Podcasts about Durkan

The subject of disinformation is a well-known part of political rhetoric, but it has implications even outside of the sphere of democracy. From the electoral system to schools; from the workplace to hospitals, the consequences of it are far-reaching and dire. A legal analyst at MSNBC and former U.S. Attorney, Barbara McQuade's decades of experience in law help inform her authorship of Attack From Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America. The book asserts that disinformation has been used deliberately and strategically to polarize, pushing voters to extremes, and disempowering legal structures while empowering a select few. Technological advancements, including rapid developments in artificial intelligence (AI) exacerbate the issue by amplifying false claims and manufacturing credibility. From historical examples of disinformation in dictators such as Mussolini and Hitler, to contemporary examples of the tactics alleged of former Presidents Trump and Bolsonaro, Attack From Within seeks to help readers – and voters – recognize disinformation, and offers suggestions on how to combat it. McQuade's talk at Town Hall may interest those who have concerns about the reality and future of truth in a civil society. Barbara McQuade is a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, her alma mater, where she teaches courses in criminal law, criminal procedure, national security, and data privacy. She is also a legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, and a co-host of the podcast #SistersInLaw. From 2010 to 2017, McQuade served as U.S Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. She was appointed by President Barack Obama, and was the first woman to serve in her position. Earlier in her career, she worked as a sports writer and copy editor, a judicial law clerk, an associate in private practice, and an assistant U.S. attorney. Jenny A. Durkan was the 56th Mayor of Seattle and previously served as US Attorney under President Obama. As mayor, she worked to make Seattle more equitable, by investing $2.5 billion in affordable housing, providing free transit for youth and two years free college for every Seattle's high school graduate, and investing millions of new funding in communities of color. Durkan served in leadership positions for the US Conference of Mayors and the C40 Mayors, a global organization focused on fighting climate change. As US Attorney, Durkan increased enforcement of civil rights laws. She served as an advisor to former US Attorney General Eric Holder and chaired the US Department of Justice subcommittee on cybercrime and intellectual property enforcement. Durkan is a fellow in the American College of Trial lawyers and taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Washington School of Law.   Buy the Companion Book Attack from Within: How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America The Elliott Bay Book Company

On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Seattle Times City Hall reporter, David Kroman! Crystal and David dig into why Seattle is putting less money into new affordable housing project this year and how this week's launch of a second social housing initiative by House Our Neighbors may be appealing to voters wanting to see progress on the issue. Next, they discuss the pressure on Mayor Bruce Harrell to deliver results now that a City Council friendly to his agenda has taken office and how the new Council's relative inexperience was on display at initial committee meetings. Finally, the show wraps up with a troubling story of the for-profit Tacoma immigration detention center refusing to allow state inspectors access after hundreds of complaints about the facility's poor conditions. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, David Kroman, at @KromanDavid.   Resources Harm Reduction in Rural Washington with Everett Maroon of Blue Mountain Heart to Heart from Hacks & Wonks   “Why Seattle will fund fewer new affordable housing projects this year” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times   I-136 Let's Build Social Housing | House Our Neighbors   “Seattle's social housing developer proposes payroll tax on ‘excess earners'” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times   “New Social Housing Initiative Would Tax Business to Fund Up to 2,500 Over 10 Years” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger   “A council of allies in place, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell feels pressure to deliver” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times   “Watch: New Transportation Committee gets intro from SDOT, CM Kettle puts foot in mouth” by Tom Fucoloro from Seattle Bike Blog   @KromanDavid on Twitter: “Councilmember Rob Saka: "Ideally I'd like to have an across the board auditing of the entire city budget, but I am mindful that that is very costly and a time intensive activity. It's not practicable or feasible this year."”   “State inspectors denied entry to privately-run immigration detention center in Tacoma” by Grace Deng from Washington State Standard   Find stories that Crystal is reading here   Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here   Transcript [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 our 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 welcomed Everett Maroon of Blue Mountain Heart to Heart for a conversation about how the opioid epidemic has impacted rural communities in Washington, the damaging role of stigma, what harm reduction is, and why it's so important. 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 City Hall reporter, David Kroman. [00:01:22] David Kroman: Hello. Thanks for having me. [00:01:24] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Thanks for being here. Well, there is - been a decent amount of news this week. We will start off talking about news you covered about why Seattle is funding fewer new affordable housing projects this year. What's happening and why are they seeming to step back here? [00:01:45] David Kroman: Yeah, it's interesting, and I would say kind of concerning for the general affordable housing landscape. So back to as far as 2018, Seattle has always made these annual announcements of how much money they're going to be putting towards affordable housing. They pair it with federal tax credits and private donations, but it usually ends up being over $100 million a year. Last year, for example, it was $147 million - I think it was about that the year before. This year, the award is only $53 million for new affordable housing projects - that stands out because voters just passed a new housing levy that's triple the size of the one before it. There is still money - less money, but there's still money - coming in from the Mandatory Housing Affordability program. And there's also the JumpStart payroll tax, which is supposed to go towards housing. So all those things together would suggest there's a lot of money for new affordable housing, but the problem is that a lot of the projects that the city has funded in the past are struggling with their finances. The combination of interest rates and some wonky details about what loans they're on mean that these 70 projects or so that are in the works, or at various stages of development, need something in the order of $90 million to prop them up. So it's a frustrating reality for people in the affordable housing world because they want to be building new housing, they want to be putting new units on the market. But because of just the nature of construction industry and where interest rates are at, a lot of that money is getting sucked up into basically paying for housing that we thought we'd already paid for. [00:03:17] Crystal Fincher: So does this money that is usually allocated annually - does it only go to the construction? Does it ever go to propping up other projects? Did this happen by surprise for the city? It doesn't seem like it was telegraphed that it would be this much of a hit. How did this change come about? [00:03:36] David Kroman: Yeah, the Office of Housing always helps out with operations and maintenance, and they see that they have a certain obligation not to just fund the construction, but to make sure that the buildings that they're helping fund function properly and can actually house people. I don't think it's uncommon that they go back and help out buildings that they'd already funded. As far as I know, though, it has never gotten to this size. It was telegraphed actually a few months ago - their initial announcement of how much money would be available suggested that it was going to be quite a bit smaller. I think people thought there were some more technical explanations for that. But what's really happening - in affordable housing, there's basically two loans that these affordable housing buildings get. There's the construction loan, which is what they get to put up the building. And then there's their final loan that they convert to once they've leased up enough of their units and are bringing in enough rent - because, despite the fact that it's affordable housing, the calculations that the banks make around these still require that they're collecting some level of rent from their tenants. Usually that process takes two or three years for them to convert from their construction loan to their final loan. But for a lot of reasons, they're just having a really hard time doing that. They're having a harder time filling their units - I think that's probably worth following up on why that is exactly. And then they're having a harder time collecting rents - some of that does go back to some of the pandemic era policies that were intended to stabilize people in their rental apartments. So they're not able to get to the point where they can get off of their construction loan. And that is a really bad loan to be on for a long period of time, just because the rates and interest rates on those are way higher. And so I think that reality is just coming to pass this year, that basically every single one of these projects is functioning on a construction loan. But if the Office of Housing didn't go back and help them weather this storm, then we're looking at a much worse problem, which is affordable housing buildings that have already been built and people are living in them - but them just basically going belly up or needing to be sold. And so kind of a rock and a hard place for the Office of Housing - they have a choice of spending on new buildings or helping out the buildings they've already funded. The choice in some ways is fairly obvious because you don't want to lose these buildings you've already built. But it does mean that future projects take a fairly significant hit. [00:05:48] Crystal Fincher: Well, it does look like that and it's important to keep these projects moving and healthy so that they don't go belly up or cause a large amount of destabilization in the market. But looking forward, especially with this hit to new affordable developments in an already-crisis level situation with housing affordability, the need for more units to be added - what kind of long-term impact does this look to have? Are we looking at a similar situation next year where we could be looking at a further hit? Is this a permanent injury to affordable housing funding, at least for the short to midterm? [00:06:28] David Kroman: Yeah, it's a good question. I'm not sure, but I do know that something fairly material would have to change between now and next year to make sure that this isn't a problem anymore. The number of units in a building that have to be leased up and collecting rent is like 90%, so it's really high. It used to never be a problem, but it seems like a lot of these buildings are hovering around 80% occupancy/rent collection. So unless the City has some trick up its sleeve for making sure that these buildings are 90% leased up and the people who are in them are paying that rent, it sets up a situation that is out of the City's hands because these are banks making these calls on whether or not they qualify for these cheaper loans. It's not like the City can pass some law that requires the banks to give them a cheaper loan. And so my guess would be it's not a problem that will go away in a year and probably will come up again this time next year. In the past, this has just never been a problem because, unfortunately, affordable housing is in such high demand that banks have never even thought twice about whether or not an affordable housing development would hit 90% occupancy and payment. The deeper concern here is that as banks see that that assumption is maybe not holding up as well, they might be more hesitant to write these loans in the first place. The only sort of cold comfort, I guess, is that this is not really a specific problem for affordable housing. I used to cover transportation - any transportation project is having these massive cost overruns and problems with construction projects too. And so maybe there's a little more leniency on the part of the financers because they understand that this isn't just some negligence on the affordable housing providers part, it's just the reality of the construction industry right now. But that doesn't mean that it's going to start being cheap anytime soon. [00:08:13] Crystal Fincher: Right - that's almost the takeaway. Everything about building housing right now seems expensive and growing more expensive. Inflation has definitely hit every element of it and interest rates are higher than they used to be, and just everything seems to be contributing to a higher overall cost. And so that's a challenge that we're going to have to figure out how to deal with, especially as it would be one thing if this were 15 years ago - We need to make plans because this is going to become a problem if we don't address it appropriately. But this now is a problem, a major problem, crisis level, where from the legislature to different cities are all acknowledging that we do have to build more residential units - at minimum - in addition to a variety of other policies, in order to prevent rents and housing costs from continuing to skyrocket. So here we are again, but not enough money is currently budgeted to go around. Is this a money issue? I know there's also a big budget deficit that they're in the process of beginning to deal with. Did the money just run out? Is this a matter of priorities? [00:09:21] David Kroman: Yeah, there is one lever I think that the City could pull and is pulling that could actually help this a little bit, which is one of the problems is the permitting timeline - for anything really, but affordable housing included - it used to be a year and a half basically just to get all the permits. There has been some legislation passed recently to exempt some affordable housing projects from design review in an effort to speed things up. That could help because then you're not sitting on a piece of property without actually being able to do anything with it. But yeah, it is a money problem because what it is at the end of the day is just things are costing more. The problem is every time there's a property tax levy in Seattle, the specter of levy fatigue is raised. So far, Seattle voters have never hit that - they have handily passed pretty much every property tax levy put before them. But there is, to an extent, an upper limit on how much in property taxes Seattle officials are going to feel comfortable asking voters to fund affordable housing. And if more than 50% of their money is going towards projects that they already thought had been funded, suddenly the political scenario starts to feel a little more fraught. Meanwhile, the other two funds that the City relies on for affordable housing are also no longer guaranteed solid funds. The Mandatory Housing Affordability pot - that depends on there being a lot of development in the City of Seattle. And of course, we've seen permits for new development plummet, which means there's just not going to be as many contributions from private developers toward affordable housing. And then the JumpStart payroll tax, this new city council is thinking already about this $230 million budget gap that you mentioned, and are not the friendliest to the idea of a business payroll tax. And so shifting the JumpStart tax from pure housing purposes to basically budget relief is very much on the table. And I think nonprofit housing developers understand that. So the problem is that in addition to the housing levy, which is robust and large, not going as far as they had hoped, combined with these other two sources of funds either declining or perhaps being repurposed for political reasons, in general, creates a lot of uncertainty among nonprofit housing developers. [00:11:23] Crystal Fincher: It does. We will continue to follow this. Thank you for covering that so comprehensively. Well, and that leads into news this week that House Our Neighbors launched a new social housing initiative, basically Part 2 of their initiative process that they talked about before. What is House Our Neighbors? What did the first initiative do? And what are they launching with this initiative that they just filed? [00:11:51] David Kroman: House Our Neighbors is the political side of Seattle's new social housing developer. 