Week in Review: May 17, 2024 - with Shannon Cheng

“Three Bob Fergusons now running for governor as race takes turn for the weird” by Jerry Cornfield from Washington State Standard

“Bob Ferguson gets two Bob Fergusons to exit governor’s race” by Jerry Cornfield from Washington State Standard

“Boeing broke deal, subject to prosecution in 737 MAX crashes, U.S. says” by Lauren Rosenblatt from The Seattle Times

“City Council Bill Cutting “Gig” Delivery Workers’ Pay Moves Forward” by Erica Barnett from PubliCola

“Political heavy hitters criticize Mayor Harrell’s housing plan” by Josh Cohen from Cascade PBS

“Who was the anonymous donor behind the controversial kid playground at Seattle's Denny Blaine?” by Ashley Hiruko from KUOW

“Police Contract Gives Big Raises to Officers, Still Fails to Meet Baseline Set in 2017 Accountability Law” by Andrew Engelson from PubliCola

“Seattle Council approves police union contract with 23% pay bump” by Josh Cohen from Cascade PBS

“Op-Ed: Seattle Council Must Reject an Unaccountable SPOG Contract” by Shannon Cheng for The Urbanist

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.

Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows, where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome to the program, producer of the show and today's co-host - and orienteering champion - Chair of People Power Washington, Shannon Cheng.

[00:01:11] Shannon Cheng: Thanks, Crystal - good to be here - and welcome back!

[00:01:14] Crystal Fincher: Hey, I am back in town and ready to talk about what's going on. Filing week ended last week, meaning it's official - we know who's running for office - everyone had to officially declare their candidacy last week. And the biggest story actually coming out of filing week was the saga of the Bobs. What happened here?

[00:01:39] Shannon Cheng: Yes, the saga of the three Bobs. As many people know, our current Attorney General Bob Ferguson is running for governor since Jay Inslee has opted to not run for another term. Bob Ferguson has been on the campaign trail for many months - it's been known for a very long time that this is an office he's wanted to pursue, and he's been in the running. And on the final day of filing week last week, two other Bob Fergusons in the state filed to run for governor as well, as Democrats. And so what that would mean is when people receive their primary ballot in August, they would see this massive long list of 30 people running for governor and there would be three identical Bob Fergusons of the Democratic Party running - this would naturally cause a lot of confusion as to which Bob Ferguson one should vote for. It turned out that these Bob Fergusons were recruited by Glen Morgan, who is a known Republican political troublemaker. There was a big hullabaloo about it and people had different opinions, but it turns out that there is a 81-year-old state law that says it's a felony, actually, to file for office with the intent to confuse and mislead electors. So the original Bob Ferguson campaign sent cease-and-desist letters to the new Bob Ferguson campaigns alluding that there could be consequences - and both Bob Ferguson 2 and Bob Ferguson 3 ended up dropping out before the deadline on Monday.

[00:03:10] Crystal Fincher: What a stunt of desperation this was. And wow, if you don't think you can actually beat Bob Ferguson, how far will you go to try and find some way that isn't just doing what the voters of Washington care about and want you to do - they would rather do this stunt. Really wild. Glen Morgan has a long history of, as you said, being a troublemaker, being an instigator, trying to file a bunch of complaints against Democrats. And I think he thinks he's really clever. But what this really did was deliver a week of nonstop talk about Bob Ferguson - everyone knows there's one real Bob Ferguson. And really wondering why a GOP operative, who is known and generally accepted by the Republican establishment, would do this. As you said, it was a felony. He said that he initially tried to recruit dozens of Bob Fergusons - basically looked up all the Bob Fergusons in the state - tried to recruit them for this effort, only wound up with those two. I doubt he told those two that they could potentially wind up being charged with felonies because of this. When they did figure out that they were going to be chided for this stunt and face a lot of scrutiny and criticism - rightfully - they decided that it was not for them. So I don't know what this amounted to other than making them look really desperate and pathetic. The real Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who's running for governor, took a strong stance on this. I think Dave Reichert eventually condemned this effort. But just - wow, what a fumble by Republicans yet again - and the drama. My goodness.

