Week in Review: September 6, 2024 - with Daniel Beekman

New Leadership or Old Guard? Demyan Challenges Springer in 45th District Race from Hacks & Wonks

“WA lands commissioner primary results certified” by Isabella Breda and Amanda Zhou from The Seattle Times

“In Washington's closest elections, volunteers go door-to-door to 'rehab' faulty ballots” by Scott Greenstone from KUOW

“Where outside money flowed in WA’s primary election” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times

“Burien faces another homelessness lawsuit, this one about religion” by Anna Patrick from The Seattle Times

“Seattle council approves rate-hike plans for utilities, electricity” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times

“Statement From the Honorable Judge Pooja Vaddadi in Response to City Attorney Memo” by Pooja Vaddadi for The Stranger

“All Seattle Public Library services restored after cyberattack” by Jadenne Radoc Cabahug from Cascade PBS

“Council Member Dan Strauss Considers Alternative To Social Housing Tax” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger

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 topical show, I chatted with Melissa Demyan, a labor organizer who is challenging 20-year incumbent Larry Springer for a 45th district state House seat in a competitive race between two Democrats. 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 Times politics and communities reporter, Daniel Beekman. Welcome.

[00:01:23] Daniel Beekman: Hey - thanks for having me, Crystal.

[00:01:25] Crystal Fincher: Great to have you back. Well, want to start off talking about the news this week that after a statewide hand recount in the super close Commissioner of Public Lands race, we have confirmed the result that Dave Upthegrove, a Democrat, will face Jaime Herrera Beutler in the general election. This was a very close race between second and third place. The top two advanced to the general election. But out of over 1.9 million votes cast, the difference between second and third place was just 51 votes after the initial certification. After the hand recount, it appears to have only changed the overall tally by two votes - and with a 53-vote margin, Dave Upthegrove has clinched second place. How did this recount process unfold and what happened within it?

[00:02:22] Daniel Beekman: Well, I think it's just another example of actually recounts are pretty boring, because they usually don't change all that much. The fact that you have to go to a recount means the race is incredibly close - and this one was incredibly, incredibly close. But like you said, the recount didn't move the needle very far, and so you ended up with the same result - and it takes time. But I suppose that it might shore up confidence in vote counting in elections if they did it all again and it barely changed. I think the really interesting part here was just how close it was after all the votes were counted. And there were days after Election Night of watching to see the needle moving slightly in one direction or the other, and just wondering what would happen. And if Democrats would, by virtue of running a whole bunch of legitimate candidates in this top-two primary, be locked out of a statewide race that as long as they have a candidate, they're probably favored to win. And that would have been sort of mind blowing if that had happened. So it didn't - just barely - but it definitely could have.

[00:03:30] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it definitely could have. And this is the second time where a statewide race was in jeopardy - this time, it actually turned out in the Democrats' favor. But in a previous race for the State Treasurer, Democrats were locked out of a general election for the same reasons. This has spurred a lot of conversation about how to avoid this kind of situation, because I believe the Democrats - if you add all of the votes for Democratic candidates - added up to 57% of the vote, I believe it was. And so, to have a majority of the state's residents cast a vote for a Democrat, but potentially not have a Democrat as a choice in the general election is almost scandalous - not in the terms of the actual election, all of the processes were followed as they should have been technically - but a conundrum. And so there's conversations with a lot of people saying this absolutely makes a case for ranked choice voting to deal with this. There are some people who say - Well, the Party should step in and clear the field of candidates. Or people saying - The Party should just endorse one and Democrats should endorse one. I would respond to that with - that's so much easier said than done. And whether the Party steps in to try and manage the race or they completely stay out - there have been situations where they've done both before and they've taken heat for both of those. It's really hard - one, when anyone can file and they choose to stay in. You can't force someone off of the ballot. And then there are conversations about - Well, is the Party playing kingmaker in opposition to the will of the voters who may want someone else? I think there is a deeper conversation to be had internally among the Party, the caucuses, as well as allied organizations who participate in independent expenditures about the most effective way to ensure that a candidate does get through to the general election. I think that there are some things that could happen that would make that more likely and reliable. But certainly there's a lot of conversation to come on that.

