Week in Review: November 22, 2024 - with Erica Barnett

“With Only Morales Voting “No,” City Council Passes Budget That Repurposes JumpStart, Cuts Jobs” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola

“Last-Minute Amendments, Lack of Transparency Characterize New Council’s First Budget” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola

“Capital Gains Tax, JumpStart Spending Plan Top Council’s Budget Agenda This Week” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola

“Seattle capital gains tax proposal falls short again” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times

“County Says They Have “No Intention” of Turning Sobering Center into a Secure Facility for Drug Law Violators” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola

Seasoned Litigator Sal Mungia Presents His Case for High Court Seat from Hacks & Wonks

“Dave Reichert concedes to Bob Ferguson in WA gubernatorial race” by Shauna Sowersby from Cascade PBS

“Project 2025 calls for massive changes to Hanford nuclear cleanup” by John Stang from Cascade PBS

“Seattle mayor, who sits on a federal AI panel, says he’ll seek ways to work with Trump administration” by Taylor Soper from GeekWire

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. And please leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks, if you love the show. 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 host of the Seattle Nice podcast, Erica Barnett!

[00:00:59] Erica Barnett: Hello - it's great to be here.

[00:01:01] Crystal Fincher: Hello - great to have you back. Well, there are a number of things we have to talk about this week. Let's start off by covering the wide-ranging news and consequences of the City of Seattle budget process. There have been a number of amendments flying around, they're heading to final passage - what has been happening and what does this mean for the people of Seattle?

[00:01:25] Erica Barnett: Well, there are a lot of changes in the budget every single year, as you might imagine. So this is just the annual process by which they say - what are we going to spend money on next year and the year after that? And so big picture, I think the biggest thing that's happening this year is that the JumpStart Fund, which is from a tax on the highly compensated employees at big businesses in Seattle - it's supposed to be spent and is obligated by law to be spent on five different categories of progressive spending. So there's student mental health care, there's affordable housing, there's the Equitable Development Initiative, and some other spending categories - and that is effectively going away. As the result of this budget, the JumpStart Fund, which was passed explicitly to do those things, is going to become a general fund revenue source. So it can be spent on absolutely anything - police, fire, parks, you name it. And so that is a big change - it's very much not in keeping with the spirit or the law that currently exists. So that's a huge change, and I think it comes from the fact that we have a new Council and they don't agree necessarily with committing to those priorities to the extent that JumpStart did. And there's also been a proposal to pass a capital gains tax. As we're recording today, the final, final vote has not yet happened - but that failed in the Budget Committee, which is all the councilmembers, and it failed by a very narrow vote of 4-4 with Tanya Woo abstaining. So that's the big picture.

Small picture - more cops, CCTV surveillance throughout the city with a live camera feed and that is what some of the new police officers are going to be for. Overtime for cops, expanding the CARE Department, which does unarmed response to some 911 calls. And then a lot of internal cuts that are going to affect different programs at the city, including the parks department - this is actually an external cut - is going to lose half of its environmental programming. And then last small picture thing is - the Seattle Channel is saved for now. Mayor Bruce Harrell proposed cutting all of its original programming, but the City Council objected to that. So they're saving it for this year and hopefully coming up with a stable funding source in the years after that.

[00:03:43] Crystal Fincher: Well, that's certainly a lot. I have also seen some indications that some offices in the city will lose headcount. There are going to be some layoffs throughout the city, including in the city's Office of Labor Standards, which is responsible for investigation and enforcement of the city's labor laws. What kind of impact will that have on workers in the city?

