Week in Review: July 12, 2024 - with Erica Barnett

Alexis Mercedes Rinck Outlines Progressive Vision for Seattle City Council from Hacks & Wonks

Grassroots to City Hall: Sanchez's Progressive Agenda for Seattle Council from Hacks & Wonks

Balancing Tradition and Innovation: Patrick DePoe's Bid for Lands Commissioner from Hacks & Wonks

“WA Supreme Court deals blow to lawsuit seeking to protect vehicle residents” by Greg Kim from The Seattle Times

“Hilary Franz’s DNR work prioritized political gain, some staffers say” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times

“King County, City of Seattle and community leaders unite for 100 Days of Action against gun violence” by Dow Constantine in King County Blog

“Seattle, King County, community leaders launch plan to combat gun violence” by Kate Perez from The Seattle Times

“Wage standard for Seattle delivery drivers at an impasse” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times

“Auditor: City Needs to Implement Smarter Strategies to Reduce Overdoses and Drug-Related Crime” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola

“Seattle police second-in-command accused of asking deputy to lie on report” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times

“Seattle Sends $1.55 Billion Transportation Levy to the November Ballot” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist

“Transportation Levy Funds Leary Bypass of Burke-Gilman Trail; Council Escalates Street Racing Rhetoric (and Fines)” from PubliCola

Find stories that Crystal is reading here

Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here

[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us the most, helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.

If you missed our Tuesday and last Friday show - because of the holiday we didn't have a week-in-review - Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Saunatina Sanchez joined me for in-depth interviews to discuss their campaigns for Seattle City Council. And last Tuesday, I spoke with Patrick DePoe, former elected member of the Makah Tribal Council and current Director of Tribal Relations for the Department of Natural Resources, to discuss his campaign for Commissioner of Public Lands. Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Seattle political reporter, editor of PubliCola, and co-host of the Seattle Nice podcast, Erica Barnett.

[00:01:35] Erica Barnett: Hello, it's great to be here.

[00:01:37] Crystal Fincher: Great to have you back on this hot week that we have - hope you have been and everyone listening has been staying cool this week. I wanted to begin with news of one of the first post-SCOTUS decisions after the Grants Pass case about homelessness - basically saying it's not cruel and unusual punishment to ban camping or sleeping on public property. This was a case where the Washington Supreme Court ruled that Lacey's ban on RV and trailer parking in public areas is constitutional. What did they decide and what was at stake here?

[00:02:15] Erica Barnett: Yeah, this is a really interesting case that doesn't directly come out of the same sort of rules as the Supreme Court case was based on in Grant's Pass. But it is an attempt essentially to restrict or bar people who live in their vehicles - who live in RVs specifically - from existing on the streets of Lacey. And so essentially the ruling found that it's totally constitutional for cities to pass laws like Lacey's, which I believe says that RVs can't be parked for more than four hours at a time and can't be parked in certain places. Seattle has similar laws about where RVs are allowed to be. But the ruling said that this does not violate rules on interstate travel - it was based on sort of the freedom to travel and be where you choose to be. And I will not pretend to understand the intricacies of the law, but that is the basis of saying that this RV ban is permissible. On a fundamental level, it's not really any different than other bans on people existing in public spaces - I think it is designed to banish certain types of vehicles and people who are unsheltered, living homeless in specific situations from a city. And we've seen similar bans on tents, sleeping in Burien. And although they're all being defended based on different grounds, they're all fundamentally trying to banish people from cities. And I think it really is yet another example of how a regional approach to homelessness runs into local laws that are sort of designed to push the perceived problem to another city - to Seattle, or Olympia, or wherever it may be. So disturbing finding, although again, I don't know how valid it is on the law itself.