[00:05:43] Daniel Beekman: I'm curious to know what some of those things are that you think could change that would - from the perspective of, in this case, Democrats, but actually - I'll just point out that I think two years ago, if I remember correctly, the Republicans in a similar situation got locked out of the Secretary of State general election. Because they had a number of candidates run in that race and ended up being Steve Hobbs, Democrat, and Julie Anderson, a nonpartisan candidate, in the general and no Republicans - which there's a good chance a Republican would have lost anyway, but you never know. And it was kind of wild not to have a Republican in a statewide general election in that year. So it's not just the Democrats that - it's a phenomenon on both sides of the aisle. But what are some of those things where parties could be more strategic?

[00:06:30] Crystal Fincher: One of the major things is looking at the amount of money that was spent in that race - and I think you even did a story about outside spending in races across the state - and the Commissioner of Public Lands race was one of the most expensive races in the state. Yes, you had five Democrats on the ballot. But for instance, Kevin Van De Wege, who is a moderate to conservative Democrat - has been kind of irritating people in the Senate, the Democratic base here locally in the state as someone who hasn't been friendly to a lot of the Democratic agenda that has been trying to advance over the past few years. It is a tactical error to think that there is some kind of mystical centrist vote that can be cobbled together. That's not a thing. It's talked about a lot of times - maybe a candidate can moderate and get independent centrist voters. The base is not there for that.

[00:07:28] Daniel Beekman: Is this kind of like the Mark Mullet-

[00:07:30] Crystal Fincher: Mark Mullet, Kevin Van De Wege. And you see by the extraordinarily poor performance by both Mark Mullet and Van De Wege, despite a ton of spending on their behalf - imagine what that spending could have done in other races, imagine what that spending could have done in the general election in this Commissioner of Public Lands race. It is not bypassing people's notice that the Upthegrove campaign had to spend a ton of resources on the ballot curing effort. Now, those resources were very wisely spent - that campaign expertly managed the ballot curing process. Certainly, Republicans had that going on on their end also, but the competence of that effort is likely what made the difference in this race. Ballot curing, ballot rehab is a term for resolving ballots that haven't been counted for one reason or another. One of the most common ones is people forget to sign their ballot on the outside - they just stuff it in and they don't realize that they need to sign it. There may be other issues, but the problem is - you send it in, they have to do their verifications and checks like comparing your signature before it can be counted - it failed one of those checks. And so the county elections offices say - We received your ballot, there was an issue with it, so unfortunately, it can't be counted. When they do that, they make an effort to communicate with the voters. But campaigns can actually do that directly - and both campaigns in this instance attempted to do that. I believe thousands of ballots were cured.

[00:09:07] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, a lot by volunteers, right?

[00:09:09] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely - so that's a whole process. I think this was likely the largest ballot curing effort, potentially, in the history of the state. And there's also a lot to talk about here - but that actually shows the utility of state parties because those efforts run on the infrastructure of the state party and on the expertise of people in campaigns. I will just throw out there - Emma Mudd, who was previously part of our Fincher Consulting team, is Dave Upthegrove's campaign manager and just an outstanding person and actually did an incredible job managing that campaign and the ballot curing effort. But looking at the expenditure of resources, particularly in primaries, and looking at the organizations who spent that - what did they get from that? What is their utility to the Party in that situation? And are there serious conversations that need to be had about that not being wise? The Party and the caucuses definitely have tough conversations with people sometimes. And I don't think donors in that situation, particularly when they are basically throwing good money after bad in an effort that doesn't seem to have a shot at all and the only thing that can result is playing spoiler - what's going on there? Why are those entities funding those types of independent expenditures that are hurting the Party and not helping it? I think there's a lot of conversation to be had about that. Similarly, Mark Mullet and his effort in the race for governor. There are a lot of resources needed for addressing those conservative ballot measures, there are competitive battleground district races - and we're spending money on this wild goose chase for these moderate Democrats who people are happy to have out of the Senate, but wish they wouldn't be so destructive as they exit.

[00:11:04] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, well, and I guess you can tell some of those donors - Hey, you're wasting your money. Why don't you spend it more strategically? Let's have a conversation about that and how you can help us and we can help you. But at the end of the day, they can spend their money how they want. And if they like these guys, then they'll do that. And it's just kind of the system that we have.