[00:04:07] Erica Barnett: Well, Mayor Bruce Harrell, even as a councilmember, was not a fan of the Office of Labor Standards and had clashed with them himself in the past. So this is not a surprise, especially with this new Council. I think whenever you cut the Office of Labor Standards, what happens is there are fewer investigators to look into things like wage theft - it ends up just making everything take longer and making it harder for workers to get the justice that they are asking for when their wages are stolen or when other things come up, violations of the transportation network company laws. And I'm being a little vague because I don't know the exact positions that are going to end up getting cut in OLS, but it's an important office that is often under siege by pro-business mayors and now city councilmembers. So it's not surprising that it was one of the offices that ended up getting cut - unlike police, which is expanding, and some of the other things that the mayor spent new money on this year.

[00:05:05] Crystal Fincher: So as we look at this - they're enabling transfers of the JumpStart funds for affordable housing, environmental response, and so on and so forth to the general fund. Now, is this like a one-time transfer? Is this going to permanently plug the hole? Or are there going to be deficits projected in coming years that they're also going to have to find new money to address?

[00:05:29] Erica Barnett: Well, I actually wrote about this, and maybe you're just setting me up nicely, Crystal - which if so, I appreciate. There are deficits projected starting in 2027. Even with moving hundreds of millions of dollars from JumpStart, they will either have to take more money out of JumpStart, which they will be allowed to do now - which would take away funding from those current spending categories, obviously - or they'll need some kind of other new revenue, or they will need to actually make cuts. And it's worth noting that all the new councilmembers - all six of them, including Tanya Woo, who is appointed and is leaving next week - they all ran on this idea of fiscal responsibility and that the city does not have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem. And yet, the mayor came in with a budget that added about $100 million in mostly new programs. And the Council looked at that and they said - Cool, we've got our own priorities. This is pretty standard - every council has its own priorities that they want to add spending on, but they piled on more programs that they wanted. And so, this structural budget deficit that was the problem that they're trying to address by using JumpStart is still there, and it's being made worse by their lack of spending discipline. And so it's going to persist in future years. And so either they're putting off cuts until the indefinite future, which they've been doing since the structural deficit was identified several years ago, or they're going to have to make some more decisions about revenue in the future.

[00:06:58] Crystal Fincher: Well, I want to touch on the revenue a bit more because we saw Cathy Moore - after the election - it looks like it may have been a response to seeing Tanya Woo very soundly defeated by Alexis Mercedes Rinck, a very conclusive citywide message was sent. And Alexis Mercedes Rinck articulated a very pro-progressive revenue vision on the campaign trail. Tanya Woo did not and had signaled her opposition of taxes. So this is one of the biggest issues in that race. The city decided that and it seemed like some members of the Council got the message from the residents of the city and took to heart that they were not aligned with the majority of voters, that they were in a different place, and wanted to move closer to reflect the actual will of the voters. That seems to have moved Councilmember Cathy Moore to introduce a capital gains tax proposal - and that's what you referenced winding up in that 4-4 tie. It needs a majority to pass, so it did not pass. What does that mean, moving forward, with Alexis Mercedes Rinck going to be sworn in in a week or two? Does that mean that the capital gains tax has a chance to pass once Alexis Mercedes Rinck joins the Council?

[00:08:20] Erica Barnett: It definitely has a chance - absolutely. The other thing that happened in the election was voters statewide soundly rejected an initiative that would have repealed the capital gains tax at the state level. And when I interviewed Councilmember Moore, she pointed to that as evidence that this proposal was ripe and it's time to do it. And Cathy has an - I don't want to say inconsistent because I'm sure it's not, to her, inconsistent - but she has an idiosyncratic record so far on the Council. And I think that she has sincere reasons for wanting this capital gains tax to pass, and I believe her when she says that they need new revenue. Now, at the same time, she also did add $2 million in the budget for a receiving center for people who are sex workers on Aurora and want to get out of the sex trade - so she's part of the spending problem. But anyway, that's an aside. I do think that once Alexis is on the Council, this could come back up and it could pass. My podcast co-host on Seattle Nice, Sandeep Kaushik, thinks that it's possible that Joy Hollingsworth and Dan Strauss voted for it, sort of knowing it was a safe vote because it couldn't possibly pass. But the fact is, they're going to have to change their votes and explain that if they do want to make it fail once Alexis is on the Council. And I think that's pretty risky politically. So I think we could see a capital gains tax next year.