2023, they ran an initiative that set up this public developer that was theoretically going to take money and then either buy or build buildings. On its surface, it sounds a little bit maybe like Seattle Housing Authority, but their focus was going to be on mixed income or housing for not necessarily the poorest residents - 80% to 120% AMI. The idea being that if you're trying to raise a family in Seattle, it's really difficult because it's very, very hard to find two-, three-, four-bedroom affordable apartments. This would fill that gap that they see is missing between the market and government provided subsidized housing. The complaint or pushback on the last initiative was that there weren't any funds to do any of that work. That was intentional on the part of the people who ran the campaign because there are concerns about violating the state's rules against having multiple subjects in one initiative. So this new initiative that they're running would be that second step. It would provide a funding source via a tax on businesses with employees earning more than a million dollars. Their hope is to raise $50 million a year and buy or build around 2,000 units of social housing. I don't know that their announcement was coordinated with the Office of Housing's affordable housing announcement, but the two things certainly are related to each other. [00:13:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. And with social housing, it's designed to be permanently affordable, government-owned, mixed-income housing that insulates itself, basically, because it's not part of the private market - where we just got done talking about all of the factors causing price increases in the private market. But because this is public, government-owned, it can move forward with a different model that is conceivably more insulated from market forces, in addition to not having profit pressure attached to it - helping to keep it more affordable with mixed incomes where people paying into the pot help fund the affordable housing for everything else. This did pass in the City of Seattle. And as you said, this was a two-part initiative process. The first part was on whether we were going to establish this public developer. And now comes the time to fund it. So when it comes to funding, what is the funding mechanism? And why was this chosen? [00:14:15] David Kroman: Yeah, the funding mechanism is similar to the JumpStart Tax that we were talking about before, which is it focuses on companies that have an employee making a million dollars or more. And I think the thought behind this - if you think back to the contentious Head Tax debate, which was targeting overall revenue of a business and trying to tax that, that became really contentious because you have businesses like grocery stores that have really high revenue, but super thin profits. So when you have Uwajimaya, for example, testifying against this tax as a beloved local business, people get kind of queasy about it - it basically failed because of that. The argument here is we're not really focusing on the overall revenue. We're focusing on whether or not they have employees that they're paying over a million dollars, because that suggests - if you can pay somebody a million dollars or more, you should be paying some tax on that. And it's a marginal tax, so the first million dollars of that person's salary are not taxed - it's everything above that that is taxed. The City's payroll tax exempts grocery stores and healthcare businesses, or at least healthcare businesses have waiver for a few years. This one doesn't do that. This targets any business that's paying people a million dollars or more. The exact number of businesses that that includes is a little murky. They relied on a couple past legislative efforts at the state and city level to come up with their calculations. If it passed, we'd get a little more sense of who would actually have to pay this tax, but that's basically how it works. [00:15:33] Crystal Fincher: So what they're referring to is an 'excess earners' tax, and it'd be a 5% marginal payroll tax. As you said, if they had an employee making $2 million, the tax would not apply to that first million. It would only apply to the one million above that at a rate of 5%. They're estimating with that revenue source, they could acquire or build 2,000 affordable units over 10 years. What is the timeline for this initiative now? What do they have to do in order to qualify and get it on the ballot? [00:16:06] David Kroman: They have set 30,000 signatures as their goal, and they want to get it by June - because if they got it in by June, that would leave the current city council no choice but to put it on the November ballot. And anybody who's trying to do a more left-leaning progressive initiative wants to get their measure on the November ballot because turnout in Seattle is going to be probably 80% - it's a presidential election - and the progressives of Seattle figure that more turnout favors them. So the goal is November '24. But they said that if for whatever reason they didn't get there, they would run it anyway at a later ballot date. I just think politically, that would be a little more challenging for them. [00:16:40] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. They just filed the initiative. So that process for the initiative to be approved, get to the signature gathering process will be commencing. How does this fit in, in the general overall landscape? Tiffani McCoy, who's the policy and advocacy director with House Our Neighbors, talked a little bit about this happening because there is either not a plan or a deficit in the ability to deliver the amount of housing we need and the type of housing we need at scale. [00:17:11] David Kroman: Yeah, it fits in because the affordable 80% to 120% AMI - there is just not really anybody interested in doing that right now. There have been some one-off projects around the city where a developer, out of the good of their own heart, has said that their building is going to be affordable to a certain level - workforce housing. But you're really relying on individual developers being interested in doing that. Usually those come with time limits, so they guarantee it for 30 years or 40 years or something like that. And then as we talked about before, there's Housing Authority and Office of Housing - it's a small lane, but there is a lane for 0% to probably 60% AMI. But when voters are approving a property tax levy, they're not quite as interested in building housing for people who are making up to $80,000 a year. But when you're looking at how expensive it is to live in Seattle or what the median income is, those people are having a hard time finding places to live and especially raise families in Seattle. And so that is more who this effort is targeted towards, which is fill that gap between 0% to 60% AMI and then 200%+ AMI housing, which there's just not a lot of people out there building that kind of housing right now. [00:18:21] Crystal Fincher: Right. And that matters so much because that is related to a lot of the staffing shortage talk that we hear about, whether it's teachers or bus drivers or healthcare workers or - across the board, we're hearing about workforce shortages, particularly in the City of Seattle and surrounding areas. And a big piece of that puzzle is that people just can't afford to live in the areas where those jobs are. It's way too expensive. So you have people moving further and further out, making it harder to commute in for a job, or just finding a job elsewhere outside of the city. And so housing affordability is an important element in just these conversations about our overall economy, including workforce strength and availability. It is absolutely related to those challenges. So once they made this announcement, the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce immediately make a statement that opposed it. I don't know that this opposition was necessarily surprising, but it was an immediate reaction. How did they respond? [00:19:30] David Kroman: No, not surprising at all - they took the JumpStart Tax to court. They clearly don't like payroll taxes on businesses. Their argument was they supported the Housing Levy and they support some level of voter-agreed-upon property tax to build housing for the poorest people. The Chamber's line, and this has been their line and that of other businesses since at least back to 2017 when the first Head Tax debate came up, is this all comes down to supply. That the real issue is that Seattle is zoned in a way that you just can't add more supply, especially in the 60% or whatever it is of the city that's zoned for single family homes. So their argument is you are asking businesses to try and address a very small part of a much larger illness. And in so doing, you're not going to get us to where the city actually needs to be. And at the same time, you're going to materially hurt these businesses at a time when it has been, at least for some of them, sort of a difficult period. I think the counterargument is it has not actually been that difficult of a period for businesses like Amazon. And if you're paying somebody over a million dollars, something must be going okay for you. But I think the Chamber's position does kind of go to this point, which is - you're talking about a symptom when the real cause is just that we have built a system that doesn't allow for new housing construction. [00:20:42] Crystal Fincher: Yes, and it would be less ironic if they didn't seem to also oppose a lot of the rezoning and necessary new construction for that. But I guess it's a comfortable position to be in when you can just oppose things that seemingly have to do with each other. But I do think that's part of the reason why this passed in the first place. This passed after several years of seeming opposition and defeat of efforts to make things more affordable overall, including housing, especially those that are funded with taxes. And that has been a big point of contention between the Chamber and other folks there. The Chamber traditionally takes a - Hey, just don't tax us approach. A lot of their financial support of candidates in elections seems tied to their willingness or unwillingness to tax business. So this has been a long-standing divide that we have here. But I wonder if they've ever wondered if that long-standing hesitance to do that, in the face of skyrocketing costs borne by the regular residents of Seattle and surrounding areas, might have something to do with the alternatives becoming more popular to the point where they pass this in Seattle. So it'll be interesting to see how formal and robust the opposition to this initiative is. But it does seem like this is an alternative that the residents of Seattle are looking at. And as we look forward, especially if the JumpStart Tax is raided for the general fund, some of the other mechanisms that the legislature is looking at right now don't end up coming to fruition - this may be one of the only avenues where it looks feasible that something can actually happen, that there can be funding for, and that we can start to make up some of the gaps that are reopening here in some of the other areas. How do you see the prognosis for this moving forward? [00:22:42] David Kroman: Yeah, I think you're right that this is a lot of voter response to an intractable problem. I think it is true that the underlying problem is supply - I think that's hard to dispute at this point. It's just there are a lot of people coming into the city and just not enough housing for them. And so then, therefore, even old, run-down housing is being competed for - rich people are outbidding people of lesser means for housing that you would not necessarily associate with rich people. A lot of that is enabled by the fact that most of the city - it's just cast in amber and there cannot be any added density. So at a time when the city's population is growing, you've got certain neighborhoods in Seattle where the population is actually decreasing, and I think that is what is driving a lot of rent increases. I think the reaction, though - the problem is now, the struggles are now - and so it's all well and good to diagnose the deep problem and look back at what the city should or shouldn't have done, or what the city should be doing to help this problem in 10 or 15 years. The city could upzone across the entire city tomorrow, and the construction environment - as we just talked about - means it's pretty unlikely that you're going to see a huge influx immediately of new housing and density because it's just not a great time for building new stuff. And so I think that then causes people to look for alternative options. And this is one of them, which is a more direct taxation to construction that is divorced from - well, not entirely divorced because we talked about the problems facing the nonprofit housing world, but more divorced from market forces that, again, perhaps should have been addressed a long time ago. But even if they were addressed tomorrow, would take years, decades, perhaps, to really show meaningful improvements in the affordability of Seattle. And so I think that is why these solutions that the Chamber doesn't like - because they are not market solutions, they are taxation solutions on their clients and the people that they represent, but that becomes more appealing because people want to make some immediate progress in the next year. [00:24:38] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, we will continue to follow that story and the initiative and see how it goes. I also want to talk about a piece that you wrote this week about Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, titled, "A council of allies in place, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell feels pressure to deliver." I think that pressure is an appropriate response - a number of commitments or what he ran on two years ago still has a lot of areas for improvement. I don't know that anyone feels that the type of progress that was indicated or promised has actually happened. But some of that was in his telling because he didn't have a great working relationship with the council - even though they have very distinct roles and responsibilities. But he's saying now, and part of what he said during the campaign - if we have a better working relationship, we could accomplish more. What did this story uncover, what did you talk about, and where does he stand on what he's accomplished and what he's looking to accomplish? [00:25:37] David Kroman: Yeah, I think it's perhaps not quite exactly like having a one-party President, House and Senate, but it's something like that. Because at least since I have been watching City Hall, I would argue that there has been no mayor who, at least on paper, has come into a more favorable political environment than Bruce Harrell does right now. Because he endorsed five people for city council - which I don't think Durkan or Ed Murray dipped that much of a toe into the political scene, so that alone was a big jump into playing politics - and then all of them won. And then he gets this bonus of another one of his opponents, Teresa Mosqueda, leaving to go to the King County Council. So basically he gets six new friendly people on the council, banishes all but Councilmember Tammy Morales as clear opponents to his agenda. And then more than that, if you've been watching the committee meetings in city council this year, their agenda items are what is the Seattle Department of Transportation and what does it do? They are just getting their feet under them. They are still trying to find where the bathroom is. Meanwhile, Bruce Harrell has been in City Hall for 14 years. So all of that added together means there is nothing in his way to basically do what it is that he has envisioned for City Hall. The question is - can he or will he do that? And also it kind of puts to test some of the narratives that were created around what the previous council was at fault for doing. Some of those I think could end up being true, but also I think some of the problems that we're talking about here - fairly complicated and don't just boil down to who exactly was on the previous city council. For example, police recruitment. The mayor has said he wants to grow the department to 1,400. It's a real question of whether the police department is ever going to be back to 1,400. But there's no longer the boogeyman of "Defund the Police" to fault for those challenges - now the rubber meets the road. Can a council that has explicitly said it wants to hire more police officers actually do that? And then if it doesn't, I will be curious to see how voters respond. Will they give him the same level of scrutiny that they gave the council the last few years? That will be interesting to watch. [00:27:35] Crystal Fincher: That will be interesting to watch. I do also find it interesting, from the perspective of his allies that we heard during the campaign, of stuff like "Defund the Police" and blaming some of the inability to achieve what they said they wanted to achieve on that, as if the council had been hostile. But if we look - particularly over the past two years - the council didn't pass up an opportunity to fund the hiring of more police officers. Functionally - policy-wise, budget-wise - they allocated all of the money that was asked for, they allocated bonuses related to that, yet they still ran as if this council was somehow hostile to that issue. It seemed, to your point, like the creation of a boogeyman that didn't exist, and certainly not since he's taken office here. Did that strike you as genuine reasons or reasons that really would have impeded him taking action on some of his priorities that he seemingly talked about? Well, it was because of the council that I couldn't. But on an issue like police funding, where council did provide the funding for that, where council did provide everything that was asked for to do that, yet there still wasn't progress - does that rest on the council or was that another issue? [00:28:51] David Kroman: Yeah, I think if you ask him and you ask the current council, they acknowledge - Sure, they didn't literally defund the police by 50%. And what they did "defund" was mostly a shuffling of the decks.decks -moved parking enforcement to SDOT for a while and they moved 911 to Community Safety. So the police department's budget shrunk, but those functions just moved to a different department. I think they acknowledge - yes, that they didn't cut them. But policing is an incredibly competitive recruiting environment. And I think their argument is. And I do think - yes, they didn't literally defund, but they were pretty public about some of their comments around the police. And I think that that probably had an effect on certain police officers' willingness to stay at the police department and others' willingness to come to the police department - can have a whole debate about the merit or harms of that, but I do think that probably played a factor. But at the same time, I think that there's a lot else going on around that issue of police recruitment that transcends just conversations around "Defund the Police" and what the previous city council did or didn't do. The mayor's office has had a budget for marketing for a couple years now. As far as we know, the recruitment environment has not improved. And so I think there are a lot of technical details that will slowly come out over Harrell's administration that show that the problems - while I do think that whatever the city council's previous image was, made probably a difference around that - I think there's a more complicated story around the mechanics of what recruitment actually looks like. [00:30:17] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I tend to think that there's a more complicated story around the mechanics of recruitment, particularly because several surrounding departments, including those with staunch supporters of hiring police, of funding police, are also experiencing challenges with hiring. It's hard to find a department around that isn't saying that they're experiencing staffing problems. So it seems to go deeper, in my view, than just that. Can I absolutely say that their willingness to examine the budget four years ago had nothing to do with this now? No, I can't. Certainly conservative elements in talk radio and Fox News continue to make a lot of that and characterize "defund" as a current dominant thought, which I think is just demonstrably false. On top of that, just on that issue, with the understanding and the knowledge that even if you were to hire an officer today, it's going to be a year plus before they can actually be deployed on the streets because of their need to train and go through their requirements. Is there a plan in the interim? We're two years into Bruce Harrell's term now, and it doesn't seem like - okay, barring that, what are we doing? I don't want to say no plan. They introduced a limited partial trial of a co-response model for behavioral health through his new CARE Department. There is that going on in a limited way - would love to see that expanded so it's at minimum around-the-clock, but certainly more than a handful of officers and responders involved there. Certainly in the area of public safety, I think a lot has been examined there. Were there any