[00:11:21] Crystal Fincher: It is. I will say, one thing that I was very, very impressed by - and wasn't expecting anything else - but the degree of accuracy of our election systems and processes was just really impressive to me. Again, almost 2 million votes were recounted by hand. Initially, the difference between Upthegrove and Pederson was 51 votes. Throughout the entire state, Upthegrove and Kuehl Pederson netted three votes from five recounted ballots in Island County and seven ballots in Snohomish. Upthegrove also netted two votes in Okanagan County. And in preliminary results, the two candidates both lost two votes in King County. All other counties reported no change or the change of one vote. So you're really talking about multiple levels of accuracy. The verifiability of our system - where we can track who votes and recount that, audit that - very good. And the tally - the degree of accuracy is greater than 99.99% accurate. And for me, just reinforces my confidence in the system. And especially with how the recount was conducted with observers from both campaigns, both parties in every county. The public able to view from certain areas in some counties - just a really transparent and impressive process. And I just have a lot of admiration and respect for the elections officials and the volunteers who participated in this recount and additional workers. I just think that it really says a lot about the integrity of our system, and I think that's a really positive, healthy thing.

[00:13:00] Daniel Beekman: And there's the added bonus of because it was kind of a weird election result situation that you had election nerds from across the country paying attention to our Lands Commissioner race and asking - What is a Lands Commissioner? What's going on here?

[00:13:17] Crystal Fincher: Yes, absolutely. One for the record books. It was fun, actually - entertaining doing a show about the Gregoire versus Rossi recount - just going through this and remembering way back. I had forgotten it was former King County Councilmember Larry Phillips who kind of uncovered a significant issue in King County at the time, which wound up likely making - well, almost making the difference in that race. I think with the ultimate tally, Gregoire would have won without improperly disqualified ballots, but that was quite a roller coaster ride with the recounts and court cases and additional recounts. Yeah, quite interesting. So that goes down in the record books and they are off to the general election race.

[00:14:05] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, and there are actual interesting issues in the Lands Commissioner race as well that will maybe come to the fore in the general election.

[00:14:15] Crystal Fincher: I hope so. I also want to talk about the city of Burien once again making news for getting sued based on policies that are potentially unconstitutional, that they insist on passing and doubling down on. This is, I think, the fifth lawsuit that they are currently facing. But this one's a little bit different because it's being brought by a church. There is a church in Burien where, with Burien's regulations that are pretty hostile to people who are experiencing homelessness and where they can camp in the city, the church actually said - Hey, we plan to host an encampment at our church. We want to care for people. And the city said they had to get a temporary use permit before it could host an encampment. Obviously, the city was hostile in their positioning for that. So the church refused to go through that process, the city issued a $250 fee for every day the church didn't comply. The city hasn't tried to collect on those fees, but they've grown to more than $100,000, according to the complaint by the church, which was filed a couple weeks ago. The church is actually arguing that offering homeless residents a place to sleep is an exercise of its religion, and that's protected by our United States Constitution. And then also drawing from the Federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, or RLUIPA, which protects religious institutions from discrimination in zoning laws. And so they're pursuing this - they're saying that they plan to open another encampment later on, so this lawsuit will also provide guidance and direction here. Again, this is the latest in a number of suits that the city of Burien is facing in response to their unusually harsh policies against camping by people experiencing homelessness. How do you view this, Daniel?

[00:16:18] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, well, I'm not an attorney and haven't done reporting on this myself - props to Anna Patrick, my coworker, for continuing to report on all the homelessness news out of Burien, including this. But I do remember, and folks who are in Seattle may also remember that before the city of Seattle started actually sanctioning tent cities or sanctioned encampments - where now they're mostly tiny home villages on various different types of property - tent cities did exist in Seattle on church or religious properties. And my understanding - thinking back to a decade ago or whatever, when that was happening - was that they were able to do that despite there not being a City law authorizing it because they were religious institutions. And so I'm not surprised to see the church in Burien making this case that - We are a religious institution. Some of these permitting and other laws don't apply to us, sorry. So that's specifically with this lawsuit. But I think in the bigger picture, it's a symptom of just an ongoing debate and struggle in Burien, where there are folks at the City Hall there running the show that have been resistant over the past couple of years to allowing there to be encampments, whether sanctioned or not, in and around downtown. And other folks pushing back on that and saying - There are people experiencing homelessness here, and we need to accommodate that in some kind of way like this. And so this is just sort of the latest spinoff from that larger debate that's also included clashes with the King County Sheriff's Office about how to enforce or not enforce street camping regulations. And so it does seem like it's a slightly different twist, but part of the same conversation down there where you have a place that - unlike Seattle for many years - wasn't dealing with this stuff as much and now definitely is.