[00:03:59] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, well, certainly with this new precedent set by the Supreme Court, people are viewing a lot of this in a new light. Certainly cities have felt vindicated and justified who have passed legislation and feel like their chances of prevailing in legislation has increased. Following this, there are a number of cities - Burien being another notable one - who are currently involved in lawsuits against their policies and the recent Supreme Court decision may have a big influence on how those turn out. And to your point, these approaches to homelessness, which some cities have basically just said - Well, our approach is to prevent homeless people from being able to exist in the city, hoping that they do get pushed along to others. Well, if we keep doing that in every city, where are people able to exist? I know we hear sometimes - Well, there's shelter and they choose not to take advantage of shelter. Even though all of the available data shows that there are much fewer shelter beds by an order of magnitude than there are actual people without homes on the streets - either directly outside with no shelter, in an RV or trailer - that need that. So we don't have enough space indoors for people to sleep - there's not enough shelter and they aren't allowed to exist outdoors, which seems to make criminalization inevitable. Which also comes at quite an expensive cost to cities who are struggling with state budgets. So they may be trading one conundrum for another one - criminalization turning into more severe budget problems. We'll see how this turns out, but I certainly hope we see a shift towards more evidence-based tactics to address homelessness. And we do see some cities and counties doing that and touting success and progress in what they're doing.

[00:05:48] Erica Barnett: Yeah, and the reason I sort of hedge a little bit on the legal aspects of this is that the law in Lacey is about parking fundamentally. And in Seattle, I mean, we have areas where you can't park from 2 to 5 a.m. - some of which are almost explicitly designed to prevent RVs from parking there, sometimes it's for street cleaning. So I can see those laws being more likely to be upheld as constitutional than, say, Burien's law, which is a total ban on sleeping outside or "living outside" and if you so much as cover yourself with a blanket, you can be moved along and ultimately ticketed and charged under that ban. That is being challenged as a violation of the Washington state's constitutional protection against cruel punishment, and so that is outside the scope of the Supreme Court decision at this point. So it remains to be seen how that one is going to be found, but that seems like perhaps a more fruitful avenue than going after parking laws.

[00:06:46] Crystal Fincher: It definitely does, and we will continue to follow that story, as we proceed through the following months and existing lawsuits. I also want to talk about news this week - a kind of expansive story in The Seattle Times about Hilary Franz, who's the current Commissioner of Public Lands and running for a Congressional position in an open seat to replace Congressman Derek Kilmer, saying that several of her employees or employees in the department said that there were certainly blurred lines between their work for the department and political work or supporter expectations. What unfolded in this story?

[00:07:30] Erica Barnett: Well, the story basically describes - and Jim Brunner, the author, spoke to, I believe, about 15 people who were current or former employees at the department - and describes a situation where people say they felt pressured to schedule around campaign events, to show up and buy seats at a table, and show up in support of Hilary Franz's Congressional campaign, and that it felt unusual to them and it felt uncomfortable. In one case, an employee was required to sign essentially a non-disparagement agreement saying that she would not disparage her former employer - and that's pretty unusual in state government, certainly in government in general. And so what's unusual about this is - if these allegations are true, just sort of the level of pressure that employees felt to participate in or help Hilary Franz's political campaign. But also just the fact that they were willing to talk to a reporter, that this many of them were frustrated and giving The Seattle Times a call, picking up the phone - you just don't usually see that level or number of people willing to come out expressing frustration. And some of them on the record - there's even two pictures of a guy who spoke to Brunner on the record. He notes that Bob Ferguson also sort of enthusiastically uses his victories in court as Bob Ferguson, the attorney general, as fodder in his campaign for governor. Ferguson has been really strongly criticized for that, and Brunner didn't really talk about that in the story. But I mean, this is not an isolated incident of one politician doing this, but it is kind of an unusual one just in the breadth and the number of people who are willing to talk.