other issue areas, whether it's homelessness, the City's environmental plans, economic development within the city, that he talked about wanting to deliver or work on in his next two years? [00:32:10] David Kroman: Harrell - I think he's going to be dripping these out slowly. But the thing that I would say stood out to me the most was his comments about the City's relationship to the county. We had seen some comments of his about, specifically the City's relationship to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, leak out unintentionally over the last two years. Fairly clear that he took a skeptical eye toward that body. But now I would say the big change now that he has this friendly council and basically full control of the City Hall is he's no longer saying those things in private. He's being fairly public about - he has a skeptical view of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. And he has a skeptical view of the amount of money that the City of Seattle is giving that body and whether it is doing what he wants it to do. He said basically the same thing about Public Health Seattle King County, which I thought was interesting. I had never heard that relationship come up as one that needed additional scrutiny. But he said that when it comes to the issue of fentanyl, that basically he thinks Public Health Seattle King County should be doing more, and he was wondering why they're not doing more. And so as far as specific policies or legislation he might introduce, I don't have a great read on that just yet. But I do think - and I've heard this from the new council members too - I wouldn't be surprised if we see a fairly dramatic rethinking of how the city and the county work together on some of this stuff. [00:33:25] Crystal Fincher: Interesting. Certainly, it seems like there might be some budget implications attached to that. That might be another reason why we are talking about this now, as the City looks to trim a couple hundred million dollars or make up for a budget deficit of over $200 million that they're facing. Has he been responsive, or did you get a chance to talk about some of the seeming inaction on some of those areas? There certainly seemed to be a number of promises as he walked in and optimism from a lot of people as he took office that - Hey, you're someone with a different vision who's looking to move forward on a variety of things, talking about One Seattle and the vision that he has for that. Has that resulted in or materialized in anything? Is he talking about doing anything specific with that? I think a lot of people are wondering just kind of overall what his plans are. [00:34:17] David Kroman: Yeah, I think so far this has not been the most policy-heavy mayor's office by any stretch. I think back to the Murray administration - before, of course, everything else came out - but that was an office that pushed super hard for the task forces around $15 an hour and housing affordability, the HALA committee, and they would lock people in a room and make them work it out. This is not that office. What we have heard from him is a lot of messaging and, I think, an effort to do perhaps not systemic things, but pushes around certain homeless encampments or priority policing around Third Avenue or 12th and Jackson. And it's kind of these hits and sort of giving a general message about what kind of mayor he is. I think he would perhaps point to some of the rules - tree canopy legislation or things like that. But I don't know that you can point to the first two years of his office and call it a major policy-heavy term. I think there's going to be more pressure on him to be a little more policy-minded in the next two years, because as we just talked about, he's not going to have to do nearly the amount of negotiation with this city council as he would have had to do with the last one. If he comes down to them and says - I think this is really important, we got to pass this. - pretty good chance he's going to get it passed without, there's going to be tweaks and I'm sure there's going to be some nods towards pushback or accountability. But at the end of the day, this is a city council that has kind of adopted the mayor's own One Seattle slogan. When he was on city council, too, I don't know that everyone would have pointed to him, as a city councilmember, as the most policy-driven. He had certain things that he focused a lot on around policing, or he was the one who pushed the hardest for body cameras. And he's pushed hard for some police technologies like ShotSpotter and things like that. But when he was on city council, he wasn't taking the lead on a lot of big, big policy swings. And so far, I would say that's mostly been true for the first half of his term. It's just he's going to have to show some big policy swings, I think, for these next two years - because I do think he's hyper-conscious of his own reelection campaign, is my sense. We didn't talk about that specifically, but I think he's interested in running for reelection. I think it's assumed he will run for reelection. And so he's going to have to build a case for himself to voters in two years from now. [00:36:28] Crystal Fincher: Definitely. I also want to talk about some of the firsts that we saw this week. We saw the Seattle City Council conduct their first committee meeting. The Transportation Committee, chaired by Councilmember Rob Saka, held its first meeting. As you talked about, it was very Intro to or Transpo 101, because these are a lot of new members who are not familiar with the way this functions, who are still just getting their bearings underneath them for how City Hall works, how legislation works, what SDOT does do. They are all very new and are not even coming into this with a policy background in the area that may help. So this is really starting from Step 1 here. What did we hear during this committee and outside of the committee - statements from members of the council this week? [00:37:19] David Kroman: Well, a few things that stood out to me. One, it's starting to hit home a bit that this is just an incredibly green city council. This is two-thirds of people who have not held elected office before - that's not to say that they have zero experience. Maritza Rivera, for example, was a department head, so she has spent some time in City Hall. But at the end of the day, some of the questions they're asking or getting briefed on are things like - What is the Sound Transit Board? Who decides where the West Seattle to Ballard stations go? - things like that. Not to say that they don't know those things, but that's the level that we're at right now in their committee meetings. So that was one thing that really stood out to me, which is - they don't have a lot of time to figure out a lot of these big problems. We're already a month in to the year because they had to spend the first month appointing a new member. Council President Nelson didn't schedule any committee meetings during that time. So it's February and we're doing the briefing meetings. I think that's going to be something to watch. We also heard, I would say - let's call it some acknowledgement of the reality of the situation. On the campaign trail, we heard a lot of talk about "auditing the budget." We really heard it in the applications to fill the vacant council seat, this phrase "audit the budget, audit the budget." It was never super well defined what they actually meant by audit. We heard from Councilmember Saka that a literal audit of the entire budget is something that would take a really long time and be really expensive. And he acknowledged that they're not going to do that, at least not this year. So that raises some questions around what they actually meant when they were saying we were going to audit the budget and how that is materially different from what happens every year with the budget - which is you review what you can, and cut where you think you can cut, and fund what you want to fund. So that was interesting - just there's a certain reality that comes with moving from being on the campaign trail to being in office. [00:39:06] Crystal Fincher: There is a reality about moving from the campaign trail to moving into office. Speaking personally and speaking as someone who is a political consultant, has worked with plenty of candidates. This is something that you hope candidates would have an understanding of while they're running. This is directly related to what their plans are going to be. Certainly, Rob Saka and other councilmembers were asked plenty of times on the campaign trail how they were planning to deal with this looming budget deficit. And part of the background of this is that, "Well, we need to audit the budget" issue - never sound credible or serious to a lot of people because, overall, just a citywide budget audit is not the thing. But as you said, the budget process is what that is. The budget process is continually reviewing, understanding, approving, modifying - what this funding is, how effective the funding has been - that's all part of the standard budget process of the City every year. And so a lot of it seemed like they were trying to avoid talking about what their plans were. They were trying to avoid taking a stance on particularly the progressive revenue that would be needed to close a budget hole like this. And the mayor put together a Progressive Revenue Task Force that came out with options that may seem doable - asked about those, the move from a lot of the candidates, especially the moderate to conservative ones, was to say - I don't know about that progressive revenue, but we really need to audit the budget before we do anything else. We need to take a look at exactly what's being spent where and see if it works and that kind of stuff. But I think we're arriving in another situation where if you actually come in with a plan about what you want to accomplish, that's one thing. If you're coming in trying to avoid talking about what you want to accomplish, that becomes really hairy - trying to contend with and explain once you're actually in office. So now the one thing that people heard you talk about, which seeing response certainly online following these comments, was - Hey, the only thing he talked about was doing audits. And now he's saying that - Well, they can't really do that, we're walking it back, it's not practical or feasible. One, that seemingly could have been something that when people pointed that out on the campaign trail, maybe they should have taken that to heart and come up with a more realistic plan. But also now that we're here, it just seems like maybe there wasn't the kind of understanding related to what they were saying. I hope future candidates look at that and take that under advisement. I hope voters look at that and again, look at the types of answers that you're getting - even though they may sound good in a soundbite, are they actually realistic? Will they actually get done what you want to see happen in the city? Or is it just a line that people are tossing out in order to avoid talking about something else, or because it sounds good as a soundbite? [00:41:57] David Kroman: Yeah, I would say this, though, about the budget. I don't want to sound like I'm defending the City's budget process too much because - it takes you a little while, but it's very easy to see where dollars are allocated, theoretically. It is much, much more difficult to know if those dollars are actually being spent in the way that the city council budgeted them for. We've seen this actually crop up in conflicts between the city council and the mayor's office, which is city council will budget a certain amount of dollars and the mayor's office - not this mayor's office, past mayor's offices - just won't spend it because it wasn't part of their priority. And I think you can look to that conflict and generalize it out a little bit. I don't know that there are great mechanisms to show for sure that when the city council puts money towards a certain thing, it's A) going to the thing that it was supposed to, going out at all - I do think there are probably some amount of dollars that are dedicated and not being spent for whatever reason. I don't think it's corruption or anything like that. It's just staffing and permit timelines or whatever it might be. And then of course, the final question of - So it's gone out the door, is it doing what it was intended to do? I think those are all questions that are probably worth asking. And I'm not sure are always asked in the fullest sense every year during budget. And so I agree that the use of the word "audit" was incredibly fast and loose on the campaign trail. Because when you say "audit," that implies something pretty specific. We have a Washington State Auditor. We have a City of Seattle Auditor. And they do audits, or you can hire people to do an audit. It's clear that audit in the most literal sense of the term is not on the table here because that costs time and money. Close scrutiny of whether the dollars that the City has allocated are being used in the way that people said they were going to - sure, I can buy that a little bit more. I don't know how you bring that more into the process than what's already there. To the new councilmembers' credit, I think there is room there to shed a little bit more light on that end of the budgeting equation than has been done in the past. [00:43:50] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely agree with that. I think you raise a really important point. It's hard to do it comprehensively - doing a deep dive into everything is a challenging thing. I do think that those questions do need to be asked frequently, especially on these high priority items. We definitely have a number of examples in the Durkan administration where they just refused to spend money - if council funded something and it wasn't aligned with the priorities of the mayor's office, the mayor's office just wouldn't spend that money in some instances or would look to divert that money to another area that wasn't one of their policy priorities as they've identified. So certainly just because money is allocated, does not mean at all that it's being spent at all or spent effectively. And I hope council does take seriously their responsibility to make sure that what they intend to happen as they set forth does happen and that money isn't just sitting there - that should be working for the residents of the city. But we'll certainly see what happens there. Last thing I want to talk about today was a story that was really concerning about a for-profit ICE detention center in Tacoma blocking health and labor inspections. What happened here? [00:45:04] David Kroman: Yeah, this was news to me. It looks like the state had tried to pass a law that basically increased access to the ICE facility - a privately run jail, basically - for people who have come into the United States. Because, as we know, there have been a lot of complaints about that facility over the years, but it's always been a little bit of a he-said, she-said situation because there's just such limited access in a way that - not to say that the state or city or county jails are in great shape, but lawmakers have an eye into those places and can see what's going on in there. They just don't with this facility because it's private. And so this bill was supposed to allow that access, but it seems like the GEO group that runs the prison is fighting them super hard on it in court and even barring people from entering. And this is pretty new to me - it seems pretty concerning - something that if you were a lawmaker, you might want to follow up on. [00:45:52] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, these complaints, there were hundreds of complaints - over 200 just between April and November of last year - stuff like insufficient food, misuse of solitary confinement, clothes rarely laundered and returning when they were supposedly laundered wet and dirtier than before, detainees with mental health issues being refused clean clothing. Medical issues, including stroke, paralysis, asthma, internal bleeding. One instance, a detainee with a broken arm was only given ibuprofen and not a cast for days after the incidents. When you talk about the types of violations that can happen when you have people who are 100% under your control, who you control their access to everything - the possibility of denial of that is egregious and atrocious. And so you do have to follow the laws of the state. Representative Lillian Ortiz-Self is trying to work through legislation to ensure that the state can inspect and examine what is happening here so it gets out of the world of he said, she said, and to ensure that they're following the laws of our state. And they've refused. So it is really concerning. A law was passed in 2021 aimed at shutting down the detention center by 2025, but that was ruled unenforceable. It just really is scary to think about - that we have these facilities responsible for people's care, basically, while they're being detained just seemingly unaccountable to anyone, with really catastrophic impacts on people who are jailed or detained here in this situation. And sometimes I'll hear people very flippantly - If they didn't want that to happen, then they shouldn't have done something to land in there in the first place. One, I think it might surprise people, the amount of seemingly innocuous things that can land someone in there. But regardless of how they landed in there, these are still people in the care of the state. And the detainment is what has been called for there, so they're being detained. But that doesn't mean that abuse, neglect, mistreatment is in any way justified. It is never justified. And I just think that we need to look at these things seriously. And when we hear about facilities, with the responsibility on behalf of the state, where they can control people's access to the necessities of life, that we should hold a higher standard than the average private company out there. And it really is just infuriating to me that we seemingly land in these situations where we have people being mistreated and they just seem to not care about the law - it's about the profit - and regardless of how people suffer at their hands in the process of it, I just - these types of stories really get to me. [00:48:54] David Kroman: Yeah, and I think it's why people are so concerned and looking for ways to get more eyes on the private prison industry - just because it is a constitutional right that people, even incarcerated people, have healthcare and food and not inhumane conditions, but just a little harder to make sure that it's not happening when the prison doesn't necessarily need to answer to the voters. [00:49:17] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. Hopefully that is something that will change soon. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, February 9th, 2024 - it's my mom's birthday today, as we're recording this February 8th. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was Seattle Times City Hall reporter David Kroman. You can find David on Twitter at @KromanDavid, that's K-R-O-M-A-N, David. 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 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 shows 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.