[00:09:40] Crystal Fincher: Hey, this is Crystal popping in again. So we record our week-in-review shows on Thursday. However, need to update the item that we just discussed because after the recording, the full council took a vote on the capital gains tax - and that vote at the full council failed on a 6-3 vote. Councilmembers Cathy Moore, Tammy Morales, and Dan Strauss voted in favor. Previously, Tanya Woo had abstained from the vote in committee. In the full council vote, Tanya Woo voted No and Joy Hollingsworth switched her vote from Yes in committee to No in the full council vote. Joy Hollingsworth said that because it passed out of the committee on a 4-4 vote with a do not pass recommendation that she voted No, that no changes were in the bill. All of the underlying facts remain the same, but for some reason that made sense to her to change her vote there. So that'll be interesting to follow up on, see if there's any more elaboration on that. But that does change the vote calculus that we just talked about - obviously with a 4-4 vote and the one person abstaining being replaced in a couple of weeks by Alexis Mercedes Rinck, that made it seem like passage could potentially be imminent shortly after Councilmember-elect Mercedes Rinck was sworn in. However, with a 6-3 vote, that means that even with Alexis on the Council, two more votes still need to be flipped while not losing any of the current ones. So that is a different prospect. Not to say that it can't happen, but that it will take some more advocacy and isn't necessarily imminent. But there is a path there - it's just perhaps a lengthier one and may take some more time. So just wanted to pop in because that is a material change to what we discussed, and we'll follow up and continue to follow that story as we progress throughout the year.

Now, I also want to talk about a story you wrote within this past week about the county saying that they don't have any intention to turn a sobering center into a secure facility for drug law violators. What prompted this response and clarification, or declaration, by the county?

[00:12:06] Erica Barnett: Well, Maritza Rivera, another one of the new councilmembers, has said that she thinks that the sobering center, which is a county-run facility - it's been in business for a lot of years, since the 70s - so it's essentially a place where people can get picked up, and go to sober up, and also largely to keep warm instead of sleeping outside. And she wanted to use it potentially to put people who are arrested under the drug laws as a kind of diversion from jail. And her statement basically was that - people can't consent to go into residential treatment or treatment of any kind when they're high on fentanyl, and so they should be kept in the sobering center, not allowed to leave, and then sort of have treatment pushed on them when they "sober up." And there's a lot of reasons that's not a very medically sound idea that I wrote about. But the county basically told me when I called them that they had not heard a peep from the City Council or Councilmember Rivera about this, and that was not the purpose of the sobering center, and they have no interest in changing its purpose at the direction of a completely separate government. And I think this speaks to a larger issue that I've observed with this Council, which is that I think they're very frustrated by the fact that they thought they were going to be able to control a lot more than they can actually control as city councilmembers. And we've seen that in trying to get little special transportation funds for every district that councilmembers can spend however they want because the Council doesn't oversee the Transportation Department. And councilmembers reportedly wanting to direct cops to their districts, which they can't do because they don't have control over the police department. And with the county, the Council has also tried to, I think more successfully, pass legislation in this budget directing King County Metro to do stuff via budget adds - saying we're going to add more transit security funding and that's going to go to King County and they're going to have to add cops on buses, or we're going to add more transit ambassadors to King County by giving them money for that and so they'll have to do that. That's kind of benign - I don't think King County is against that, but it's just this kind of meta issue - I think they're very frustrated that their role is actually quite limited.