[00:09:06] Crystal Fincher: Well, and I wanted to talk about this because this is something that a lot of politicians are negotiating and have to deal with if they're running, certainly running for reelection. The law is that you cannot use public resources for your campaign. So that means that if it's you or employees in your office, the computers, phones, you can't use any public time - so people's effort while they're being paid by a public entity or any of those tools in service of that. There are a lot of public officials from the city all the way to the state level who do work with this - I've been involved with this before - the way you do it is all of your time off-the-clock. You can't do anything that's not in a publicly accessible area, so you can't sit in your office and make phone calls generally. You can't do anything that the general public wouldn't have access to, wouldn't be able to do. So you have to be very careful about that - and you have to talk about that, have trainings about that, make sure people understand. Looks like people in this office did understand and felt like there was too much being asked of them - they're feeling pressure to attend to the campaign. I think that might be a challenging thing - just looking at overall how this generally plays out in offices, where usually if you're working for someone, you probably support the direction. Although that's not a universal thing - there are plenty of employees in public offices who are there for several administrations, whether it's Democratic or Republican. They're experts at their job, their job is a nonpartisan one, they're just fulfilling their role - and they should have the freedom and ability to not feel pressure or be pressured to participate in a campaign activity. I think most people think that is an absolutely fair expectation and that would be within the bounds of the law. Certainly, people can volunteer in their extra time if you wanted to help secure endorsements, which people are alleging that they were asked to do or pressured to do. You can certainly do that in your free time, but to be forced to do that would be the issue here and people are saying that they felt like it was that much more. And a lot of it seemed not to actually do directly with Hilary but looking at her chief of staff, who went around with a notebook and a pen taking people's personal information so they could communicate that way. That may be excessive if that turned out to be - I am standing at your desk expecting this, and you may be concerned about your job status if you don't participate - that wouldn't be a good expectation. But I think this serves as a reminder for most public officials, especially those running for office, to be very careful. To put yourself in the shoes of your employees, of other people in the office, and to make sure that they don't feel in any way pressured to be participating or contributing to assisting a campaign. And that if they don't want to, they don't have to - and that's not discussed or handled in the office - and you're taking care in being diligent not to involve any public resources there. I think that is justified.

[00:12:09] Erica Barnett: Yeah, and I think the response to stories like this, I fear - just among the general public, the sort of non-hacks and wonks - is to just look at this and say, Ah, yeah, that's how government works. That's just standard practice. Of course, elected officials are pressuring their employees to do this kind of stuff all the time. And I would say that is not the case - I have covered local politics for a long time, not so much state politics - and for the most part, in my experience, elected officials do take this stuff seriously. And it is not a huge thing to say, walk outside of City Hall and make a call from your personal cell phone. I mean, these things are doable - you can run for office while also holding office without violating election rules and without putting your employees feeling like they have to say yes or risk their jobs. And I think public employees, particularly the ones you were talking about who've been there for a long time - and I don't know exactly what happened in this case - but if and when this kind of thing does happen, they feel justifiably angry about it because it's not their job to work on campaigns.

[00:13:08] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And my experience certainly agrees with that. I think the majority, the vast majority of public officials take this very seriously and are very careful to stay within the bounds of the law - like you said, stepping outside to take a call on a personal cell phone is very normal, standard practice. And you usually don't see people blurring the lines like this, which is perhaps why this became a story - because it is so non-standard. Certainly worth mentioning, Hilary Franz says that some of these allegations are not the case, some may have been misunderstandings - but saying that this is just part of the ugly nature of primary elections and people trying to place a story to gain a political advantage, perhaps. Certainly notable that some of the unions representing some of these classes of workers in the story have endorsed a different way, so there may be political maneuvering here. But it is certainly noteworthy for several people within an office to come forward with these types of concerns.

Also, want to talk this week about a response to so many troubling events that we've seen recently in King County with relation to gun violence - and King County and Seattle leaders launching a new initiative to prevent gun violence. What are they planning?

[00:14:27] Erica Barnett: The announcement was that they are going to spend $1.6 million over the next 100 days for intervention, for community-based programs, for a program at Harborview Medical Center that supports people affected by gun violence. This is an announcement that came out of King County - Dow Constantine and Councilmember Girmay Zahilay speaking at this presentation - and Mayor Bruce Harrell also supporting this initiative. I heave a little bit of a sigh when I see announcements like this, though, because $1.6 million - I don't believe it's new money. They're concentrating it for expenditure in this hundred days - okay, but looking into the details, it's stuff like we will expand a community resource guide, we will launch a public awareness campaign about gun violence, we're going to work with this national center to study gun violence. And it feels like this sort of steady drumbeat of increasing gun violence in our communities hasn't abated, no matter how many studies we've done or how many initiatives we've launched. I mean, I've been here a long time. Crystal, you've been here a long time too. Doesn't this just feel sort of like dreadfully familiar?