[00:18:21] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And the thing that I personally find sad and tragic about Burien is this is a relatively small population of homeless people that we're talking about. And previously, a million dollars had been offered by the county, as well as tiny homes and land on which to put them - which is usually the hardest things that cities have to work through and deal with. But the city of Burien rejected that and have just gotten more and more hostile and punitive in their approach to addressing homelessness. They're addressing it as a public safety issue and not an issue of people lacking housing. And unfortunately, the sweeps that are conducted - or pushing people out of one spot - doesn't solve the issue of homelessness. It just moves them from one place to another, oftentimes exacerbating instability and making it harder for people to try and work their way out of homelessness, get out, remain in contact with services - it's really challenging. And actually, this church's site had received a lot of people who've been pushed out of other places in the city. Now, notably in this situation - at the church, they had no incidences of violence, no incidences of harm or death. There have been services provided at a county location and at the church. So it seems that this is actually, for people who unfortunately don't have a place to get inside, has been a safe and reliable option and place and has not been a burden to the surrounding community. After the church-based encampment closed, four people have perished on the streets of Burien who were homeless. So it does seem to be having an impact on the community to not be focusing on caring for these people and getting them off the street. I don't think anyone is happy with having encampments. I think just about everyone doesn't want to see an encampment. I think a lot of people want to see those people housed. And then there's some people who just don't want to see them at all, without much concern about what happens to them. But it's just really sad how outside of the norms of Democratic or Republican local city governments, Burien has been in their approach to this. And so we'll be following this lawsuit as it proceeds - and hopefully the church will get a good result here.

[00:20:50] Daniel Beekman: Well, what do you think - I wasn't covering and didn't follow super closely the election results in Burien last fall. But I seem to remember - because this stuff was bubbling up far in advance of the 2023 city election there, and I thought there was potential for some kind of a voter backlash against just whichever side you're on, I suppose. But like against some of the controversy - unending controversy - in Burien about how homelessness was being handled. But I seem to remember there wasn't some kind of sea change coming from the electorate last fall to say - We're going to throw as many of these folks out that were on the ballot that were in power. We want to move to a more lefty council or something like that. I don't believe that that happened. And so I wonder - to the extent that this is a political power struggle down there - maybe some folks feel like they were validated in the positions they were taking by the results of that election. I don't know it well enough to know if that's the case, but part of me wonders about that. And perhaps once you have a church suing you. Like I mentioned, the back and forth with the Sheriff's Office. And Burien's police chief, I believe was pretty popular there, ended up leaving. So maybe that stuff ends up having an effect at the ballot box next year. But so far, I don't think that it resulted in a voter revolt or anything like that - so that's interesting.

[00:22:22] Crystal Fincher: It hasn't, and it is interesting. It is quite possible that Council took the results of that election as affirming their stance and that the public was behind it. As someone who did follow that race closely, I would say a few things. Certainly, I think the public all over the place is very concerned about the increase in homelessness that they've seen. I think people - while everyone is bothered by it, different elements of that bother some people. Some people are just bothered by the visible element of visible homelessness and kind of just want the problem out of sight and out of mind, in their view. I think there's a lot of other people who do want to meaningfully handle the problem. I think what they didn't count on and what was not before the voters was a lot that has come out just about faulty processes. Some would argue misuse of resources - certainly looking at how wise the use of resources are - and the lack of attention on addressing the actual problems. And getting caught up in the media circus - the mayor's kind of notorious for trying to be on the news, on Fox News, doing interviews on conservative talk radio. He seems to really like that element of things, but not paying attention to the nuts and bolts of what's happening in the city. And getting the city tied up in so much lawsuits - this is not a big city, they don't have a big budget. They're already facing structural problems that set the city up for deficits and walking into a number of lawsuits that were warned about on the front end. And this is not a normal course of business - there are other more conservative cities, there are other cities that have similar ideological feelings - but haven't gone about the policymaking in such a clumsy. Or just - negligent is the word that just keeps coming to mind, because they're facing lawsuits for violations of open public meetings requirements, lawsuits that the legislation that they passed just is not legal. They've been in a skirmish with the Sheriff's Department, the King County Executive's office. So it seems like they've just gotten caught up in all these controversies of their own creation and aren't focusing on the problems. I think that will all be litigated in the next election. Also, the candidates there were pretty significantly green challengers, so it wasn't like they were established people who had been preparing for a long time, as many candidates do, to run. But I think that this has clued a lot of people in, and certainly there are a lot more candidates who are looking at running next year than there were last year. So we'll see, but certainly incredible to see what has happened there.