In this episode, from the Dublin Festival of History 2023, Ann Marie Durkan will introduce the maps she prepared, which locate animals and animal-related businesses in Dublin City in 1911. It provides an insight into how in 1901, 803 Dubliners worked as cattle dealers, drovers, farriers and vets, yet over the course of the 20th century most of these animals, and most of these jobs, disappeared. Ann Marie Durkan is an Irish Research Council funded PhD candidate in Dublin City University.This episode was recorded at the Central Library, on October 3, 2023.The Dublin Festival of History is brought to you by Dublin City Council, and organised by Dublin City Libraries, in partnership with Dublin City Council Culture Company. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kilimanjaro ep.677 Atop the slopes of Kilimanjaro lies the last vestige of our once proud world. Based in London, UK, Roman is an up and coming writer who always strives for variety in his work, be it serious speculative dramas to, as others had put it, the 'totally gonzo'. Stories from both categories can be found in anthologies like Wandering Wave's 'Tumbled Tales' anthology to 'S for Slasher' from Red Cape Publishing. He also dabbles in film reviewing as a hobby as well as other arts-related pursuits.   ---- Listen Elsewhere ---- YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TallTaleTV Website: http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- Story Submission ---- Got a short story you'd like to submit? Submission guidelines can be found at http://www.TallTaleTV.com   ---- About Tall Tale TV ---- Hi there! My name is Chris Herron and I'm an audiobook narrator. In 2015, I suffered from poor Type 1 diabetes control which lead me to become legally blind for almost a year. The doctors didn't give me much hope, predicting an 80% chance that I would never see again. But I refused to give up and changed my lifestyle drastically. Through sheer willpower (and an amazing eye surgeon) I beat the odds and regained my vision. During that difficult time, I couldn't read or write, which was devastating as they had always been a source of comfort for me since childhood. However, my wife took me to the local library where she read out the titles of audiobooks to me. I selected some of my favorite books, such as the Disc World series, Name of the Wind, Harry Potter, and more, and the audiobooks brought these stories to life in a way I had never experienced before. They helped me through the darkest period of my life and I fell in love with audiobooks. Once I regained my vision, I decided to pursue a career as an audiobook narrator instead of a writer. That's why I created Tall Tale TV, to support aspiring authors in the writing communities that I had grown to love before my ordeal. My goal was to help them promote their work by providing a promotional audio short story that showcases their writing skills to readers. They say the strongest form of advertising is word of mouth, so I offer a platform for readers to share these videos and help spread the word about these talented writers. Please consider sharing these stories with your friends and family to support these amazing authors. Thank you!   ---- legal ---- All stories on Tall Tale TV have been submitted in accordance with the terms of service provided on http://www.talltaletv.com or obtained with permission by the author. All images used on Tall Tale TV are either original or Royalty and Attribution free. Most stock images used are provided by http://www.pixabay.com , https://www.canstockphoto.com/ or created using AI. Image attribution will be declared only when required by the copyright owner. Common Affiliates are: Amazon, Smashwords

Welcome to Season 4 episode 17 of the No Block No Rock Podcast! On this week's episode Hurrdat Sports Director Sausha Durkan joins NBNR to talk about Raiola back to Nebraska? McCord TIME? Chaos time in Lincoln!THIS IS A MUST LISTEN EPISODE!!Check out our website: https://nbnrpodcast.com/Follow us on Facebook, Twitter (X), Tik Tok, Youtube & Instagram: @NBNRPodcastThe No Block No Rock Podcast is proudly part of Hurrdat Sports.The No Block No Rock Podcast is sponsored by Nebraska Brewing CompanyHey NBNR listeners my name is Mike Anderson owner and founder of MXA Construction group Omaha with 15 years experience in the industry and I want to help you fix that eye sore from indoor to outdoor, and floor to ceiling whatever your needs might be we can help your dreams become reality ….. Find us on Facebook at MXA Construction Group or visit https://mxaconstructiongroup.com/ - Mention code NBNR to receive discounted pricing!This Holiday season, make your home shine with Richey Holiday Lights!Transform your home into a winter wonderland. They handle everything from design to installation. You can contact them at https://richey-holiday-lights.square.site/“Garage a mess? Don't stress! Get ahold of Rob at Nebraska Garage Solutions!Nebraska Garage Solutions is a locally owned and operated company that focuses on affordable garage storage solutions.They specialize in, but not limited to: Overhead metal storage, Custom wood shelving, Pre finished slatwall systems, and Cabinets/entertainment areas. Get a hold of Nebraska Garage Solutions today. www.nebraskagaragesolutions.comShort-term rental hosts, are you tired of spending your precious time doing laundry, restocking supplies, and cleaning up after guests? Look no further than BnB Maids of Omaha – your local heroes for short-term rental cleaning. Their team of skilled professionals is dedicated to turning over your short-term rental, making it spotless for your next guests, and ensuring an inviting and welcoming space. Whether you're a busy Airbnb host or managing multiple properties, BnB Maids of Omaha is here to make your life easier and your guests' stays unforgettable. They pride themselves on reliability, trustworthiness, and attention to detail. BnB Maids of Omaha is your key to more bookings and 5-star reviews! Ready to regain your time and boost your rental's success?Visit bnbmaidsofomaha.com today to learn more and get started.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

David Duncan Discusses Durkan's Presentation at BDNY by Floor Focus Magazine

On this Tuesday topical show, Crystal chats with Andrew Lewis about his campaign for Seattle City Council District 7. Listen and learn more about Andrew and his thoughts on: [01:02] - Why he is running [03:31] - Response to critics calling him ‘fickle' [07:03] - Lightning round! [12:33] - Lightning round follow-up: Endorsements, SPOG contract questions, waterfront, reallocating encampment funds [17:05] - Homelessness response: Is there room for improvement? [20:13] - City budget shortfall: Raise revenue or cut services? [23:39] - City budget shortfall: Progressive revenue options? [26:03] - Climate change, bike and pedestrian safety [31:36] - Public Safety: Alternative response As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Andrew Lewis at @LewisforSeattle.   Andrew Lewis Councilmember Lewis is a born and raised Seattleite and a proud graduate of Seattle Public Schools. He holds a BA in history and political science from the University of Washington, a masters degree from the London School of Economics, and a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to serving on the City Council, he served the people of Seattle as an assistant city attorney. He lives in West Queen Anne with his wife Laura, an assistant attorney general, their daughter Vivian Grace, and two rescue cats, Scoop and Maggie.   Resources Campaign Website - Andrew Lewis   Transcript [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 Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show 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. Well, I am very happy today to be welcoming Seattle City Councilmember Andrew Lewis to the show. Welcome. [00:01:01] Andrew Lewis: Hey, great to be here. [00:01:02] Crystal Fincher: Well, lots of people have been familiar with you for quite some time. You are an incumbent running for re-election here on the Seattle City Council. I guess the first question is just - Why are you running, especially when so many other of your colleagues have chosen not to? [00:01:18] Andrew Lewis: Yeah, well, it's really great to be here to talk about the campaign 'cause I really do think Seattle is positioned to be one of the definitive cities of this century in terms of our potential - our potential for climate resiliency, our potential to overcome a lot of the challenges we face around housing insecurity and emerging challenges in public safety - and I wanna be a part of that. And finish a lot of the work that we've set in motion in the first term, and really bring a lot of that work to its full conclusion. We've worked, in my office, to put in place a big capital plan to redo a lot of our community centers in the city to be climate resiliency hubs - that is gonna be an increasingly necessary piece of infrastructure for shelter during extreme weather events like heat and smoke surges. We have worked to put in place a pilot for a dual dispatch alternative 911 response that is gonna be hitting the road in October, and that the Harrell administration and my office have shared ambition to see scaled to a bigger civilian department that has the capacity to respond in a public health-centered way to a lot of emergencies in our community. So if the first four years was about setting the stage to get these investments locked in and get a commitment and funding locked in, the next four years is really about implementation and really seeing that fully realized. We also have a lot of big, exciting things that are coming on the horizon in the next term - including major revisions to Seattle's Comprehensive Plan, which has huge implications for housing affordability, for climate. We have the Move Seattle levy which will be renewed in 2024 as well. So really, really big policy lifts that I really have strong opinions on and wanna see realize their full potential for a multimodal city with dense and abundant housing. So those are some of my priorities and I'm sure we'll dive into those more over the course of the interview. [00:03:30] Crystal Fincher: We will. Now, one criticism leveled against you is that you're fickle - that may be putting it pretty bluntly. But one, The Stranger said - in their endorsement of you to be clear, they are absolutely recommending you - they said you "could really use a stronger spine" and The Seattle Times said, "Seattle voters have every reason to feel whiplash these past four years. Perhaps no other councilmember has veered from one position to the next as often and as dramatically as Andrew Lewis. Do you agree with that criticism and how do you respond to it? [00:04:04] Andrew Lewis: Yeah, I actually don't agree with that criticism - that probably won't surprise anybody here. But I think that a lot of it comes down to the fact that we unfortunately have a media environment where there isn't much recognition or respect for nuance - absent the Hacks & Wonks podcast, of course, where nuance is the currency of the realm. But if you look at some of those instances where we, as policy makers, are forced into a very polarizing environment where the options that were dealt are these two polar options and there's not really much interest from actors in the media that have a strong agenda and like - look, obviously I'm supported by The Stranger, I appreciate their support, I'm glad that I have their endorsement - and they wouldn't contest that they have an agenda. I'm sure The Seattle Times editorial board would not contest that they have an agenda either. And I do think that polarizing actors can get frustrated when the dichotomy that they're pitching people gets flipped on its head because people that are in the middle - that are being forced to pick false choices from two things that are dealt - want to flip the table over on those false choices and try to figure out a way to bring community together and come up with a better policy. And I think that we see, with the result of the Fentanyl Work Group that Mayor Harrell put together with support from my office, that we are getting a better proposal with a broader base of support from the work - that we have spent over the summer digging into how to best respond to the fentanyl crisis, rather than just reactively passing a policy that was set up really with no clear, well-thought-out implementation plan in June. And I can't really sit here and say that it's bad policy to take a little bit longer and ask real probing questions instead of just pick between two choices that are put in front of us. And honestly, I think a lot of the problems in our politics come from accepting those kinds of false choices. So, look - if I'm reelected, I'm certainly going to continue to try to figure out how to make the best policy outcomes we can. And sometimes that might mean rejecting divisive policies. And if people want to call that being fickle, that's what they can do. But I think that the people of Seattle want to see solutions to their problems and not just figuring out how the red team or blue team can win in a given moment. [00:06:49] Crystal Fincher: I appreciate your beautiful rhetorical flourish on "nuance is the currency of the realm" here on Hacks & Wonks. You have a podcast also where nuance is also covered there. Now, we're going to depart from our normal kind of candidate interview script - I guess, that we've had over the past several years and switch it up a little bit before we get back to the regular script - and do a bit of a lightning round, which we've done in live events and in forums, debates, but haven't so much in these interviews. But I think it can be useful to level set and to help give people just a base understanding of who we are before we get back into long-form questions where we get to discuss things without the, I guess, limitation of kind of the super short soundbite type of thing that other forums are limited to. So starting out - these are yes or no questions, and we'll make our way through them, is - Did you vote yes on the King County Crisis Care Centers levy? [00:07:52] Andrew Lewis: Yes. [00:07:53] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote yes on the Veterans, Seniors, and Human Services levy? [00:07:57] Andrew Lewis: Yes. [00:07:58] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote in favor of Seattle's Social Housing Initiative 135? [00:08:03] Andrew Lewis: Yes. [00:08:04] Crystal Fincher: In 2021, did you vote for Bruce Harrell for Mayor? [00:08:08] Andrew Lewis: I voted for Lorena González. [00:08:10] Crystal Fincher: And did you vote for Nicole Thomas Kennedy or Ann Davison for City Attorney? [00:08:16] Andrew Lewis: When I don't publicly endorse a candidate that I have to work with, I don't publicly state - so I'm gonna decline to answer. [00:08:24] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. And did you vote for Leesa Manion or Jim Ferrell? [00:08:27] Andrew Lewis: I voted for Leesa Manion. [00:08:29] Crystal Fincher: Do you rent your residence? [00:08:33] Andrew Lewis: I own. [00:08:35] Crystal Fincher: Okay, and are you a landlord? [00:08:37] Andrew Lewis: I am not. [00:08:38] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to