[00:15:37] Crystal Fincher: So I'm going to disagree a little bit here.

[00:15:39] Erica Barnett: Okay - all right. Tell me why I'm wrong.

[00:15:41] Crystal Fincher: There are certainly some familiar things in here, but there are a few things that I think are substantive and are valuable. One, I don't know firmly what is new money that wasn't already budgeted, but it does appear that it's an acceleration of the spending of money and of the deployment of the programs that are funded. And I think that matters - sometimes when we hear legislation and big dollar amounts are announced. Like, hey, we're investing $10 million in this - and then you look in the details and it's $500,000 this year and the rest over the next 20 years - and that isn't really going to accomplish much, certainly not like $10 million right now. So getting more money allocated right now, which translates to the types of services and support that are provided, I think is helpful, particularly with a couple of firmly evidence-based interventions that at least - after a conversation with Eleuthera Lisch of the King County Office of Gun Violence Prevention, the hospital initiative is actually one that is doing really good work in intervening with people at critical - really traumatic - but critical points in time that seems to be interrupting violence that frequently follows violence, whether it's in retaliation and resulting from the trauma there. So that seems to be a real segment of gun crime that's happening and an evidence-based intervention to address that and an expansion of that intervention. So that actually, I think, is valuable.

[00:17:14] Erica Barnett: I agree with evidence-based interventions, but I will point out that that particular one, they're adding, I believe, $250,000, which is money - but if that's the thing that works, why not invest 10 times that amount. With drugs and with all kinds of other issues where there is evidence for certain solutions, I want to see the money going into that and not more sort of studies that the county ultimately doesn't do a whole lot with. So yes, I'm all for investing in stuff that is actually evidence-based and that is good to hear. I would just like to see more of that and less of the kind of performative stuff that I fear they're doing yet again here.

[00:17:51] Crystal Fincher: I absolutely agree with more money going into evidence-based programs and want to see more of that. They did say that after the 100 days, there will be a follow-on report that perhaps does allocate more funding, so we'll see. The 100 days seems to be an acceleration and a coordinated push that also includes community-based violence interrupters that have shown to be effective, at least preliminarily, in reducing or preventing gun violence. There are also studies of existing initiatives that are supposed to be getting updated reports, updated data on how they're progressing. So there's a demand to do more - there's a lot in the bucket. I do think that there does need to be - one, yes, I do think we spend too much on studies and task forces and all of that. And half the time that is an excuse - I think half the time is probably conservative - that's an excuse to act like you're doing something without having to do something, so I think that's an absolutely valid critique. I think there is some substance here. I think there is a role for validating what you're doing - at least making sure that it's not having the opposite effect as intended - and it sounds like those are built into this program. But I think the answer is to follow what they're doing closely, and at the end of this 100 days to really demand follow up action. And to your point, for the things that we're confident are working and that they felt confident enough to increase some funding for - let's double down on that. Let's double down on what we know is effective and allocate sufficient resources to handle that. A lot of times we hear those dollar amounts - that really is equating to staff on the ground, the people to do the work, the offices and the technology to do the work, the time and convening and coordinating these responses between different levels of government. So it really does come down to funding the people, making sure we're getting the results that we're hoping to. And it seems like, at least preliminarily, there has been positive responses from some of this stuff. But I do think some of it is substantive, so we will see.

Also, news coming out of Seattle about the PayUp legislation potential repeal - that was touted as perhaps one of the first pieces of legislation that the Council was going to vote on, was teed up by Sara Nelson, and she seemed to be very enthused about it - and it seems to have stalled. Why is this stalled and where does it stand?