[00:25:07] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, it'll be a local election to keep an eye on next year, for sure.

[00:25:12] Crystal Fincher: Yep. So I also wanted to talk this week about news of a Seattle City Light rate hike, which you wrote about. What is the hike and why is it happening?

[00:25:22] Daniel Beekman: Both Seattle Public Utilities, which provides water, sewage, solid waste and drainage services, and Seattle City Light, which provides electricity, both submitted - they call them strategic business plans, but they're basically six-year plans that they make every few years. They submitted their newest ones to the Seattle City Council beginning of the summer, looking for approval of those. And they talk about lots of things in those plans about their approach to employees, and their approach to the environment, and this and that and the other. But the nuts and bolts one that matters to regular people on an everyday basis is that in these plans, they project what's going to happen with their rates - what all of us who live or do business in Seattle and other service areas for these public utilities pay on our bills. And these aren't locking in what's happening with the rates - that's done on an annual basis through actual ordinances, this is just a resolution. But it's basically these public utilities say - This is what we think is going to happen with our rates over the next six years. Does that sound good? Can we go ahead with those plans, Seattle City Council? And so earlier this week, the Council approved those plans for both Seattle Public Utilities and Seattle City Light - and contained within there are some significant projected rate hikes. They range between the two utilities and they range year to year, generally between about 4% to 6% average increases per year. And that means - those are adding up, and I did some number crunching based on what the utilities told us about a typical house. So if you take a typical house in Seattle, which a listener to this may or may not be typical - but what they call is typical right now is paying about $333 a month for all these services. And by 2030, based on these rate hike projections, that same house would be paying about $444. So more than $100 per month difference because of these annual average rate hikes of 4% to 6% each year. So that's significant. It's not completely out of bounds or at a different level than past rate increases. I've been covering the utilities for a decade now, and this isn't incredibly unusual - to see rate hikes in the 3%, 4%, or 5% a year, sub-6% a year space. Part of it is due to just standard inflation - the cost of goods and services and labor has been increasing. But then with both utilities, there are also specific reasons for this related to the businesses that they're in. And just as a piece of context, these are public entities, but they're not mostly funded out of Seattle's general fund. They're self-sustaining entities that pay for the services that they provide and the costs that they incur out of the rates that they charge.

[00:28:32] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. It is a public utility and that in itself, taking out any need for profit in the way that it's necessary for private companies, does hold the rates down lower than a lot of private utilities. Last year, I believe Puget Sound Energy had a rate hike of 8.7% in 2023, which is higher than Seattle utility customers are experiencing. Now, why is Seattle City Light saying that the rate hike is necessary?

[00:29:07] Daniel Beekman: Like I said, both Seattle Public Utilities and Seattle City Light - part of what's going on is just they have union contracts to accommodate with wage increases, and they have employee pensions to pay, and they are doing capital projects where the cost of materials has been increasing. So that's part of it, but there are also specific things to each of the utilities. So to take Seattle City Light, for example, a co-worker covered this in more detail earlier this summer - but there's been some changes in the market for energy. For much of the last 20 years, the hydropower from Seattle City Light's dams that it controls throughout the state met most of the city's demand for electricity. And when City Light needed to purchase additional energy on the market, they could do that at prices that were relatively stable and low. But things have been changing in recent years - partly because demand for electricity has been surging because of things like data centers operating in and outside of the city of Seattle, and the electrification of HVACs, building systems, and electric vehicles surging. And so there's more demand for electricity - and that's affected both Seattle City Light's ability to meet that demand just with its own hydropower, but also it's affected the costs on the open market. And so, City Light is buying more energy at higher prices now than it was even just a few years ago. And I believe it's projecting that to continue and maybe even accelerate into the future - and may have to buy some new renewable power resource of its own to supplement the dams, like solar panel arrays in Oregon. And so those are cost drivers, according to City Light, that require rate increases.