require landlords to report metrics, including how much rent they're charging, to help better plan housing and development needs in your district? [00:08:47] Andrew Lewis: Yes. [00:08:48] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to provide additional funding for Seattle's Social Housing Public Development Authority? [00:08:54] Andrew Lewis: Yes. [00:08:55] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with King County Executive Constantine's statement that the King County Jail should be closed? [00:09:03] Andrew Lewis: Yes. [00:09:04] Crystal Fincher: Should parking enforcement be housed within SPD? [00:09:08] Andrew Lewis: Yes. [00:09:09] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to allow police in schools? [00:09:13] Andrew Lewis: No. [00:09:14] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget for a civilian-led mental health crisis response? [00:09:19] Andrew Lewis: Yes. [00:09:20] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget to increase the pay of human service workers? [00:09:25] Andrew Lewis: Yes. [00:09:26] Crystal Fincher: Do you support removing funds in the City budget for forced encampment removals and instead allocating funds towards a Housing First approach? [00:09:36] Andrew Lewis: No, but I'm happy to expand on that later. [00:09:39] Crystal Fincher: Will do. Do you support abrogating or removing funds from unfilled SPD positions and putting them towards meaningful public safety measures? [00:09:49] Andrew Lewis: No. [00:09:49] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocating money in the City budget for supervised consumption sites? [00:09:54] Andrew Lewis: Yes. [00:09:55] Crystal Fincher: Do you support increasing funding in the City budget for violence intervention programs? [00:09:59] Andrew Lewis: Yes. [00:10:00] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't give the Office of Police Accountability, OPA, and the Office of Inspector General, OIG, subpoena power? [00:10:11] Andrew Lewis: I'm on LRPC, so I can't comment on active bargaining, unfortunately - but I can expand on that later. [00:10:17] Crystal Fincher: Do you support eliminating in-uniform off-duty work by SPD officers? [00:10:23] Andrew Lewis: Same answer, unfortunately. [00:10:25] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Will you vote to ensure that trans and non-binary students are allowed to play on all of the sports teams that fit with their gender identities? [00:10:33] Andrew Lewis: Yes. [00:10:34] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to ensure that trans people can use bathrooms or public facilities that match their gender? [00:10:39] Andrew Lewis: Yes. [00:10:40] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with the City's decision to implement the JumpStart Tax? [00:10:44] Andrew Lewis: Yes. [00:10:45] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to reduce or divert the JumpStart Tax in any way? [00:10:52] Andrew Lewis: I could, yes. [00:10:53] Crystal Fincher: Are you happy with Seattle's newly-built waterfront? [00:10:58] Andrew Lewis: Yes, but that's something I want to expand on, too. [00:11:02] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Do you believe return-to-work mandates, like the one issued by Amazon, are necessary to boost Seattle's economy? [00:11:09] Andrew Lewis: Yes. [00:11:10] Crystal Fincher: Have you taken transit in the past week? [00:11:12] Andrew Lewis: Yes. [00:11:13] Crystal Fincher: Have you ridden a bike in the past week? [00:11:15] Andrew Lewis: Yes. [00:11:16] Crystal Fincher: Look at you, Andrew Lewis. Should Pike Place Market allow non-commercial delivery car traffic? [00:11:24] Andrew Lewis: No. [00:11:25] Crystal Fincher: Should significant investments be made to speed up the opening of scheduled Sound Transit light rail lines? [00:11:31] Andrew Lewis: Repeat that one more time, sorry. [00:11:33] Crystal Fincher: Should significant investments be made to speed up the opening of scheduled Sound Transit light rail lines? [00:11:39] Andrew Lewis: Yes. [00:11:40] Crystal Fincher: Should we accelerate the elimination of the ability to turn right on red lights to improve pedestrian safety? [00:11:46] Andrew Lewis: Yes, absolutely. [00:11:48] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever been a member of a union? [00:11:50] Andrew Lewis: Yes. [00:11:51] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to increase funding and staffing for investigations into labor violations like wage theft and illegal union busting? [00:11:59] Andrew Lewis: Yes. [00:11:59] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever walked a picket line? [00:12:02] Andrew Lewis: Yes. [00:12:02] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever crossed a picket line? [00:12:04] Andrew Lewis: No. [00:12:05] Crystal Fincher: Is your campaign unionized? [00:12:07] Andrew Lewis: So we pay the union wage. I don't know if he is formally - my campaign manager's formally joined, but of course I'd be all for it. So, yes. [00:12:20] Crystal Fincher: And that was the next question. If your staff wants to unionize, would you voluntarily recognize their effort? [00:12:25] Andrew Lewis: Yeah, totally. [00:12:26] Crystal Fincher: Well, look, Andrew Lewis - you concluded our first in-interview lightning round here on Hacks & Wonks. I guess following up on that, there were a couple of issues where you wanted to follow up on that - so I'll give you a little bit of time to clarify. [00:12:41] Andrew Lewis: Yeah, I mean, the first thing I would say, like in how I do endorsements - there were some questions about endorsements. If I publicly endorse - publicly endorsed Lorena, publicly endorsed Leesa Manion - I will say in the future who I voted for. If there's a municipal office where I have to work with that person, like council colleagues or other municipal officials - if I don't publicly endorse, I don't state 'cause I have to work with those people. So, I mean, people can maybe infer based on some of my other statements and actions, but it's just a hard and fast rule I have that I inherited from my friend, Nick Licata. So I will just say, put that out there. On the waterfront - well, actually, first, LRPC - there's some questions regarding bargaining. At the Seattle City Council, there's a body called Labor Relations Policy Committee - it's five City councilmembers. Our deliberations are private 'cause bargaining is private - for good reason. We oversee the bargaining process for all unions that have contracts with the City, including the Seattle Police Officers Guild, and we weigh in in that body on approving bargaining parameters. So sitting on that body - it's just best practice to not specifically talk about hard and fast positions on the bargaining process. And I know that's frustrating to a lot of my friends in labor for the coalition bargaining that's happening right now. But by virtue of serving on LRPC, I have to be really, really careful about what I say to avoid unfair labor practice allegations and other things like that, regrettably. On the waterfront, which is another question that came up. I think the waterfront's gonna be great and have a lot of really cool new things - the Overlook Walk, the Aquarium expansion, obviously going to be a big new investment. So on the whole, it's a beneficial addition, and I think yes is the best answer to that question. There are ways it could be dramatically improved - I don't think anyone out there is denying that. A couple of months ago, when we were discussing the designation of Dzidzilalich - the renaming of Elliott to Dzidzilalich Way - I asked the Office of the Waterfront staff how much leeway we have to make improvements to increasingly remove the amount of footprint that's on the waterfront that is reserved for cars - which is the biggest deficiency, in my opinion, of the waterfront. And everything essentially north of the ferry terminal is city right-of-way and not state right-of-way - where we have an increased amount of leeway to make changes. So I'm optimistic that over time, we can continue to work and shape the waterfront to reflect the kind of urban space that I think a lot of us in the community wanna see. It's tough that so much of the shape of the waterfront was kind of locked in over a decade ago before I was on the council to really have a say in how to shape those conversations. But just clarification there on the waterfront. On the question regarding money that goes towards removing and remediating encampment locations - I mean, that's an ongoing - that maybe is the subject of further questions, actually, in the interview, but I don't think it's necessarily a situation where we're in a position to completely get rid of the money that we've set aside for the Unified Care Team - with the current state of how the rest of our contract with the regional authority is set up, we do need the ability in case of emergencies or obstructions or other exigent problems to be able to remediate an encampment location. But I think that we should be doing it with compassion and discretion and not - yeah, and that our focus needs to stay on having a Housing First approach to resolving the crisis of homelessness that we're facing. [00:17:05] Crystal Fincher: How do you think that compassion and discretion has been going so far? Has the City met that mark, or is there room for improvement? [00:17:14] Andrew Lewis: I think there's always room for improvement and I think that all of us admit that that's the case. We - for the first time, we're tracking why people might decline offers of shelter. In the Durkan administration, we never did that. It's something that's been a long council priority to like, if someone declined shelter, we should ask them why. In the Durkan administration, there was no interest - there was just sort of a philosophy of like, Well, no, if they say no, then why would we ask them? And it's like - well, if you want to increase the rate of people accepting offers, you should be asking people. And under the Harrell administration, we have started asking. And the Harrell administration has been very responsive to feedback in updating and changing a lot of our outreach practices that, in the Durkan administration, we weren't getting any traction as a council in that kind of responsiveness. And what we've learned through that process is the dominant shelter preference are tiny house villages. And if you have more tiny house villages, you're gonna significantly reduce the amount of encampments in the city. There has been a 42% decrease in encampments over the course of the past year or so, through our work with the Unified Care Team. And that reflects a reduction in the amount of displacement, because there is an emphasis on increasing the amount of shelter placements from the outreach that we do to encampments. We have increased the amount of enhanced shelter in tiny house villages, though not as much as I would like to see. So I think the focus needs to be on continuing to scale up those enhanced shelter options that - we do have a consensus from the Harrell administration on wanting to do. The historic challenge has been resistance from the King County Regional Homelessness Authority to tiny house villages, but I think the new leadership team there has a different view of the utility of them. So my hope is that we can continue down that path in centering things that work. The best model that we've done in recent years is the JustCARE model, which used a hoteling-supported placement system. But we can do the same work with tiny house villages, and that might be more attainable than leasing or acquiring additional hotels in the current climate. So that's what we need to continue to work on - in my estimation. If you want fewer encampments and you want to provide people with a place to go, I think it all really comes down to having more tiny homes. [00:20:06] Crystal Fincher: And I think it's fair to say you've been the council's leading proponent of tiny homes during your time serving. I do wanna talk about the upcoming anticipated revenue shortfall in the City of Seattle. It's projected to have a revenue shortfall of several million dollars beginning in 2025. Because the City's mandated to pass a balanced budget, the options to address the upcoming deficit are either to raise revenue or to cut services. How will you approach the issue of how the City collects and spends money on behalf of its constituents? [00:20:44] Andrew Lewis: Yeah, it's estimated to be around - $200 million is the deficit that we're anticipating for the next biennium. So we have the entire year of 2024 to plan around a variety of different strategies to mitigate the impact of that looming deficit. I think that there's a couple of things that can be brought to bear. Obviously, there's some revenue options that were queued up by a recent task force that was convened by Mayor Harrell and Councilmember Mosqueda. It's not likely that any of those revenue sources in and of themselves would be enough to completely close the gap. So there would have to be - if there is a strategy pursued to pursue new revenue, there would have to also be some level of efficiencies and reforms that are found. I think that there is some utility in having the City really take a hard and fast look at some of the things that we do and figuring out if we can do them better. I think there's a broad consensus, for example, that things like design review are tedious, subjective, not really helping to advance a lot of our current policy challenges around getting things built in the city. All of these processes come with associated costs. I think that there are ways to look at the 45 offices and departments that we have at the city and look for some opportunities for consolidations of certain roles. I think there's a credible argument to be made that the Seattle Department of Construction Inspections, the Office of Planning and Development, the Office of Housing, the Department of Neighborhoods could theoretically all be merged into one department and there's probably economy of scale savings that we could realize from those kinds of efficiencies and consolidations. So I think that we need to think creatively in looking at all of the different options to get there. I don't think we can take revenue off the table and we can't take looking at some ways to more efficiently and effectively deliver existing services. Or get out of certain lines of business entirely - like I just indicated, design review, but there's other things in the permitting and land use world that we could probably streamline as part of the Comprehensive Plan. And I think there's a lot of interest in those kinds of actions - to have a more, to be able to build housing quicker, to be able to build things faster, and to reduce the associated costs with the process that slows a lot of that housing construction down. [00:23:39] Crystal Fincher: I think everybody would welcome streamlining of that process, and I've also seen indications that there is broad interest in doing that. So we talked about the streamlining - are you considering any progressive revenue options? [00:23:54] Andrew Lewis: Well, yeah - I mean, look, I co-sponsored the JumpStart Tax - gosh, like three years ago now, I guess, is when we did that. It seems more recent. So I'm not averse to new progressive revenue. I have proposed in the past a capital gains tax, which is one of the things that was recommended in the report. But I wanna take a good hard look first at ways that we can really show our work in 2024 - trying to figure out how we can really make the case that there's ways to find some additional ways to save money in the deficit before we are rolling out and committing to new revenue. People forget - partly 'cause I think there's a lot of people that don't wanna give the council credit for things - but people forget that in the last biennium, we found $60 million worth of savings that we rolled into the budget. So it's not like we aren't able to go through this work and find ways that we can save money. I mean, the county has been doing similar budgeting practices by necessity for over a decade because they have to. I mean, the county's in a position where they have the same budget pressures that we're facing - they can't raise progressive revenue, so they have found ways to be more efficient and effective. And I don't think that we at the City face the same pressures, but I think that there's a lot of ability to realize similar efficiencies. Also because we have dynamic and new needs - the Social Housing Initiative is a dynamic and new need - that's not something that we've had before that we've had to figure out how to resource. So finding ways to redistribute and reallocate funding from other parts of the budget, I think, is something that should be a focus of our work in 2024. [00:26:02] Crystal Fincher: Makes sense. On almost every measure, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals - which is an important milestone to hitting the 2040, 2050 climate goals - as we are experiencing the impacts of climate change right now, many of which are devastating from extreme heat and cold, to wildfires and floods. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet 2030 goals? [00:26:31] Andrew Lewis: So in my first term - really proud of prime sponsoring legislation mandating that new commercial construction needs to essentially be non-emitting. Like you can't build a new commercial building in Seattle and heat it with natural gas - you have to get heat pumps. Councilmember Strauss sponsored a similar bill for residential construction doing the same thing. So that's new buildings. I want us to work on figuring out ways to adapt existing buildings, to convert to electric heat pumps instead of using natural gas. One of our biggest contributing factors in our climate accounting, our carbon accounting, is the heating of large buildings. And that's something that we can really take on, and I think that we - in the Comp Plan next year and through other sort of incentives and mandates - can get there to speed that transition up and have that part of the carbon accounting really go down. We need to continue to work on the biggest plurality of our climate challenge, which is our transportation system in the City of Seattle. I used to think it was as simple as the process of building out light rail - I don't think that anymore. I mean, obviously that's gonna be essential and having that grade-separated fixed rail transit is critical and we have to be completely committed to speeding it up, getting it done right, and delivering it. But other things like emphasizing 15-minute city planning in the Comp Plan and figuring out ways to follow the lead of other cities that have made a lot of stunning progress in the COVID era around the subsidy and expansion of e-bikes. I think that e-bikes have a lot of potential to be a significant component. I don't think they're a silver bullet for our transportation climate problems, but I think that they are like a leg of the stool. I think that e-bikes can be a significant way to make biking, as a transportation alternative, more accessible and getting more people to take on that kind of commuting habit to reduce their dependency on single occupancy vehicles. That means we need to - in the Move Seattle levy and just through other budget priorities, through our transportation budgets - really make sure that protected and safe bike infrastructure is something that we're really investing in. So that people feel like they're - not just that it is a comfortable and convenient alternative to use an e-bike, but that you know you can do it safely and in a way that you are going to feel and actually be protected by the infrastructure you use to get around the city. Really proud, in my first term, to have sponsored the first increase in a decade of the commercial parking tax, which is a tax on private commercial parking lots - to create the first-ever dedicated funding for Vision Zero infrastructure improvements. So building on that is something we really need to do to meet our climate goals. I'm proud to be the only candidate in this race in the primary who mentioned climate change in my voter guide statement. I think - in 2023, it's kind of stunning that you can have six candidates running in the Seattle City Council race and only one of the six even mentions climate change as something that we need to be doing. But here we are. So that'll continue to be a priority. Last thing I'll throw out there - really proud of the work I did with 350 Seattle and a coalition of environmental organizations to make significant investments in our community centers, through the renewal of the Metropolitan Park District, to be heating and cooling centers in extreme weather events and also to decarbonize those community centers as part of the process. This is all - it needs to be everything - we need to be mitigating, we need to be investing in climate resiliency, and we need to be aggressively working to reduce our overall climate footprint. And we can really be the city that I think leads the country in being an urban example of how you can be part of the solution on climate. [00:31:09] Crystal Fincher: Now, I just want to give my full-throated support to the e-bike subsidy and to helping to improve bike and pedestrian infrastructure. It's so important, and especially e-bikes - showing that more than even regular bikes - to reduce vehicle trips, vehicle miles traveled, and as you put it, certainly a leg of the stool that's going to meaningfully address carbon emissions and pollution in our city. I want to talk about public safety and particularly alternative response. Other jurisdictions - not just around the country, but in our own region and county - have rolled out alternative response programs to better support those having behavioral health crises, experiencing homelessness, a variety of issues that may not be best addressed by a police officer in an armed capacity. Which used to be a pretty common - and in some places still is - commonly talked about by even law enforcement officers, that they cannot address and solve everything. But it seems like Seattle has been falling behind on alternative response, behavioral health responses. Where do you stand on those solutions, and what are your thoughts on the civilian-led versus co-response models? And how do we move forward quickly to help improve public safety in the city? [00:32:32] Andrew Lewis: All right, well, I'm gonna give a long answer, 'cause I feel very strongly about this. And appreciate the question. And honestly, Crystal, I appreciate - as an avid listener to your podcast - the way that this topic is discussed extensively with the guests that you have on, because it is not in our broader media and I think this is one of the first parts of the problem. In our broader legacy media, this really isn't discussed as something that's important. You know, like there's only passing reference to it in the editorializing from The Times, definitely none of our local TV news discuss it. And I'll just plant that as a flag - that I think that that is part of the reason it's been hard to get momentum for it - is it is not given much bandwidth, time, respect, or analysis by a lot of legacy media voices, and that diminishes the momentum for it. But just to maybe go way back - I think I got ahead of myself on that part - there's lots of great models nationally for how you can send alternative civilian responses for public health-based calls for service. Eugene, Oregon has a longstanding program called CAHOOTS, Crisis Assistance Helping Out in the Streets. That program's been in operation for 30 years - sends mental health clinicians without the assistance of police to respond to calls for crisis in the community. And they've never had any serious injury or death associated for their staff of responding to those calls. Denver, which is probably a more analogous city - for our purposes as a major city - has a program called STAR, Support Team Assisted Response. Almost exactly the same as Eugene's CAHOOTS program - mental health clinicians and EMTs, civilians, provider-based. They've had no significant challenge, and a Stanford study actually recently saw that there's been an attributable, nearly one-third decrease in street disorder in the place where they've been in operation - which is incredibly impressive - and they've only been in operation for three years. Albuquerque has a similar program. So we really are a late adopter to this work. I will say that the council in June of 2020 really put down - a stake in the ground for having this kind of a service as a really, really big priority. I was a big leader in that, former Councilmember Lorena González was a big advocate of that, my colleague Councilmember Herbold has been a huge, steadfast advocate of this kind of service. And for whatever reason, and I don't really - people can speculate, but I never really got a good reason why - it was not a huge priority for the Durkan administration. And the Durkan administration just really was not interested in lending capacity, bandwidth, or support to developing this kind of a program. And we lost a lot of time as a result of that - to be quite candid. The Harrell administration coming in - and I'm gonna say this - I think the Harrell administration on this issue has been great. We have lots of impediments in the City of Seattle and Washington State, mostly related to the fact that arguably this work needs to be bargained. And I don't wanna get into the bargaining too much, but that's been a big impediment. But the Harrell administration has worked in good faith with Councilmember Herbold and I to develop this work along - and admittedly it's complicated work, and it's taken a lot longer than any of us would like it to. But the Harrell administration has gotten us to a point where we're gonna have a pilot in October. And I give immense credit to them for making this a priority in the first year and a half of their administration. And this dual dispatch pilot that's gonna be hitting the road in October is gonna bear a lot of similarity - in practice, I think - to a similar dual dispatch program in the City of Kirkland, which is called RCR, Regional Crisis Response. Actually, if the podcast is looking for a great guest to talk to about that - highly recommend Councilmember Neal Black, who's the one in Kirkland who turned me on to the fact that they have that service. I was not aware of it - did a ride-along with it- [00:37:22] Crystal Fincher: We actually did a show on that. [00:37:24] Andrew Lewis: With Neal? [00:37:25] Crystal Fincher: Not with Neal - with Mayor Herbig and the executive director of the RCR program. [00:37:30] Andrew Lewis: Oh, that's right - no, you did. Sorry, sorry. Yes, of course - oh my God, sorry. Yes, I listened to that. Old friends with Nigel Herbig, so yeah - I was texting him about it when that launched a couple of months ago. Sorry, I totally spaced on that. [00:37:44] Crystal Fincher: How dare you not know every episode of Hacks & Wonks, Councilmember Lewis? [laughing] [00:37:48] Andrew Lewis: I know - scandal, scandalous. But in any event, I do think our dual dispatch will bear a lot of similarity to that program. And it sets a good foundation because the team - you know, it's a dual dispatch team. And just really quickly, 'cause there's a lot of confusion in community about this. A co-responder system is where you have like a mental health clinician and a police officer in the same unit, the same vehicle, and they respond at the same time in the same vehicle. A dual dispatch program is where the units are separate - like you have a mental health clinician, EMT, in one vehicle and you have police in another. And both of them are dispatched at the same time, but they can sort of work together and like screen off in the field as necessary based on the needs of the call. And in practice, my understanding is that leads, in lots of cases, to the officer, you know, clearing the call and moving on to something only they can do - in the overwhelming majority of situations where the mental health clinician is able to take on the call on their own. So dual dispatch has the potential to continue to evolve into something that is a fully independent 911 response like CAHOOTS and STAR - because with the right training and doctrine, that fully independent unit can have incrementally, you know, more responsibility and more autonomy as we implement the program. So, you know, it's been a while, but I appreciate the Harrell administration's prioritization of this. I appreciate that we're building the program out in the new 911 Communication Center Department, and that we have a new civilian director who's very, very committed to this work - and, you know, I look forward to this pilot being the first step. But in these cities - like in Denver and Albuquerque, those pilots grew very, very quickly into big, mature systems. So my hope is that we can have a similar experience here - we're just getting that service. The best advertising for the service, Crystal, is gonna be getting it out there so people can interact with it, people - and people tangibly know. Like one of the pushbacks I get a lot as an advocate for alternative 911 response is that people don't really have a great conception of like what that means, and they're sort of vulnerable to counterarguments about like - you know, people are gonna kill the alternative responders, or like things that just aren't problems in these other jurisdictions. And I think by getting it out there, it'll make it easier for advocates - like myself, like Councilmember Herbold - to be able to say, Look, this is what we're talking about, we need more of this. And I think that once it's out there, I think that it's gonna catch a lot more attention and public support. [00:40:38] Crystal Fincher: Well, I certainly hope so - and there have been, I believe, some fits and starts in Seattle previously, whether it's the JustCARE model or others - but sincerely hope that we can get meaningful alternative response, comprehensive response up and running here in the City of Seattle. And thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today about your candidacy and your time during your first term - much appreciated. [00:41:04] Andrew Lewis: Thank you so much. [00:41:05] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe 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, 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.