But also, there are a number of people who ended up filing. We have a number of competitive statewide races - more than we've seen in many previous years. Are there any notable races that you saw that you're looking at?

[00:05:15] Shannon Cheng: Looking down the final candidate list, the Attorney General race, as we've known, was going to be competitive. It looks like it's still going to be Nick Brown, Manka Dhingra and the Republican Pete Serrano running - nobody else filed in that race. There is a Commissioner of Public Lands race that has Dave Upthegrove, who's currently on the King County Council, running, as well as former Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler, who lost her seat to Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in the last even-year cycle. There's also Patrick DePoe running for that seat, as well as a handful of other names, so there will be action in that race. The Superintendent of Public Instruction race has Chris Reykdal, the incumbent, running against Reid Saaris and a couple other people as well. We'll also be electing the State Auditor, the Insurance Commissioner, Secretary of State, and Lieutenant Governor. What else did you see, Crystal?

[00:06:10] Crystal Fincher: These races are interesting in that a number of them are going to have pretty interesting primaries, like the gubernatorial race - and really talking about and having to reflect on who the bases are that they need in order to get out of the primary. And then, because we are a top-two primary state and not a partisan primary state, what that means - that could be very interesting in a race like the Commissioner of Public Lands race. So we'll see how this unfolds, but it is, I think, useful and important for - even people in races who look like they're safe incumbents headed to re-election to really run a real race, to get to all of the corners of the state and talk to the people of the state, answer questions, listen to people about what matters to them most. There is a lot of angst and displeasure by people, who have those gripes with people at many levels of government. And I think that especially right now, in this state - the people who are running have an opportunity to buck that trend and to really show that they want to listen and be responsive. We're facing several serious problems that we don't see getting addressed adequately at many levels of government. So this is an opportunity for these candidates to really listen and respond and articulate a vision and plans that are at the scale of the challenges that we face. So I'm just eager to see how they do turn out. We did previously speak to two of the major candidates for Attorney General - Manka Dhingra and Nick Brown. Heard some pretty impressive articulations of visions in comprehensive ways with that office, and I hope to hear similar from these other candidates running for these other offices. Also, interesting races happening across the state - in Pierce County, the notorious Ed Troyer, the Pierce County Sheriff, is not running for re-election. So there's going to be a new Pierce County Sheriff - that's going to be an interesting race, certainly, to follow. A number of state legislative races that we will be watching closely. A lot on the ballot. And then we have these big initiatives looming over all - that really are about who we are and our values as a state, and whether we want to defund significant portions of our government and our public services or continue forward in addressing and mitigating the impacts that we're already feeling from climate change, that we're setting people up to be securely taken care of with long term care and the like. So a lot of debate to come, it's going to be interesting to see.

Also, want to talk about this week - big news regarding Boeing, where the Department of Justice, as was signaled in a Congressional hearing a couple months back - that the DOJ has found them in violation of their deferred prosecution agreement, opening them up again to criminal prosecution. How did we arrive here?

[00:09:19] Shannon Cheng: In 2018 and 2019, there were two 737 MAX crashes that killed 346 people. And in the aftermath of those two tragedies, it was found that Boeing had not disclosed to the Federal Aviation Administration information about this software fix called MCAS, or Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System. My understanding is that Boeing was feeling competitive with Airbus and was trying to develop new versions of their old 737 airplane. They were going to do this by installing larger engines. The issue is that the placement of those engines affected the way that the aircraft handled, and they didn't want to have to make all the pilots go through new training. So instead, they put a software fix in to try to make the plane operate the same way as the old 737s. And tragically, in these two 737 MAX crashes that happened in Indonesia and Ethiopia, a faulty angle of attack sensor during takeoff caused the software to make the planes tip down and eventually crash into the ground, killing everybody. In the investigation that followed, they felt that Boeing not disclosing this was going against safety regulations around the aviation industry. And as a result of that, in 2021, Boeing entered this agreement with the Department of Justice that within the next three years, they were going to meet certain safety conditions in order to avoid being criminally prosecuted for those two crashes. And that deferred prosecution expired in January of this year. And the DOJ announced earlier this week that Boeing, in their mind, had not met these safety conditions. And so Boeing has about a month to respond with how they think that they have done so. And if not, it looks pretty certain that the criminal prosecution against Boeing is going to move forward.