And on the Seattle Public Utilities side - again, it's sort of a multitude of factors. There are utility taxes that factor into this. There's a complicated relationship between Seattle Public Utilities and King County - which means that when King County raises its rates, that Seattle Public Utilities ends up having to raise its rates. But a sort of interesting, tangible thing that you can talk about with Seattle Public Utilities is that it has agreements with federal and state environmental authorities to try to do things like reduce water pollution when the older pipe systems in the city that handle both stormwater from rain and sewage from bathrooms in the same pipe - during heavy rain events, those can overflow and spill into our waterways like the Lake Washington Ship Canal. And Seattle Public Utilities has promised - and is legally bound with federal and state authorities - to curb that pollution, basically bring it down close to zero. And in order to do that, they're doing things like building a $700 million plus mega-project - enormous storage tunnel between Ballard and Wallingford, which is almost done, that's going to hold just gigantic amounts of stormwater and sewage mix until it can be pumped to the water treatment plant. And that costs a lot of money - that cost has escalated on that project, which is just one example of many capital projects and maintenance projects that Seattle Public Utilities is engaged in to upgrade its infrastructure. Upgrading infrastructure is expensive.

[00:32:41] Crystal Fincher: That it is, but necessary if the utility is going to continue to provide reliable service. We certainly see in other parts of the country that the lack of reliable service is certainly a problem. So we will continue to follow that also.

[00:32:56] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, and I think the bottom line thing on that is that obviously, whether it's required or not, it's going to hit people in their wallet. And so Seattle City Council basically didn't end up making any changes to these projected rates from the utilities. But what they did do is have a bit of a discussion about - Well, what are we going to do? It could be a hardship for some folks to pay. And how can we get more people who are eligible into our utility discount program to help those with the least ability absorb these cost increases.

[00:33:30] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, we will continue to keep our eye on this and also pay attention and dive deeper into some of those underlying energy issues facing our state.

Also wanted to update you on a few items that we've discussed before. Seattle Municipal Court Judge Pooja Vaddadi submitted an op-ed to The Stranger that really, in very detailed fashion, refuted the claims by Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison and the City Attorney's Office - where they basically claimed she was biased and were moving to prevent her from hearing municipal criminal cases. Basically, she accused them of lying, of citing cases that never happened, that didn't exist. It's a pretty detailed refutation. So it'll just be interesting to see what, if any, response is provided by the City Attorney's Office. And if true, this actually seems pretty egregious - that they would move to prevent someone who was elected by the residents of Seattle in defiance of public will. So we'll continue to follow that and see what happens.

We also received a very welcome update from the Seattle Public Library this week that they are back to being fully operational after a ransomware attack had had various services down since May. That attack disrupted access to staff and public computers, the online catalog and loaning system, e-books, audio books, in-building Wi-F, and its website. But they are back up, all services are functioning at 100%. So very welcome - I'm sure folks are eager to refill their Libby queues and get back to using all of the wonderful and free services that the Seattle Public Library offers.

So the last thing I wanted to talk about was a weird instance happening of the Seattle City Council continuing to punt on the issue of Initiative I-137 to fund social housing - a municipal initiative in the city of Seattle that submitted signatures in time to make the November ballot. Unfortunately, the City Council seems to have shirked their charter-mandated duty to vote on that in a timely manner, and it looks like that is going to be on the February ballot. However, they continue to punt that. Seattle City Councilmember Tammy Morales said - Hey, we have a charter responsibility - the charter's like the Constitution for the city of Seattle - that we have to take this up. And so unless there's a reason to delay, we should discuss that. If there's a competing initiative, as has been rumored, as has been polled - if they plan to put one on, we should discuss that as business before the city. Council President Sara Nelson claimed attorney-client privilege, which was just really weird. And I think Dan Strauss also claimed the same thing - he may have claimed it before Sara Nelson. That's not a thing that exists in this entity. If there was attorney-client privilege, that binds the attorney, not the client - and the City of Seattle would be the client here. However, that's not a thing when just discussing public business and their public responsibility. But unfortunately, as has happened before, they seem to have improperly shut Councilmember Morales down, even though she represents the views of the majority of the city that did previously vote to pass social housing with the knowledge that this funding initiative was going to come, and the residents of the city who signed their signatures to get this on the ballot so that they'd have the opportunity to vote. The City Council has an obligation to place this on the ballot once it qualifies. The city residents have a right to vote this up or down. Looks like they're working on an opposing initiative. But it's just really alarming to see just the continued lack of understanding, lack of justification, lack of transparent process, and lack of basic responsibility as mandated. It just seems like they are both unwilling and unable to understand and carry out their duties there. So we'll continue to follow that.

And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, September 6th, 2024. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was Seattle Times politics and communities reporter, Daniel Beekman. You can find Daniel on Twitter at @DBeekman. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. And you can find me on Twitter at @finchfrii, with two I's at the end - you can also find me on any platform that you want, I'm there. You can 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 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. 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.