[00:14:19] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And it's - I guess, fascinating is one word you could call it - troubling, mystifying. Really, what strikes me is - no secret, I have a number of ideological differences with this Council majority, and that's one issue. But there is a separate issue of just competence, really. And understanding what the job is - and there are details and intricacies in the job and the role. But like just the basic scope of their responsibility seems to be something that they weren't familiar with coming in and still struggle with. Communication with departments, with partners as they're crafting legislation. Also with this - to me - was another trend that I have noticed where we're hearing legislation being proposed that is going to involve action and coordination among different departments to implement this. And there hasn't been any communication with those departments or walking through what that implementation could be, which sets up a number of problematic issues. Is this even possible in the way that they're envisioning it? Do they have the capacity? Are there conflicting initiatives happening? This is basically setting up an implementation for problems to run over budget and to potentially not deliver what their intent is with the legislation or direction they're providing. So there really does, I think, need to be more of a focus and understanding of what the actual job is, what the role is, what they can and cannot do - so that they will stop wasting time chasing these things down that they want to do. That they do have a better shot of at least delivering what they say they want to, and that we don't hear continued Council briefings that involve letting them know that the legislation that they passed is experiencing some of the negative consequences that people warned about - that they seem to be caught off guard by, or surprised by, or even not understanding legislation that they passed when being asked about it as it's being implemented. So I just hope there's more diligence as we move into this next year, certainly, about just the literal job of being a councilmember, even before you get to the ideological issues.

[00:16:49] Erica Barnett: Yeah, I think that there's also sort of a lack of understanding of how things are going to play politically. And I look back to the minimum wage stuff - the gig worker minimum wage, the idea of getting rid of the minimum wage for tipped workers and going to a minimum wage that's lower if people get tips. These things are phenomenally unpopular and they haven't passed, and their sponsors have withdrawn them so far. And I think that we could have not wasted - because those are two of the biggest policy debates that happened in this Council's first year, and they are now a quarter of the way into their terms, and they went nowhere because they were very unpopular. And rightly so. And so I think that there's a lack of attention to the political winds or the political perspective of the communities they represent.

And then - you're right - I can't tell you how many times in this budget process I heard people, particularly Maritza Rivera, saying they were confused and didn't have enough data and information. And me, as somebody who follows the budget, I'm going - I can point you to that information. The city has produced extensive reports on a lot of these things. And like, yes, I guess we could direct them to spend their time doing a report - and in fact, the council is directing city departments to do a ton of reports on stuff that is already kind of basically known and that they're have been reports on. But like, don't we want the city departments - let's say the Seattle Department of Transportation - to be focusing on future-looking things and not explaining what they do to a City Council that hasn't done its homework?

[00:18:24] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, we will continue to follow how the Council proceeds and what they do as they get more familiar with the jobs they've been elected to do.

Now, I want to talk about some late-breaking election results. As many people know, we and several states have a vote-by-mail system. Those votes take a little while to come in and a longer while to get completely counted. So when we have very close races, it can be one to two weeks before we know for sure who has won a race. And we got a couple of answers on some very close races - one involving a very consequential open state Supreme Court seat where Sal Mungia, who is predominantly supported by Democrats - although this is a nonpartisan position - defeated Dave Larson, who is predominantly supported by Republicans. This was a very close race with Sal Mungia pulling it out in the end. And so, our state Supreme Court currently has a Democratic or liberal-leaning majority, I think people would generally say. That doesn't always conclusively dictate how people are going to rule on issues or decide there. There are lots of cases that are unanimous. There are lots that are split, not necessarily on the ideological lines that people may assume most things fall on. But there was definitely a difference in ideological stance or positioning between these two candidates. And I'm sure a majority of the state - the majority of voters certainly who voted - but us being a blue state in Washington, are pretty happy with this result overall. It's consistent with what we've seen, and I guess a reinforcement that this court will continue to have generally the same ideological positioning as they've had generally. Is that generally how you see it?

[00:20:14] Erica Barnett: Yeah, I wasn't following this race as closely as you were, Crystal. I can't wait to hear more about your interview with Sal Mungia. But basically, with these Supreme Court races, because they are so low profile - and I guess I am a low-information state voter on some of these races - I just sort of went and saw that Sal Mungia was the one that the Democrats support. And I said - Okay, sounds good. But I think electing judges has its upsides and downsides.