[00:11:09] Crystal Fincher: In this whole process - yes, they decided to make these changes. No, they did not adequately disclose it. They knew that there was a potential safety issue that they did not alert people to. And then they seemingly hid it. And also wrapped up in that - that became apparent at the time - is the chummy relationship they had of the agencies that were supposed to be overseeing and regulating them. So, there was a lax culture of oversight. There was a culture that, I think, we see now as clearly as ever was prioritizing profits and the image of the company, the shareholder returns over actual safety. And decisions weren't being made with passenger safety as the top concern. Now, those are the two crashes. This is before we get to the incident of the plug flying out this past January, which prompted a lot of other revelations and disclosures and troubling details that really make it look pretty plain that Boeing, once again, did not prioritize passenger safety, did not prioritize sound engineering practices leading up to this plug problem - that should have been handled as part of this deferred prosecution agreement. A lot of the family members of people who were killed in those two crashes thought Boeing got off way too easy initially with escaping criminal prosecution. Representatives for those families are saying - It's coming late, but at least this looks like it's happening now - and they are eager to see some accountability, finally. We'll see how this unfolds, but Boeing seems to think that they could, over the past few years, address this with a crisis communications mindset - and just say the right things and wait it out for this to go away. And it's going to take more than that. There has to be a substantive change. There has to be a priority of passenger safety. There has to be a culture of listening to whistleblowers and not retaliating against them or worse - now that two whistleblowers are dead. One, seemingly, of what the family said was a medical situation, and the other of what was reported to be by suicide. But a lot of people look at those circumstances and eyebrows are raised. I think lots of people are waiting to see some real accountability. And again, this is really not only serious for people who are flying in these planes, but also this is crucial to our region's economy. Boeing messing this up is jeopardizing the lives and livelihoods of tens of thousands of families in our region. And many of these people have taken pride in their work and pride in their jobs and have tried to be part of making this situation better. And it seems like people at the top have made that impossible time and time again. I really do hope that changes. Our region needs it - families are counting on it, in addition to folks who are flying. So we'll see how this unfolds over the next month.

[00:14:20] Shannon Cheng: And it's not just people in the region - it's the entire airline industry. It's really short-sighted, I think, of Boeing to be - like you said - just relying on what they hoped was managed crisis communications rather than dealing with actual fundamental problems where maybe there was some cutting of corners rather than implementing actual safety precautions and making sure the engineering was sound. The airline industry relies on people's confidence in using it. Even though actually flying is much safer than driving your car - I think you're 200,000 times more likely to die in a car accident than you are in a plane crash. I think there's just this perception - it's the same reason why people are afraid of shark attacks - they're not that often, but just the image of it is very vivid in people's minds. And I think when people get on a plane, they give up their control to a pilot and the maintenance of the aircraft and things like that - and so we just need to maintain the confidence in that for people to keep using it. Otherwise, the entire thing's going to come tumbling down. So for Boeing to not take these recommendations to shore up their compliance with safety regulations seriously is really disappointing.

[00:15:23] Crystal Fincher: Yes, it is. And in more disappointing news, here locally in the city of Seattle, we have a battle to repeal legislation that increased pay for gig worker drivers - bringing them up to minimum wage standards. An effort led by Council President Sara Nelson to repeal not only the wage, but a lot of gig worker protections is underway. What is happening here?

[00:15:52] Shannon Cheng: In 2022, the previous council passed this Pay Up legislation. We have all these companies like Uber, DoorDash, Lyft that have been making profit by not treating their employees as actual employees. They have workers who they are making work for them as independent contractors, despite many aspects of it where if you looked at it objectively, you would say - Well, these people are actual employees. That can range from not helping pay their self-employment taxes to only paying them for the time where they're actively working rather than even the time where they're waiting for an order or a ride request to come through. So this legislation that was passed by the previous council was an effort to try to give protections to these gig workers and make sure that they were being compensated fairly for the work that they're doing and contributing to the local economy. Unfortunately, these companies have banded with the restaurants - and after the legislation took effect this past January, the apps immediately added extra fees to restaurant orders, which the customer weren't happy about and stopped ordering as much. And that affected workers having work to do and therefore their pay. And so in response to this, Sara Nelson is trying to repeal much of the protections and matching of minimum wage that had previously been passed. So this has been working its way through council over the last couple months. It got voted out of committee, despite many delivery workers coming out and commenting against it. And I believe it's going to be voted by the full council on May 28th.