[00:20:22] Erica Barnett: The Council needs five votes to pass legislation, obviously - out of nine councilmembers - and two councilmembers that, I think, perhaps Council President Nelson believed that she had on board, Cathy Moore and Joy Hollingsworth, have balked at the idea of repealing the minimum wage for gig delivery workers. And the substance of this legislation would be to repeal the adopted minimum wage in the PayUp legislation passed at the end of last year and adopt a lower minimum wage that delivery workers and labor advocates say is below the Seattle minimum wage, which is around $20 an hour - so that's the substance of it. Gig workers themselves have been showing up for months at City Council to explain how this would impact their wages, how the delivery fees that the companies have imposed on every single delivery are impacting their ability to earn a living - and these are sort of punitive fees that all of the companies imposed and said that they would lift if the Seattle Council would just get rid of the minimum wage requirement. So I think that it is possible that Moore and Hollingsworth were impacted by all of this testimony. At the same time, I think that Council President Nelson has perhaps not been diplomatic in her efforts to push this legislation through. She has presented a very one-sided view of how this would work, sort of suggesting this is just a wage adjustment that will help drivers actually, and they don't understand their own interests. And not even so much as meeting with Working Washington, the main organization that is pushing back against this repeal. And I don't have insight into her mind - why she decided not to sort of at least go through the appearance of having a process, a normal process where you meet with both sides - but she's made it pretty clear that she's only interested in hearing from one side. She's portrayed a group that was created by Uber as a lobbying group that includes drivers as representing all drivers, so it's just been a very one-sided process. And I think that other councilmembers are balking against that.

[00:22:26] Crystal Fincher: I think you hit the nail on the head there and this was a failure of stakeholdering, which is so important in any legislative process. No matter what side of an issue you wind up coming down on, it's so important to understand where all of the impacted stakeholders are on the issue. And that clearly wasn't the case - there were councilmembers who were surprised by, I think - one, the public polling that wound up coming up that the majority of Seattle residents are in strong support of this legislation. Two, the breadth and passion of people testifying and saying - I am a driver and this is my experience. I am a driver and this legislation has helped me. Sure, maybe there are ways that it can be improved, but fundamentally this has helped. And really just repealing the whole thing - driving down wages again - is not the answer. And hearing that from so many drivers, from so many residents in Seattle saying - I hear you blaming drivers for the increase in costs, but we're seeing incredible profits by these platform companies that aren't doing anything but acting as a middleman and taking a chunk out. There's no promise that we've seen to lower these prices, and this is the type of threat that we've seen them make in other cities. This doesn't actually seem to be a unique Seattle problem that they're saying - Hey, you fix this in Seattle and everything goes away. Yes, costs for restaurants have gone up, the costs on the menu have gone up, but those costs have been driven up by these app companies themselves in service of profit for themselves. And that's not the driver's fault, so why are we punishing them by lowering their wages again? Those have all been very compelling arguments and were compelling evidently to at least a couple of the councilmembers that Sara Nelson thought were on board - who attempted to negotiate a deal which included a higher wage floor in these apps that was rejected by the app companies. So this is an area of disagreement - not everything can be negotiated away, sometimes there just needs to be a call that says, No, we don't want to lower the fees for drivers anymore, particularly in a city like Seattle that has always been so strongly in favor of a strong minimum wage for residents. It would have been - it seems like an unprecedented action to lower a minimum wage, which these councilmembers ultimately were not in favor of. Certainly justified calls in many situations to modify legislation - you see the effects of legislation and then you make adjustments based on we weren't sure what was going to happen or this wound up happening that we weren't expecting and we can make some technical adjustments to fix that. Seemed like there were councilmembers in support of doing that, but just such a severe and massive lowering of the wages was too much - and Sara Nelson miscalculated on this.

[00:25:21] Erica Barnett: Well, and this law has not been in effect for very long and there was an immediate backlash by the delivery companies - they imposed a $5 fee on every delivery to do, as you said, just to serve as a middleman - a rent-seeking middleman with an app. And I think that the speed with which Sara Nelson acted to accede to their demands, basically, was kind of off-putting. Like, we don't really know what the impact of this would even be long-term - they immediately retaliated by imposing this fee, so it's kind of a lopsided situation that could have worked itself out differently if it had been given some time. And we were talking before we started recording, Crystal, about the fact that some restaurants are actually rebelling against the apps and just going back to the system that we used to have, which was restaurants would deliver stuff to you, to your door. They really used to do that. They would just deliver it themselves. I know it's hard to believe that we existed without Uber and DoorDash and all these other apps. But yeah, they just have people get in their cars and drive or on their bikes, and they bring you stuff, and they charge you a fee, and there's no middleman taking out a chunk. Incredible.