Ep 107 with Ellen Durkan of Iron Maiden Forge in Wilmington, Delaware Ladies and gentleman please stand up for the amazing Ellen Durkan!! This ladie pushes blacksmithing inna direction like no one else. I personally put her work next to the likes of someone like Peter Braspenix. Ellen has brought metal art into the fashion world in a most amazing way. Her run way projects are absolutely mind blowing. Again I would compare her work to the greatness of Cirque Du Soleil. While not nearly the grandiose of the Cirque, she definitely brings an essence of that style of entertainment to the table. Combine her amazing talent with metal art, fashion runways and preforming artists and you get yourself something unlike anything else in this world. This one was a solo hosting job. Hope you all can handle it. I personally like it best when there is one of the Nicks bouncing around with me. Much love and respect for taking part in the show people. Its really amazing to hear how many people have enjoyed the show. Thank you all very much!! Don't hesitate to reach out and let us know what you think of the show! ABANA 50TH ANNIVERSARY!! Mark the calendar!!! June 6-9th 2024!! The Artist Blacksmith Association of North America is celebrating their 50th!!! You can head over to www.abana.org/50thanniversary to get all the details on this amazing event. Also, if you wanna be super duper fantastically awesome... Check out our sponsors @detwillerlinseed https://detwillerlinseed.com/ These guys are hooking you up with 10% off orders over $50!! Use the code forgechat10 and save!! Try the flax wax. You will love it! KNIFE MAKING SUPPLIES!! @maritimeknifesupply www.maritimeknifesupply.com Maritime Knife supply is the place to go for all your knife making needs. Literally everything for knife making supplies! www.maritimeknifesupply.ca Save on kilns !!!! with the code FSCKILN Save 10% when you order 10 packs of belts from Norton , VSM , Klingspor , Combat Abrasives , and 3M! Maritime Knife Supply also carries a full line-up of 2x72 @brodbeck_ironworks grinders and accessories #handmade #metalfabrication #forged #artistblacksmith #metalart #blacksmith #blacksmithing #wfiprojects #bladesmith #welding #canadian Songs of the week Ellen - Sia Lando - White Zombie - I am Legend --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/forgesidechat/message

On this Tuesday topical show, Crystal chats with Maritza Rivera about her campaign for Seattle City Council District 4. Listen and learn more about Maritza and her thoughts on: [01:06] - Why she is running [04:46] - Lightning round! [19:29] - What is an accomplishment of hers that impacts District 4 [22:51] - Response to ARTS staff letter complaints [24:58] - City budget shortfall: Raise revenue or cut services? [29:02] - Public Safety: Alternative response [31:24] - Victim support [33:33] - Housing and homelessness: Frontline worker wages [34:49] - Climate change [36:56] - Transit reliability [39:15] - Bike and pedestrian safety [39:52] - Small business support [41:43] - Childcare: Affordability and accessibility [43:40] - Difference between her and opponent As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Maritza Rivera at https://maritzaforseattle.com/.   Maritza Rivera Maritza is running to make restoring our public safety system a priority because she knows from personal experience that failing to take public safety seriously harms low-income and underserved communities the most. She won't rest until we get to 5-minute response times for priority 911 calls, take home and car break-ins seriously, get guns off our streets and out of our schools and shut down open-air drug markets. Maritza loves Seattle, the small businesses, food, arts, music, and diverse populations that make up our city's rich fabric. Maritza is committed to listening to everyone and working with everyone – to find real solutions to real challenges we cannot ignore any longer.   Resources Campaign Website - Maritza Rivera   Transcript [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 Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show 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. Well, today I'm very pleased to be welcoming a candidate for Seattle City Council District 4 to the program - welcome, Maritza Rivera. [00:01:01] Maritza Rivera: Thank you, Crystal. Thanks for having me on the program today. [00:01:05] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, I wanted to start off by hearing why you are running. [00:01:12] Maritza Rivera: Thank you for the question, Crystal. I'm running because I'm a mom of two teenage daughters who go to Ingraham High School, where - sadly, and I'm sure you know, and everyone else by now knows - there was a shooting in the fall last November. And a student got killed by another student. And our kids were all in lockdown for hours. And as I was sitting - not sitting, standing - at the parking lot waiting for the kids to come out and my girls to come out, it was, you know, a frightening experience. And I thought, you know, the public safety issues in Seattle right now are such that I can't sit around and watch what's happening. And when our current councilmember, Alex Pedersen, decided not to run again, I thought - I have 30 years of public service, I have something I can offer the city council, and I can't sit around and watch - I have to try to do something. You know, I grew up in New York City in the Bronx, in a mainly Black and brown neighborhood - and it was low-income and it wasn't safe. You know, we were safe in our homes, but it wasn't safe walking to and from school. And I moved to Seattle 22 years ago because it was so safe and vibrant and beautiful - and I thought what a great place it would be to start and raise a family, and we did that. And then fast forward - you know, things have really changed in Seattle - and, you know, I got into the race to address what I think is most urgent right now, which is the public safety issues across the city that the D4 is also experiencing, like the, you know, the shooting at my daughter's school, like the - daughters' school - the, there are home break-ins and car break-ins, the businesses on the commercial corridors of the D4 are suffering. Those small businesses - they're getting their windows broken into, there're folks using drugs blocking their entryways. So, you know, these are all the issues - there've been shootings in this neighborhood apart from the school shooting. And so we really need to address that. And, you know, we need to do various things on the, you know, unhoused folks - we need to get folks off the street. I think it's inhumane to leave people living on the street where there's no sanitation and amenities, where women and youth are particularly vulnerable. Lots of folks in those encampments are vulnerable to, you know, the drug dealers who are preying on these folks. We really got to get them indoors. We need to provide services - both mental health and drug addiction services - but we need to have folks off the streets. You know, we need to do better that way. And so for all these reasons, I thought - you know, I'm going to get into this race and I'm gonna do what I can to help get our city back on track. I think the mayor's doing a great job, but he needs a city council that's gonna work with him to actually accomplish positive change. [00:04:45] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Well, we are going to add a different element into this than we have in some of our prior years' candidate interviews and do a little lightning round here in the interview. Pretty quick and painless - but just some quick yes or no, or quick answer questions. So starting off - This year, did you vote yes on the King County Crisis Care Centers levy? [00:05:08] Maritza Rivera: Yes. [00:05:09] Crystal Fincher: This year, did you vote yes on the Veterans, Seniors, and Human Services levy? [00:05:13] Maritza Rivera: Yes. [00:05:14] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote in favor of Seattle's Social Housing Initiative 135? [00:05:21] Maritza Rivera: That's the PDA [Public Development Authority]? [00:05:24] Crystal Fincher: Yes. [00:05:25] Maritza Rivera: No. [00:05:26] Crystal Fincher: In 2021, did you vote for Bruce Harrell or Lorena González for Mayor? [00:05:30] Maritza Rivera: Bruce Harrell. [00:05:32] Crystal Fincher: In 2021, did you vote for Nicole Thomas Kennedy or Ann Davison for Seattle City Attorney? [00:05:38] Maritza Rivera: Ann Davison. [00:05:39] Crystal Fincher: In 2022, did you vote for Leesa Manion or Jim Ferrell for King County Prosecutor? [00:05:46] Maritza Rivera: Oh my God. I'm so sorry, I'm having a - Leesa Manion, Jim - I can't remember, Crystal. [00:06:04] Crystal Fincher: Okay. In 2022, did you vote for Patty Murray or Tiffany Smiley for US Senate? [00:06:10] Maritza Rivera: Patty Murray. [00:06:12] Crystal Fincher: Do you rent or own your residence? [00:06:15] Maritza Rivera: Own. [00:06:16] Crystal Fincher: Should parking enforcement be housed within SPD? [00:06:24] Maritza Rivera: I don't have an opinion on that one. [00:06:27] Crystal Fincher: Are you a landlord? [00:06:30] Maritza Rivera: We are. [00:06:31] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to require landlords to report metrics, including how much rent they're charging, to better help plan housing and development needs in the district? [00:06:47] Maritza Rivera: You know, I'm gonna say maybe on that one. [00:06:51] Crystal Fincher: Are there instances where you support sweeps of homeless encampments? [00:06:57] Maritza Rivera: I, you know, we need to get people off the streets. So I do support getting folks off the streets and into sheltering. [00:07:09] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to provide additional funding for Seattle's Social Housing Public Development Authority? [00:07:17] Maritza Rivera: And that one also, I would say maybe, because it depends on - the reason I didn't vote for it was because I feel like we have all these programs for housing and I need to see, you know, where are we with what the investments we're already making before we add another thing. So I just have concerns about adding something else before we know what we're doing with the current investments that we have. But I think that, you know, it passed. So it doesn't matter, you know, it's the law of the land and I respect that. And I think that we should have - you know, let them do a, let us do a project - let us invest in a project and see how it goes. And if it's successful, then great - we should keep funding it. [00:08:07] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with King County Executive Constantine's statement that the King County Jail should be closed? [00:08:20] Maritza Rivera: You know, to be honest, Crystal - I don't know enough about why he's, you know, he's making the recommendation to close it to be able to answer yes or no on that one. [00:08:31] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Would you vote to allow police in schools? [00:08:37] Maritza Rivera: Depends what kind of police. Like I think if it's community police officers and if it's in a - you know, what the details around it is - I think I might support something like that, but it just depends what it is. [00:08:53] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to allow any armed presence in schools? [00:08:59] Maritza Rivera: Armed presence. I don't think we need armed presence in schools, but I do need - I think we need to make the relationship between, you know, our youth and schools and the police more - you know, a better relationship. [00:09:16] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget for a civilian-led mental health crisis response? [00:09:25] Maritza Rivera: I would have to see what that looks like. Civilian-led without any experience working with mental health folks - I'm sorry, with folks that are experiencing mental health crisis - like, I mean, you need mental health professionals to work with folks. So if it's in conjunction working with the mental health professionals, perhaps. But folks experiencing mental crisis really need a mental health professional. [00:09:54] Crystal Fincher: Okay, and for these, we're going for quick yes, no, or maybe answers. We have a whole section to talk about all the details. So I promise you - you'll get the ability to explain yourself on topics in a fuller way after we get done with this. Do you support allocation in the City budget to increase the pay of human service workers? [00:10:14] Maritza Rivera: Sorry, can you repeat the question? [00:10:17] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget to increase the pay of human service workers? [00:10:25] Maritza Rivera: Maybe. [00:10:27] Crystal Fincher: Do you support removing funds in the City budget for forced encampment removals and instead allocating funds towards a Housing First approach? [00:10:42] Maritza Rivera: Most, I mean, maybe, Crystal. Again, we need to look at what the proposal - these are hard to answer yes or no because without the details, it's hard to say on some of these. [00:10:54] Crystal Fincher: Do you support abrogating or removing the funds from unfilled SPD positions and putting them toward meaningful public safety measures? [00:11:06] Maritza Rivera: We need to hire more police officers. So, I mean, taking money away from being able to do that, and you can't do the money- [00:11:16] Crystal Fincher: Right, this isn't for hiring police officers. This is money that was allocated for unfilled positions that were then not hired yet. So in this year's budget - where there is money there for them to be hired, but they weren't hired yet. [00:11:29] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, but it's not ongoing funding. So, you know, that's a maybe - because if it's, you're funding something temporarily, but then once you hire the officers, you're not gonna have the money to redirect the resources. So if you're saying the funds for this year's budget that haven't been used, and it's a one-time thing- [00:11:51] Crystal Fincher: Well, there would still be money for hiring in successive budgets. It's just if they didn't use it in the current year. [00:11:55] Maritza Rivera: Correct - current, but I mean - yeah. [00:11:57] Crystal Fincher: So you think it should be saved and added to the next budget? Is that- [00:12:01] Maritza Rivera: No, no - what I'm saying is if you're gonna use it for a one-time investment in something, then that's fine. But if it's not for ongoing - if you need to hire the officers, right? 'Cause the problem, Crystal, is sometimes - you know, if you're investing in something, that thing you're investing in, if it's a community thing, that needs ongoing investment as well. So I just wanna differentiate - if we're not using it this year, then we should redirect it to something else, like the budget in general of the City. But then it has to be something that's a one-time because then for the following year, you're gonna need it to fund the thing you originally- [00:12:44] Crystal Fincher: Yes. [00:12:44] Maritza Rivera: -fund, right? [00:12:45] Crystal Fincher: And that is a useful differentiation. [00:12:48] Maritza Rivera: Yeah. [00:12:48] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocating money in the City budget for supervised consumption sites? [00:12:56] Maritza Rivera: I would support - you know, I've had- [00:12:58] Crystal Fincher: Going for a yes, no, or maybe, yes, no, or maybe. [00:13:01] Maritza Rivera: Well, maybe on that, but- [00:13:04] Crystal Fincher: Okay. [00:13:05] Maritza Rivera: More leaning toward no, because I think the Fire Department actually has a better solution that I would support instead of consumption sites. [00:13:14] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. Do you support increasing funding in the City- [00:13:16] Maritza Rivera: I'm sorry, the Fire Department, did I say Fire? [00:13:18] Crystal Fincher: I think you said that. [00:13:21] Maritza Rivera: Okay, great. [00:13:22] Crystal Fincher: Do you support increasing funding in the City budget for violence intervention programs? [00:13:28] Maritza Rivera: Yes. [00:13:29] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't give the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General subpoena power? [00:13:40] Maritza Rivera: I need more information about that, Crystal. [00:13:43] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't remove limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian? [00:13:53] Maritza Rivera: I need more information about the SPOG contract. So anything related to that. [00:14:00] Crystal Fincher: Okay. So again, opposing a SPOG contract that impedes the ability of the City to move police funding to public safety alternatives? Again, not enough information? [00:14:12] Maritza Rivera: Can you tell me the question again? Sorry. [00:14:18] Crystal Fincher: Sure. Do you oppose a SPOG contract that impedes the ability of the City to move police funding to public safety alternatives? [00:14:32] Maritza Rivera: So take money away from the police department to put into police alternatives. [00:14:38] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that prohibits, or impedes, or makes harder the ability of the city to move police funding to public safety alternatives? [00:14:53] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, I do need more information. [00:14:55] Crystal Fincher: Okay. Do you support eliminating in-uniform off-duty work by SPD officers? [00:15:04] Maritza Rivera: Ask me again - sorry - do I? [00:15:07] Crystal Fincher: Do you support eliminating in-uniform off-duty work by SPD officers? So if they're working - doing parking duty, or traffic direction duty - off-duty. Or if they're working in a security capacity off-duty. Do you support eliminating their ability to do that in SPD uniform? [00:15:37] Maritza Rivera: I need more information about that too, Crystal. These are very detailed. [00:15:45] Crystal Fincher: They're specific questions. [00:15:47] Maritza Rivera: Very specific - correct. [00:15:49] Crystal Fincher: Yes. Will you vote to ensure that trans and non-binary students are allowed to play on the sports teams that fit with their gender identities? [00:15:58] Maritza Rivera: Yes, I support that. [00:16:00] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to ensure that trans people can use bathrooms and public facilities that match their gender? [00:16:05] Maritza Rivera: Yes. [00:16:06] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with the Seattle City