[00:17:27] Crystal Fincher: Looking at the way these gig work platforms have been operating and legislation attempting to correct what some people may call challenges, other people may call abuses - definitely here and California has been really enlightening. Initially, these app companies came in with lower fees and higher pay - to start. And then, as they got more of a foothold in the market, they started lowering the pay to the people who were delivering, increasing the fees on the restaurants, and increasing fees to end users. And so what these companies have gotten very good at doing is when people are saying - Hey, this is becoming untenable. Restaurants are going - The fees are too high. Drivers are going - We aren't making enough. And end users are going - We're paying these humongous fees. They then say - Well, those fees are because of the regulation we're facing, and in fact, we're going to have to increase those fees because of the regulation - hoping that that makes the public then go - Oh no, that's evil, this regulation. Yes, repeal the regulation, and then we will have lower fees. So a group basically put together by the industry wrote this legislation to repeal this with a complete marketing campaign to boot saying - We need to repeal this because the fees are too high. Well, what wasn't mentioned is that there's no guarantee in any of this that the fees would lower. This is just potentially lining the pockets of the people running here. And it looks like a lot of this angst and dissatisfaction is misplaced, while these platforms are just making money hand over fist and trying to figure out ways to make more. So this is kind of the backdrop of this conversation.

Another backdrop - it's really interesting - the positioning of people in this whole thing. Bruce Harrell was supportive of this legislation that passed - he signed it, got credit for it - good thing. In this repeal legislation - where the council lines up on support of this - obviously, Sara Nelson is in support. It looks like Maritza Rivera, Rob Saka, Bob Kettle are all in support. Joy Hollingsworth abstained, saying that she wanted to see some improvements or some modifications - so is a wild card there. Tammy Morales is a no. What I don't think we know is where Dan Strauss stands. So this is looking like it's going to pass out of council, if things stand as they currently stand. There may be some amendments - there were some that were introduced to soften some provisions of this rollback. We'll see. The question is - is Bruce Harrell going to sign this if it lands on his desk? Big question. And then if he does not sign it - if he does veto it - are there enough votes for a council override? That's where the question marks are right now. And I think that is a good time to discuss something I think a lot of people have no reason to know - this is not fun to watch, pay attention to, few things with the city are right now - but there have been rumors for a while that Sara Nelson is interested in running for mayor. Lots of people have been used to talking about Bruce and Sara as aligned and one - and they're not aligned on everything. In fact, there are factions there and there's some wariness, competitiveness. Everyone has heard, on the inside, these rumors. And it looks like there's merit to them, it looks like it is under consideration. And it looks like there are some business interests that a lot of people might assume are locked up by Bruce Harrell that aren't necessarily committed to someone right now and are trying to figure out who is going to be best for their interests and their shareholders. And Sara Nelson's going to the mat for them right now. So this is really interesting to watch.