[00:26:28] Crystal Fincher: There is not. And yeah, I enjoy - there is Amante Pizza and Pasta in Kent that has such a delicious cheesy chicken parmesan and great pizza - and they'll just deliver it to you and it's fantastic. They've been around for a while and I really enjoy them. But yeah, it would be cool to see more restaurants move back towards that model and at least where more of the money that is being spent in this current system is kept for the people actually doing the work.

Also want to talk about Seattle's audit regarding reducing overdoses and drug-related crime and what the Council is saying they may do about it. What did this audit uncover?

[00:27:11] Erica Barnett: This is an audit by the City Auditor's office that looked at one of the top 10 spots in Seattle for drug overdoses and drug-related crime - they don't specify exactly what kind of crime, but basically the hot spots. And most of those are Downtown, there's one in Little Saigon, of course, and a couple in Capitol Hill - but the one they looked at was a section of Third Avenue between Virginia and Blanchard Streets, where there is some affordable housing, there's a shelter, and there's a lot of overdoses. And what they basically found is that some of the things that could be effective in combating overdoses or that have been effective are place-based interventions that will differ based on what the specific situation is at a place. So whether the issue is that there's a big market in stolen goods or whether the issue is that there's a vacant storefront and people are congregating there. And so they recommended things like filling vacant storefronts, activating sidewalks, and getting rid of stuff that blocks sight lines on sidewalks, and just kind of doing - frankly, Jane Jacobs-y style stuff to make the sidewalks and the streets safer by just putting more people there and making it feel more like a place that people are passing through, doing business, and not just congregating. Pretty reasonable suggestions. And of course, they also recommended that a little bit of policing, although they said what they want is natural guardianship - meaning shop owners and the shelter providers sort of being present. They did recommend that transit police check in on bus stops more and enforce the code of conduct on buses, but the audit really did not call for more police presence, but more of - as I said, they called it natural guardianship, more activity to discourage congregation.

[00:28:57] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, more of a community presence.

[00:29:00] Erica Barnett: Exactly.

[00:29:00] Crystal Fincher: Which again has been shown to help, is an evidence-based intervention. There's so much more to public safety besides just police - actually seems like a fairly recent phenomenon to even suggest that it's only police. Police used to tell you - We can't do this alone. We need these other elements in the community. Certainly prevention should be a much higher priority than just responding to crime that has already happened - it's much better if you don't have a victim in the first place than having to respond to one - and these things have been shown to do that. Not only in so many studies nationwide, but the City's own audit is saying this once again. So the question is, do they plan to listen?

[00:29:45] Erica Barnett: Yeah, I mean, there's another section of the audit that talks about harm reduction for drug use. And it notes that a lot of people, particularly this block, as I said, includes some publicly subsidized housing. And they noted a lot of the people who experienced fatal overdoses there - and I think it was 11 people total in the study period - were living in or in front of these subsidized housing developments and this is true all over the city. Sara Nelson, who we were just talking about, has sort of taken this to mean that Housing First is maybe a bad thing. She attached a letter to the audit basically saying this shows that our Housing First and harm reduction approach is perhaps misguided, that we can't just rely on it. I think that that is not what the audit says. The audit just says that - Look, people are also overdosing in their homes, which is true of people who are just in market rate housing - if you look at overdose data, it overwhelmingly shows that that is true. So I suspect that the current Council will not decide to reverse course and make a massive investment in street improvements instead of the police-based approach they've endorsed and got elected on. But I think it also shows that there is some evidence-based stuff we could be doing, perhaps alongside that misguided police-only approach - that hopefully some of this will actually happen - but not holding my breath. But it's an interesting audit and it's well worth reading - I found it really fascinating.