[00:20:41] Crystal Fincher: I agree. Definitely pros and cons with electing judges and pros and cons with appointing judges. But I personally, obviously, am on the left-leaning side of things and do appreciate our Supreme Court and the justices on it. I am personally gratified by this decision. Also, Mungia had a lot more experience, has been a litigator for quite some time, seemed to be more highly rated by the nonpartisan entities, and had the support of the majority of justices on the current court and such a wide variety of people. So Mungia seemed very qualified. We did have a unique conversation when we spoke to him in our interview on Hacks & Wonks, so we can link that in the show notes and you can listen to that for yourself if you want. But will be really interesting to see, especially in this time with now a Trump administration, and states are so much more consequential given that the federal situation isn't necessarily a given with such basic things as privacy rights, abortion rights, LGBTQ+ protections and ability to participate in society. And I am thankful and appreciative that we have a court and continue to send members of the court who will uphold the rights of the people of the state - certainly gives me comfort.

And that leads to something else I want to talk about. Reichert - although this race was decided on election night - Ferguson was clearly the winner immediately, as we saw the first drop of results. But this past week, Reichert finally conceded to Ferguson. Now, concession has no practical application - it doesn't stop the counting or impact anything. But in this time of people being weird about elections and denying their validity, it is notable that Reichert is accepting the results, has acknowledged his defeat to Ferguson. But also in this time, as now a lot of focus - especially in blue states - is shifting to people wondering, Hey, if the Trump administration tries to do things that are against our state's values, our state's laws, what are we doing to protect them? How do you see Bob Ferguson, Nick Brown, who was just elected as attorney general, and even Bruce Harrell, as the mayor of the largest city in the state - their stances and what they've indicated is going to be their approach to dealing with, working with, opposing the Trump administration?

[00:23:11] Erica Barnett: Well, Ferguson has been incredibly aggressive in his stance as attorney general - just in going after, for example, drug companies, mostly companies that have been in opposition to policies the state has. And he has said in the run up, both in the campaign and since being elected, that essentially that this is the job he was born to do. I'm vastly paraphrasing, but I think he will be as aggressive as a state governor can possibly be in fighting the Trump administration's efforts to, for example, site deportation centers here, or prosecute women who come here to get abortions, and defending our status as a sanctuary state. Similar for Nick Brown as attorney general - I think he has made his positions on that very clear. So I think that to the extent that we're able to actually do anything about these policies - and I think that extent may be somewhat limited because the federal government is the federal government. But to the extent that we're able to do anything and preserve Washington's status as a sanctuary state on many different levels - also for trans people, for LGBTQ people in general - he's going to be a strong governor on that front. And Nick Brown is going to be a strong attorney general. Bruce Harrell, I don't know. He hasn't made a whole lot of statements about Seattle's - the policies that we have to protect immigrants, to protect LGBTQ people, to protect women. His profile has been very muted on this - in comparison, I would say to his predecessor, Jenny Durkan, who was the mayor during the first Trump administration and was very loud and vocal on opposing anything and everything he did. Of course, she was a former federal prosecutor and was really attuned to those issues. But yeah, Bruce Harrell - obviously a Democrat, but we haven't seen a real aggressive stance from him yet on Seattle's sanctuary city status, for example.