Part of this backdrop, which a lot of people saw and raised eyebrows about, were these announcements of the MLK Labor nominations and awards. Bruce Harrell was just awarded "Elected Official of the Year" by the awards that MLK Labor gives out, called the Labor Oscars. I'm sure he's very happy to receive that. If you look at responses to that online, there was - to put it kindly - confusion about what went into that selection. And I think what the backdrop here is - this legislation is really big for labor, for workers in the city. Also trying to get City workers who are not police officers - who just got a COLA increase, but then were told that they were going to have to wait until after October to receive it, to move that up. There are some pressing active labor interests going on in the city, and I think that they're working and using the tools available at their disposal to build relationships, to help inform and educate people about what is really at stake and why this is really important. And this was part of that. I think that explains that and can help clear up confusion for a lot of people. So it's going to be interesting to see if this is vetoed. I hope it is. That would be a big win for labor, it would be Bruce Harreld delivering in that way and showing that he does continue to care about workers - that would be a good thing and should be applauded. And then the question is - do they have enough votes to sustain the veto or could they override it? And I think that's an open question right now, but also that underscores why it's still worth people contacting their councilmembers and contacting the mayor with how you feel about it and what you feel is important to make sure that they understand where the community is on this. They're certainly hearing from people who are impacted, but this is really important. It is really expensive to live in the city of Seattle and in this region. Making a living wage is something that most elected officials have said is really important and crucial. And the Pay Up legislation really helped people working in the gig economy to do that. I hope that continues. We will see where that lands.

[00:23:43] Shannon Cheng: The way I see it is - these companies have a business model that is based on profiting off of not paying workers what they're fairly due, of taking advantage of restaurants by charging them fees. So do you want their failed business model to be giving them profits on the backs of our local restaurant owners and the workers who are bringing food to your door for you?

[00:24:05] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Also, news in the City this week was a mega-coalition coming out to urge the mayor, Bruce Harrell, to improve his draft One Seattle Comprehensive Plan. What was said here?

[00:24:22] Shannon Cheng: The Comprehensive Plan is long awaited. It's going to set the vision of how the city of Seattle develops over the next 20 years. And people have been anxiously advocating and working on it and waiting for the mayor's draft plan to come out - it was delayed and finally did come out this year. And immediately there was backlash across the board from state legislators who had passed state law mandating that cities across the state meet minimum density requirements to planning commission to urbanists. And now, this coalition has come together that includes varied people from the social housing developers to the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce to commercial real estate interests to affordable housing developers. They have all signed on together to the Complete Communities Coalition and said that the mayor's draft plan just doesn't go far enough, that our region desperately needs more affordable housing built, and that more density needs to be provided across the city and not just along arterials or these very specific places that have been picked out. And it's pretty striking. I feel the first couple years of Harrell's administration, he skated by by saying - We're all just One Seattle - and kind of going on vibes. But now that he's actually needing to deliver results, or think about trying to get reelected next year, and coming out with these proposals people have been waiting for for a long time - people are seeing that maybe it's not really a One Seattle vision, it's more for some special interests. And that is now showing up in people coming together you wouldn't normally expect to.

[00:26:01] Crystal Fincher: So this is as broad a coalition as you can get. This includes some of every major interest in the city - from business interests to labor interests, worker interests, ethnic community interests, affordable housing, social housing, urbanists - just everyone - developers. Everyone with an interest in the city, everyone with an economic stake in the city - everyone is going to be benefited by a better Comprehensive Plan. And this pretty much lays this out. What I also appreciate about this and coalitions that do come together - they don't see eye to eye on everything, but they do see eye to eye on this and they can come together - and they have specific recommendations. I know sometimes we hear - We don't have specifics. So I definitely want to call out that there are specific recommendations here that we're talking about. You alluded to some - wanting to allow larger four-plexes and six-plexes to facilitate the construction of three- and four-bedroom homes that can accommodate families, which is really important. They want to allow mid-rise construction and mixed-use apartment and commercial buildings within a five-minute walk of bus lines, instead of just along arterial streets or near frequent transit, which is a much more limited set of places. Third, they want to expand the boundaries of the plan's Neighborhood Centers from an 800-foot radius to a quarter mile. They also want to include more density bonuses and other incentives to encourage developers to build more income-restricted and affordable housing units that don't rely on public subsidy. They also want those incentives to be made available to Seattle's new social housing developer, which the residents of Seattle passed by initiative - the residents clearly want this to be included in part of the City's affordable housing plan and density plan. And then finally, they want the city to allow 12- to 18-story buildings in all of the Regional Center designations, or the most dense areas - including places like Capitol Hill, the U District, Northgate, and Ballard.