[00:31:08] Crystal Fincher: Well worth reading and certainly for all the talk in these initial months of these councilmembers being in office - of needing to conduct audits and listen to the data - let's hope they do what they said they were going to do and follow the recommendations of the audit here in this area.

Want to talk about some really troubling potential news about the police second-in-command being accused of asking a deputy to lie on a report and more. What is alleged to have happened here?

[00:31:43] Erica Barnett: This is a case reported by The Seattle Times in which one of the Deputy Chiefs of Police, Eric Barden, is accused of asking Pierce County police officers to lie on a report involving an alleged domestic violence [DV] situation in which Barden was the listed victim. This is involving an ex where there were a couple of DV reports by both parties in the past, and he asked them to essentially lie on a report about an alleged attempt by this woman to violate a protective order. The basic issue is that you're not supposed to ask police officers to lie on a report - it is dishonesty, it is the kind of thing that you can get heavily disciplined for if not fired. And so this is a big deal. I believe that the current Interim Chief, Sue Rahr, was aware of these domestic violence reports - which I did some reporting on when she came in - and Barden was rumored to be put on leave, but he either was not put on leave or was on leave for a very short period before Sue Rahr reinstated him. And so right now he is currently in that position, and I don't believe there's been any sort of movement from the current police chief to impose any discipline because of this latest allegation, which just came out this week.

[00:32:59] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, this is really challenging. Again, a Deputy Police Chief - this is someone in leadership, someone certainly who you would think shapes the culture of the department, which has made lots of news for having challenges. They're facing several different lawsuits related to that. And so - one, asking a deputy to lie on a police report to prevent an arrest of a former domestic partner, in addition to other allegations involving domestic assault, just really makes you question - particularly in light of data showing that domestic violence seems to be a larger problem within police departments and for the law enforcement community than it is for the community at large. Seems like there should be an intervention there, there should be extra attention paid and efforts made to address this, to reduce this, to intervene in this. And it looks like not only was that not happening here, but going in the opposite direction and lying - which is unethical, illegal, against policy no matter how you look at it on a police report - very troubling. And now there's a situation where Barden has provisionally been placed on the county's Brady list, which is an impeachment list - basically a list of officers with potential credibility problems. What does it say that yet another person in leadership in this department is under investigation for these multiple incidents and really can't even testify in cases that they're involved with, seemingly because they've been provisionally placed on this Brady list? What does this mean for the department?

[00:34:42] Erica Barnett: Well, I think it just speaks to the culture of the department and the larger problems that the police department has been extremely reluctant to acknowledge or address - just with sort of a culture of impunity, a culture of misogyny - and that culture having been fostered and not addressed from the very, very top. And so this is a person who is basically second-in-command, as you said. Another officer who was reinstated was alleged to have sexually assaulted a City employee - and that was another Deputy Chief who was removed by former Chief Adrian Diaz from his Deputy Chief position and was reinstated by Sue Rahr. So I've said before - the problems with hiring police officers are complex but one issue, I think, that keeps qualified officers who want to engage in culture change from coming to Seattle is that we have a well-deserved reputation for being a really problematic police department culturally. And just for women to work at, for people who are interested in culture change to work at - there's just a very entrenched culture and it's bad. And I think that the police department has failed to acknowledge that over and over and over again. And the fact that Sue Rahr coming in as a temporary police chief has made the choice to allow both of these men facing accusations - in Barden's case, facing accusations and being on a Brady list - is not encouraging so far. But she is still new, so we don't know what action she's going to take in the future. But yeah, there's a rot at the root of Seattle Police Department. And until it's addressed, they're not going to address any of the other problems that they say they want to address - like hiring, like becoming a department of true accountability and getting out from under the consent decree that they've been under since 2012.

[00:36:30] Crystal Fincher: Certainly a number of challenges they need to address, and we will continue to follow the efforts or lack of efforts to address them. Finally today, I want to talk about Seattle making the decision with a unanimous vote by the City Council to send the Transportation Levy to the November ballot for Seattle voters. What will this levy do, and what's on this levy?