[00:24:55] Crystal Fincher: Well, and this is really interesting because what Trump has signaled and folks in his administration have signaled is that they are going to use basically money as the carrot and the stick for a lot of what they're looking to accomplish. And federal funding is distributed in so many different ways to state and local government entities, to school districts and school education entities. And so the threat of losing federal funding for education, or federal funding for transportation projects - which the city of Seattle certainly gets, for large infrastructure projects like light rail and different things like that - are conceivably on the table. And Trump seems very willing to not only use funding as a carrot to enact what he wants, but use it to punish - and the threat of revoking funds to punish cities, localities that don't agree with what he's trying to do. And it seems like they may be looking to provoke some of those issues, and trying to drive some of that conflict to force the hand of blue states and to see what happens. So it is interesting to see and hear some electeds seemingly be afraid of losing funding and being afraid of offending the Trump administration for fear of being targeted. But that may come with some conditions or stances that are very challenging for people in our state to accept, that are contrary to what our state and the voters in our state traditionally believe and have stood for. So it'll be really interesting to see, especially as typically just placating or going along with folks who are saying and doing the things that Trump and his administration are saying and doing, usually doesn't mitigate much harm - oftentimes makes it easier for those forces to accomplish their agenda. So it will be very interesting to see how they navigate through these issues moving forward.

[00:26:53] Erica Barnett: Well, I will just say - we have practice with this. We went through the first Trump administration. Now I know that he is unleashed this time. It will be different. It will be harsher. It will be worse. But I think that's why we're in a good position with Bob Ferguson. I don't - and I may eat my words on a future podcast - but I don't see him capitulating because I don't think that he sees a point in that. And I think that for the state to sort of betray its values over the threat of losing, let's say, transportation funding. I think we're going to lose transportation funding. I think we're going to lose funding in a lot of areas. When Trump was president the last time, the county didn't shut down, but it didn't get as much funding - transportation projects stalled. It was just a very slow time. And obviously, because of COVID, everything sort of came to a halt and that was the focus in 2020. But I think we have been to some version of this before. And if the country survives, then we will survive too, as a state. And I don't think that we will gain anything - and I think Ferguson probably sees it this way as well - by sort of kowtowing to Trump and trying to work with him in a way that requires selling out, essentially. And I'll just mention really quickly, there was a GeekWire article - I don't know how much to read into this - but they said that Bruce Harrell was at an event and said that he was not going to go to D.C. and to the Trump administration with his fists balled and that he could work with anybody. I don't know the entire context of those comments, but that is definitely quite a bit different than the posture that Jenny Durkan had. And not to like overpraise the Durkan administration - I'm just saying she was quite combative with the Trump administration and came in with that posture. And that's not what Harrell is doing - publicly - anyway.

[00:28:31] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And I look to California also - another solidly blue state - that took pride in opposing Trump during his first administration. The governor, Gavin Newsom, similar to Bob Ferguson, signaling very strong opposition to Donald Trump and what he's articulated so far. The Los Angeles Unified School District taking steps to declare that they're a sanctuary district and whatever they can do to proactively prepare to protect their students, they will do. So just curious to see. I also, from a legislative perspective and just all of our levels of government, do hope that our legislators and lawmakers are taking a proactive approach to potentially grappling with the loss of federal funding. I don't think this can just be viewed as - Oh, hypothetical, it hasn't happened yet, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. We already are dealing with budget challenges, as we just spoke about earlier in the show, on a number of fronts. Are having a broad conversation about tax revenue overall with broad support of the capital gains tax, other progressive taxation - that may come into play - but that may need to be used for backfilling funds that are lost. That certainly needs to be part of the scenario because if we don't plan for that, pass more progressive revenue, use it for existing things, and then have to be put in a bind by going - Okay, now there's a new hole that we have to contend with. That's a whole new mess. So I do hope that people are taking this threat seriously. I've heard some comments from some legislators that indicate that they're prepared to deal with this. And others, including some in leadership, that indicate maybe they are not feeling currently that this is something that they need to consider and potentially deal with. So I hope we do see that taken seriously as we move forward.

And with that, thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, November 22nd, 2024. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is 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 Bluesky, and me on Bluesky, and Hacks & Wonks on Bluesky - so find us and follow us there - it's where things are happening and where it's at. You can also catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show on most weeks, except weeks when I'm really busy and trying to catch up on other work like this week. And if you like us, please leave a review wherever you listen. You can get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com.

Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.