Now, interestingly, the Chamber points to its own recent polling data showing that Seattleites overwhelmingly support affordable housing construction. In a recent April poll, 69% of respondents said they thought building more affordable housing would improve the quality of life. Same percentage said they supported the building of a wider variety of housing types in their own neighborhood. When 70% of the city tells you that - you do it. This is not hard. I appreciate Josh Cohen's reporting on this on Cascade PBS - formerly known as Crosscut - just really important here. And again, another opportunity for you to communicate directly with the mayor's office. I know sometimes if you're online - easy to read something and talk about it there - but crucially important to contact the mayor's office. Email them, call them, let them know how you feel about this, why it's important to you, how it impacts you. Because this is a big deal and basically every corner of the city is begging for the mayor's office and mayor to make this better - it's going to impact the region for a decade and beyond. We can and should do better than this.

Remember that story about an anonymous person complaining about a nude beach in Seattle that had traditionally been used by queer people, has been around forever and a day - but tried to make it a big deal, said they were unhappy with it, and was anonymously prepared to pay for a playground to basically go next door, which would make the nude beach there not possible. So basically, a playground as a way to evict the nude beach at the park. People were wondering who that anonymous donor was and also just taken aback at trying to evict and push out a long-standing use by the queer community here. When it came to public information sessions, the public was overwhelmingly in support of maintaining the beach. The people who lived there and around there - were fine with it. The City heard that and said - Okay, there's going to be a massive uproar if we do something. We're going to keep things the way that they are.

And we didn't hear that much after that until a recent KUOW article Wednesday - unmasking the person who was behind this - Stuart Sloan, who lives next to the beach in his $21 million mansion, was unhappy with the nude beach and texted Bruce Harrell complaining about it. In response, representatives from the City went to meet with him personally to talk about it. Then evidently, the City - on his behalf - came up with an idea to put in the playground. That was the City's idea to placate him as a fix to then push out this nude beach. So you have this super ultra-wealthy person who has a park next to him, but doesn't want it to be a park - wants to dictate who can use it and when, and feels that he has the right to do that - texted his pal the mayor, who he's also donated to, and they seemed to bend over backwards going through this whole process, which ended up being a waste of time and money in and of itself to do this. And it just shows the incredible levels of access that moneyed interests and people enjoy. We see this in so many places and it's infuriating. And people love acting like it's not that, but here we are. And what I find ridiculous about this is that the City - and seemingly, it looks like the mayor's office - helped maintain this person's anonymity. They knew exactly who this was, who this was on behalf of, who was putting up the money - and decided to play along with this whole thing. And in fact, if you look at other communications in this piece by Ashley Hiruko, he has treated the City like his own staff on numerous occasions. There was a time he was having an event and saying - Hey, is the City going to have security there? I hope they're going to get security there - like they're working for him personally and they aren't public City resources. This is just a wild amount of entitlement and access by this super rich bro, who is not a friend of the city and seems to enjoy antagonizing people using the property next to them in ways that they always have. Just really a grotesque example of the privileges that wealth provide when it comes to access and actions of government.

[00:33:02] Shannon Cheng: I read this story and to me, it's a microcosm of what's happening on a larger scale with the Comprehensive Plan we just talked about. This wealthy owner doesn't want certain people to be in his neighborhood near him. He doesn't like the parking that the public park next to him brings into his neighborhood. And with the Comprehensive Plan limiting density in very specific areas of the city and not allowing it in others, it's just doing this on a larger city-wide scale. So just noting that the introduction of the playground to this park and removing the possibility for this to be a nude beach did get blocked by massive public outcry and turnout - and perhaps the same thing could be done for the Comprehensive Plan.

[00:33:45] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Just really infuriating to see. And everybody needs to do better. Everybody needs to do better in this scenario. But geez, what an evil villain unmasking situation this is. And ugh ugh-

[00:34:00] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, and good on KUOW for following up and figuring out who it was and the manner in which - the text of the personal cell phone of the mayor. I mean, who - do you have the mayor's personal cell phone, Crystal?

[00:34:11] Crystal Fincher: I can say this. I'm confident if I texted the mayor, I wouldn't be getting a text back. How about that? [laughter]

[00:34:17] Shannon Cheng: Fair enough.