[00:36:54] Erica Barnett: So the levy is a continuation of a levy that's expiring. It's a $1.55 billion levy, which is larger than any previous levy - both just in terms of the total size and the amount people will pay as homeowners, as renters. And so what does it do? It does a lot of things. It invests a lot of money in arterial paving and maintenance. It invests heavily in sidewalks, particularly in the North End - more heavily than previous levies have. And it also funds basic stuff like bicycle safety. And at the very last minute, Dan Strauss, a City Councilmember representing Ballard, Magnolia, Fremont, and a lot of northwest Seattle - but he always focuses on Ballard, his own neighborhood where he grew up, he likes to point out - and he has basically at the last minute put in a provision that will dedicate $20 million to, as he puts it, completing the Burke Gilman Trail Missing Link. By, I would say, skipping the actual Burke Gilman Trail and detouring it to Leary Way - which is a big, busy street - putting a path there. And that is the option that has long been favored by industrial businesses in the area. So this has been a subject of litigation for decades and decades, and Strauss has said he's solved the problem. But I would say that the Leary alternative to completing the Burke Gilman Trail is pretty darn controversial because it requires people to dogleg over away from the trail, up Leary, back to the trail, and crossing 13 different intersections - which is incredibly dangerous for cyclists. And we are moving rapidly away from Vision Zero - people are being killed on streets and sidewalks at greater and greater levels every year. And I think that this is - unless it's just amazingly designed, I don't know how you get around passing 33 different driveways and 13 street intersections - I don't know how you make that safe. And so that was a last minute addition that six councilmembers voted to support.

[00:38:53] Crystal Fincher: I think a number of people see that as emblematic of this transportation package as a whole, perhaps. Certainly, Mayor Bruce Harrell heralded this as an all-of-the-above approach to transportation. But I think, as you alluded to, amid record pedestrian and cyclist injuries by drivers, record traffic violence on our streets that is claiming so many lives, that is maiming so many people - that many were hoping, one, for more investments in modes and projects for people who aren't driving, which is a sizable percentage of the city. In addition to just doing more to address our climate challenges and to achieve our climate goals and make it possible through more frequent transit, through more safe ways and modes to travel outside of a car - to transition from driving as much to certainly driving less or to enable more people to be car-free, to not have to drive, certainly to not have to commute on a daily basis. This did not end up with a lot of those types of investments that a number of disability advocates, safety advocates were pushing for, were saying were necessary. And so this is going to go to the voters - we're going to see. This is going to define transportation in the city for most of the next decade. So unless something else comes forward, it looks like it's going to be limited here. Certainly roads need maintenance, bridges need maintenance - some of that is well past due and needs to be handled, which Councilmember Bob Kettle, Bruce Harrell certainly have talked a lot about, Councilmember Rob Saka, also the Chair of the Transportation Committee. But for the price tag it has, a number of people were saying - We, with just a little bit more investment, we could do so much more for the community and it feels like an opportunity lost.

[00:40:47] Erica Barnett: Well, and just real quickly on the climate change stuff - the proposal really touts its climate change credentials by pointing to the investments in electric vehicle charging infrastructure. And while we do need that infrastructure, I would say that the best vehicle purchase is the one you don't make. And encouraging people to buy more cars - even if they are EVs - is not as big a move in the direction of addressing climate change as making our transit system work better, making our bike lanes actually safe, making it so you don't have to risk your life to cross the street. It's a very tepid approach when it comes to both climate change and the safety of people who aren't in cars.

[00:41:26] Crystal Fincher: A tepid approach, I think, is a great explanation - and Seattle voters will be making a decision on this on their November ballots.

And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, July 12th, 2024. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is the excellent Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was Seattle political reporter, editor of PubliCola, and co-host of the Seattle Nice podcast, Erica Barnett. You can find Erica on Twitter, on all platforms at @ericacbarnett and on PubliCola.com. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. You can find me on all platforms at @finchfrii - that's two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar and be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-reviews and our Tuesday topical shows delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, please leave a review wherever you listen - it is very helpful. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com. and in the podcast episode notes.

Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.