[00:34:21] Crystal Fincher: Oh my gosh. Okay. So, finally, I want to talk about this week - just a disappointing update that we did expect to see come - doesn't make it any less disappointing. But just an absolute lack of action on accountability that was promised by several of these people, including Sara Nelson when she ran for office, that did not materialize at all in this Seattle Police Officers Guild agreement. What happened in this situation? What did they do?

[00:34:57] Shannon Cheng: Big sigh. About a month ago, the tentative agreement that had been reached between the City of Seattle and SPOG got leaked. And I've been working on this issue for a long time - and I expected that we were going to pay a ton of money, but I was still absolutely flabbergasted at how little we got in return. The contract gives massive pay raises retroactively to SPOG employees. And in return, the City gets - in my mind - very little, almost nothing in terms of the accountability provisions that we've been fighting to get implemented since the Accountability Ordinance of 2017 passed. So the contract did get approved, not surprisingly, by the SPOG membership - most of them are set to receive on the order of $60,000 of back pay. And it went before the Council on Tuesday for ratification. I was there with others. And public comment, which is usually two minutes per person, was restricted to one minute per person. So we didn't really get much opportunity to say anything about this contract, which has been behind closed doors for almost six years. It was passed 8-1 by the council. Tammy Morales was the lone vote against - she did try to pass an amendment to try to delay the vote so that there would be more opportunity for public engagement. That failed. And then Mayor Harrell immediately signed the agreement. So it's set and it's a very huge missed opportunity by the City - we do not get many chances to change the SPOG contract. And it's just so disappointing that after this long, we're paying so much money and not getting anything that we wanted to see in it.

The other thing that really gets to me is that there's all this talk of - It's going to help with officer recruitment and retention - which I understand that argument. But they're making it sound like it wasn't SPOG that was causing the delay in this contract being negotiated. The reason that this specific contract - no other labor contract in the City takes this long and requires three years of back pay - it's because SPOG is not willing to agree to the things that the City wants in terms of accountability or the ability to civilianize and have an alternative crisis response. Those are bargaining chips that SPOG knows how to use very well, and they have done it shockingly well. It's just very frustrating that nobody is willing to stand up to them. There were nods from Councilmembers Moore and Saka that maybe this was not the agreement that we wanted and that they were looking to get the State Legislature to pass some kind of law to help with the next set of negotiations. However, my group - we work on police accountability and we've been at the State Legislature as well - there's just really been no action on that since 2021. The main reason is that you have to build a large coalition to get a statewide law passed, and we just don't have that. There is not enough labor support, and I have not really seen anybody from the City other than Councilmember Herbold in 2021 testify about it. And it's just very deeply disappointing and bad negotiating strategy. And I just - very bummed.

[00:38:06] Crystal Fincher: Justifiably very bummed. We've done several shows about this, you have done shows about this that have been very informative. And one thing that I think a lot of people have learned over the past several years is that - Yes, there's a police chief. Yes, there is a mayor. But what they can do is dictated by what's in the contract. And so when we see situations of egregious misconduct - and we've seen those - the recourse provided, whether you can fire something, what penalties there can be, whether something stays on that officer's record or not, is dictated by the contract. The contract supersedes the authority that the chief has, that the mayor has, that Seattle law has. It's written in the contract that what's in there overrides Seattle's law, which was very applicable because laws were passed to address this that were invalidated. So it's challenging when there is broad recognition. And lots of people have amnesia - I work in elections, I pay attention to what people say during campaigns - and Sara Nelson talked a lot during her campaign. If you look at what she communicated to voters on her mailers and stuff, she is talking about police reform. She has Harriet Walden on her stuff, co-signing her desire to do police reform. And what a lot of them were saying is - Hey, we want to hire more police. We absolutely want to do that. We want to make sure that there are more police to respond to things, but they need to be accountable for what they do. And we're going to support reforms for that. "More cops with reforms" was the distilled message that they were giving. And a lot of Seattle voters were down with that - they voted for that. This is not what they voted for. There is no reform. In fact, there was a move backwards.

And a lot of the things that were talked about as being absolutely necessary - we talked about polling and 70% of voters in a city being a huge number. The amount of people who support alternative responses dwarfs that - that's in the 80s in the City of Seattle. And this contract makes that unworkable, makes that functionally impossible to do citywide. This is out of step with the region. This is out of step with the industry and best practices at large. We see several cities in the state moving forward with alternative response and it being welcomed. And working well with law enforcement. Law enforcement saying - Hey, we weren't meant to, there are types of calls that are non-criminal calls that our time isn't well spent on, that's keeping us from addressing more serious and pressing concerns. It's great to have that taken care of by someone else - that's not what we signed up to do anyway. But this has just been such a distorted conversation in Seattle - it's just weird. It's weird how out of step this conversation is. And it's not an issue of - Do you love police or do you hate police? It's what is working on the ground to keep people safe? And it seems like they're doubling down on the things that are proven to make things more dangerous and not more safe for everyone in the community. It's just weird.

And disappointed to see in that - this was rushed through. If we look at other legislation that was caught up in committee for a while, hearings, lots of conversation. And this - boom, let's rush this to a full council vote immediately without a public hearing, limiting public comment, and even that one minute was only because Councilmember Tammy Morales called for it so strongly and made it obvious that it was looking really bad that they were doing this without any kind of public input on this process. It is really disappointing to see. And just disappointing from a process standpoint - they said they're going to listen to community and hear what people have to say - and that just doesn't seem like it happened here. Again, there are people who differ on the amount of money going to this, this happening during a budget crisis where they're deepening the deficit that they don't have a plan to fill - and that looks like we're paying for these cost increases with cuts and other services in the City. But even for people who don't have an issue with them - as we heard in the public comment, they're saying - Hey, okay, give the cops - but why so much more money than everyone else? Why are we leaving the firefighters? Why are we leaving other City employees out? It was wild listening to the public comment - I heard about 90% of the people who testified - and there were some very conservative people, there were some very progressive people. But 100% of the people that I heard had gripes with how they went about doing this. So again, this could have been handled in a much better way. The process was rotten, and it didn't need to be. They could have improved what they did and what they said their goal was if they even would have listened to more feedback from people who are more aligned with them. They just didn't do that. And I think one of the pieces missing here is there's not a lot of experience on this council. They are missing a lot of information just off the top. So if they aren't listening to public feedback, they're missing out on some very basic things - which this contract makes really obvious. They need to listen to help them formulate sound policy. If they are missing out on that, the policy isn't actually sound. It's really a problem that goes beyond ideology, just in the actual composition of the legislation that they're trying to do.

[00:44:03] Shannon Cheng: And I think just even understanding the history and the context of where this all is. I wrote an op-ed in The Urbanist - and I was just trying to bear witness to what this process has been like. In my mind, this is repeating what happened in 2018 - except that in 2018, we did have a vibrant public meeting where we heard from both sides passionately about that contract, for and against. And what really disheartens me the most is just what we're being fed by the people in power, who actually have power over what happens next in these negotiations, is - I just think they're giving SPOG too much credit, that SPOG is going to negotiate with us in good faith. They're telling us that for the contract that goes from 2024 onwards - because this contract we just passed is completely retroactive, it is already expired - and they're saying that - Oh, well, we'll get accountability in the next contract. Well, that is exactly what they told us in 2018, and it didn't happen. We've now reset the clock. SPOG has their back pay - they got what they wanted. They don't have any incentive to negotiate with us to get the accountability in there that we want and that they don't want. They're definitely more obstinate than some of the other local police guilds and associations. And so we just have a very difficult problem here because SPOG doesn't want to cooperate, and nobody's willing to stand up to them.

[00:45:20] Crystal Fincher: Very well said. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, May 17th, 2024. The producer of Hacks & Wonks and our co-host today is the insightful Shannon Cheng. You can find Shannon on Twitter at @drbestturtle - because she's a doctor, you know. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. You can find me on all platforms at @finchfrii, with two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. I listen on Overcast - I mean, I don't listen to Hacks & Wonks, I actually hate the sound of my voice, but I listen to other podcasts on Overcast. I appreciate that you listen. That's a whole diversion. Anyway. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show 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.