Council's decision to implement the JumpStart Tax? [00:16:14] Maritza Rivera: Yes. [00:16:16] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to reduce or divert the JumpStart Tax in any way? [00:16:24] Maritza Rivera: Need more information about that - it depends. [00:16:27] Crystal Fincher: Are you happy with Seattle's newly built waterfront? [00:16:34] Maritza Rivera: I mean, as a user of the waterfront, I think it's a great project. Obviously, I don't have the details of the investments that are being made and how things are getting completed, but I think it's a great project for the city. [00:16:53] Crystal Fincher: Do you believe return to work mandates like the one issued by Amazon are necessary to boost Seattle's economy? [00:17:02] Maritza Rivera: Yes, absolutely. [00:17:05] Crystal Fincher: Have you taken- [00:17:06] Maritza Rivera: We need to get folks back into the office if we're gonna get downtown back on track. [00:17:11] Crystal Fincher: Have you taken transit in the past week? [00:17:14] Maritza Rivera: Yes. Light rail. [00:17:15] Crystal Fincher: Have you ridden a bike in the past week? [00:17:19] Maritza Rivera: No. [00:17:20] Crystal Fincher: Should Pike Place Market allow non-commercial car traffic? [00:17:25] Maritza Rivera: Actually, I would like to see it closed off to non-commercial, which is a proposal - I know - that's being floated around. [00:17:34] Crystal Fincher: Should significant investments be made to speed up the opening of scheduled Sound Transit light rail lines? [00:17:42] Maritza Rivera: Sorry, ask again. [00:17:43] Crystal Fincher: Should significant investments be made to speed up the opening of scheduled Sound Transit light rail lines? [00:17:50] Maritza Rivera: Yes, we should do all we can to finish the extensions. [00:17:56] Crystal Fincher: Should we accelerate the elimination of the ability to turn right on red lights to improve pedestrian safety? [00:18:04] Maritza Rivera: Yes. [00:18:05] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever been a member of a union? [00:18:08] Maritza Rivera: I haven't personally, but my dad was when I was growing up. [00:18:15] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to increase funding and staffing for investigations into labor violations like wage theft and illegal union busting? [00:18:24] Maritza Rivera: I definitely support that. [00:18:27] Crystal Fincher: So you would vote to increase funding? [00:18:30] Maritza Rivera: I mean, I support doing it. I can't say - I mean, I don't know what the current, where we currently are with that work at OLS [Office of Labor Standards], but I definitely support it. And if we need more funding, then we need to look - figure out how to get it. [00:18:47] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever walked on a picket line? [00:18:49] Maritza Rivera: Yes. No - like walked with the picketers. [00:18:53] Crystal Fincher: Supporting. Supporting the picketers, yes. [00:18:56] Maritza Rivera: Supporting - yes. [00:18:57] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever crossed a picket line? [00:19:04] Maritza Rivera: No. [00:19:05] Crystal Fincher: Is your campaign staff unionized? [00:19:12] Maritza Rivera: Campaign - no. [00:19:13] Crystal Fincher: If your campaign staff wants to unionize, will you voluntarily recognize their effort? [00:19:19] Maritza Rivera: Yes. [00:19:21] Crystal Fincher: Well, that's the end of our lightning round. Pretty painless, there we go. So back to other questions. Lots of people look to work you've done to get a feel for what you prioritize and how qualified you are to lead. Can you describe something you've accomplished or changed in your district, and what impact that has had on residents there? [00:19:44] Maritza Rivera: I've worked - so I've worked at the City for a number of years now - I just resigned from my position as Deputy Director in the Office of Arts and Culture, where I primarily was in charge of getting our budget through the budget process. And prior to that, I was in Mayor Durkan's administration - worked in the Mayor's office and worked with a portfolio of City departments - a lot of it related to their budgets and reviewing of their budgets. So I think in general - not just in the D4, but across the city - I've been involved in reviewing department budgets and working to make sure and bring accountability to those budgets. And making sure that I was implementing the mayor's - and the city council, when they passed the budget - implementing the programs and the services that were passed in the budget. So like I'll say most recently, 'cause I was just at ARTS, there was recovery funding for arts organizations and artists across the city. And I worked - our staff did a great job - and I worked with our staff to get those dollars out the door as quickly as possible, particularly post-pandemic. And the department gives grants out to organizations, arts organizations, across the city. So we work to make sure and we were getting those grants out as quickly as possible. So I think these are things that are not just specific to the D4, but do include the D4. True, in the Durkan administration - unfortunately, we were in a pandemic. And one thing that I feel really proud of is - I worked on reopening of the farmers markets after everything was shut down. It was really the first thing that was opened, and I worked with the farmers markets across the city - including the one at the University District - to make sure that they opened it safely during that post-pandemic, not post-, but during the pandemic, actually - I shouldn't say post-pandemic - during that pandemic time. And I'm really proud of the work that I did there because the farmers market was open and available to the residents here in the D4. And I'm proud to say there were no outbreaks at the farmers markets because we were following the public health guidelines, and working with the farmers markets' leaders who did a great job in putting the guidelines - following the guidelines and making sure that they were doing all they could to make sure that there were no outbreaks so we could continue to keep the markets open. [00:22:51] Crystal Fincher: I wanted to ask more about your time at ARTS because there was reporting related to your time there saying that 26 out of 40 ARTS staff at the time signed a letter really detailing complaints against you, highlighted by three - that leadership disregarded City policies, that there was a toxic work environment, and that the staff's ability to do its work for the community was hindered. With over half of the employees there signing their name to this letter publicly and this being handed over to the Ombuds office with their concerns, how do you respond to this? Do you think that accurately reflects your time there? Were there any thing that these employees said that to you was something that you could improve or reflect on? [00:23:39] Maritza Rivera: I'll say, Crystal, that the mayor brought in Director, or former Director - or former Interim Director - royal alley-barnes to direct the office. She, in turn, brought me on - I was backfilling for someone at the time. And, you know, I know that staff - you know, every time there's change of leadership, staff has - some staff have a hard time. And so - you know, we, I feel really proud of the work that I did while I was at ARTS. And I have a lot of respect for the folks that work there. I know change is hard, but we worked together and we were able to get a lot accomplished, and I feel really proud of my personal work while I was at ARTS. [00:24:36] Crystal Fincher: As you consider those allegations in your time there, is there anything to you that you could have done differently to change that outcome? [00:24:47] Maritza Rivera: Again, I just feel really proud of the work that we were accomplished - I mean, that we accomplished together. That's - you know, I feel proud of the work there. [00:24:58] Crystal Fincher: Well, I wanna ask you about the budget, because the City of Seattle is projected to have a $224 million budget shortfall in 2025. The City's mandated to pass a balanced budget, so the options to address this are either raise revenue, cut services, or some combination of those two. Which one of those will be your approach to the budget? [00:25:22] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, thank you for the question, Crystal - and obviously this comes up a lot. First and foremost, I think we need to look at the budget and make sure that we are accountable to the dollars that we're currently investing. So I say that, to say - we need to look at the programs that are being funded and make sure that they're having the outcomes that we intended - because part of budgeting is making sure that the money that you're using is being well spent. And you don't know that if you don't know what outcomes you're getting - How many folks are you helping? Is it really helping? Does the community feel like it's helping? And so we need to do the reviewing of those programs in each of those departments to make sure that the programs that we're funding are actually, like I said, having the intended outcomes. If they are, then we should continue them. If they're not, then we should redirect the resources to something different that will have the outcomes that we're intending. So we need to engage in that exercise before then we look at - excuse me - raising revenue. And so that, to me, is really important - the accountability piece. I feel really strongly - I mean, my dad was a blue collar worker and he paid taxes, and I just, I'm very sensitive - people work really hard for their money and we wanna make sure that we're spending their money, we're accountable to those dollars. And then once we do that exercise, then we can look toward - if we need to raise revenue, then we can look at how we would do that. But I do feel like the accountability piece is really important and it's been missing. [00:27:18] Crystal Fincher: Well, I do wanna get into more specifics here because that is not a small budget cut - pretty significant - so unless that review winds up with some pretty steep cuts or that's the outcome - that will end up, there will also need to be revenue. There were some options presented by a revenue workgroup. Do you support revenue options, and which ones do you see yourself supporting or advocating? [00:27:44] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, Crystal - I can't say now which ones I would support. You know, I'd have to, I'd look at it and see and talk to, you know, folks. And see and then talk to my colleagues and see what makes sense for the city - and talk to the mayor, obviously, as well. So we need to do this working together. We need to find these solutions working together as a city council and working with the mayor. So I can't say today which ones I would support, but I will say that we need to work together to look at which ones make the most sense for the city. [00:28:25] Crystal Fincher: Are there any of the recommendations that you would not support, or what would be the priority revenue options or what you'd be most likely to support? [00:28:36] Maritza Rivera: I don't have - I can't say today what that would be. [00:28:41] Crystal Fincher: Okay, so nothing from the workgroup that you've heard makes it to the top of the list? [00:28:48] Maritza Rivera: There's nothing today that - I wouldn't prioritize it right now. I'd wanna have conversations about it. [00:28:54] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. I do wanna talk about- [00:28:56] Maritza Rivera: I haven't met with the workgroup and I haven't had the opportunity to have those conversations. [00:29:01] Crystal Fincher: I see. When it comes to public safety, several jurisdictions around the country and in our region have rolled out alternative response programs to better support those having a behavioral health crisis or other issues, but Seattle has stalled in implementing what's a widely-supported idea. Money's been allocated, but it has not been implemented yet. Where do you stand on non-police solutions to public safety issues? And what are your thoughts on civilian-led versus co-response models? [00:29:32] Maritza Rivera: Well, I think that we need to support alternative responses because we know that, in certain cases, a police officer is not trained to handle a situation - but a mental health or social provider or social worker's in a better position to, is trained to respond to those situations and be able to deescalate. In terms of - you know, I think the non-police solutions where there's a co-response - sometimes that's appropriate and that's what we, you know, should support. You know, I think the Health One model is a great model - it's proven to be successful and it's one that we should look to invest more in. Those are the kinds of models that I think have proven results to work and something that we should look at expanding. And then, also - I mean, in terms of in the community - when the police budget got cut, things like the police, the community policing efforts, also - those are the things that kind of go first. And I think those are a really great way of working with community in the neighborhoods to really do, to handle, to address the public safety issues. And so I think that we need to go back to basics that way and make sure that all our neighborhoods have that community policing - community police and those neighborhoods working on the ground with the community folks to address the public safety issues in the neighborhoods. [00:31:24] Crystal Fincher: Now, I do wanna talk about victims and survivors. We talk a lot about victims - people who have been impacted by crime or who have been harmed - but most of what we hear are people speaking for victims or over victims. And we don't often listen to what they're saying, and what they say mostly is that - one, they wanna make sure that what happened to them doesn't happen to them or anyone else ever again. And they want better support, more effective support, in helping to get beyond what happened to them - to help mitigate the harm that occurred, whether it's from an assault or a theft or you name it, some help getting beyond that. What can you do, in your capacity as a city councilperson to better support and help victims or people who have been harmed? [00:32:19] Maritza Rivera: I mean, I think - I mean, we need to listen to folks and we need to listen to - you know, we need to listen to their experiences and we need to listen to, you know, their needs. I think that about victims and also survivors - and just in general, as a city councilmember, your job is to listen to your residents in your - to the residents in your district, in this case district. It used to be they weren't district positions, right? They were citywide. But now you need to listen to folks in your district and make sure that you are, you know, not operating in a vacuum when you are doing the work because really, ultimately, the work is to support the residents of the city. And so that includes victims as well - listening and listening to what their needs are, because you need to be well-informed when you are making these decisions that have an impact across the city. [00:33:33] Crystal Fincher: One thing called out by experts as a barrier to the homelessness response is that frontline worker wages don't cover the cost of living - causing staffing issues, impacting the level of service. Do you believe our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages for our area? And how can you make that more likely with how the City bids for and contracts for services? [00:33:59] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, absolutely - I think the nonprofits need to make sure that they're paying living wages to the folks that they hire, in the same way that the City does. And, you know, I mean, I think with the bids - that's an area where you can, as you're working with these providers and nonprofits, making sure that you're setting up funding models that require nonprofits and providers to support workers and make sure that they're paying living wages to their workers. [00:34:49] Crystal Fincher: Now, on almost every measure, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals, while we're experiencing devastating impacts from extreme heat and cold, wildfires, floods locally and around the globe. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet 2030 goals? [00:35:09] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, I think my biggest priority in terms of the climate is really on the transportation front. I think - you know, I came from a city where we had a robust transportation system and it meant that I didn't have a driver's license 'til I was 30 years old because I - and I took public transit everywhere. So, you know, Seattle - we need to be investing in a transportation system that's on par and competitive with other cities across the country. And, you know, we've lagged behind - it's taken us a long time to get even where we are, but we need to go further. And it really - I think, is one of the best ways that you can address climate change - is to get people out of their cars and using public transportation. And so I support, you know, the light rail, buses. We really need to get folks, you know, utilizing these services, but we can only do so if we have a robust service. And so we really need to focus on investments in the transportation. So, you know, like Move, the Move Seattle Levy's coming up next year - or not coming up, but, you know, renewal, hopefully. The council, whoever's sitting council, will vote to renew it and put it on the ballot again for folks in the city. But I really do think that we need to continue and we need to expand on the transportation investments, so we can have a robust system that folks will utilize and we can get folks out of their cars. [00:36:56] Crystal Fincher: One major issue that people are saying is preventing them from getting out of their cars right now is transit reliability. Because of staffing shortages, other issues - the reliability of buses has been tanking with buses not showing up when they're scheduled, routes being suspended, some being canceled - and really putting people who are currently riding in a bind, forcing some of them out of transit and into cars. Now, Sound Transit is a regional entity and King County Metro is a county entity, but as you talked about with the Move Seattle Levy and other things, the City does impact transit service in the city. So what can you, as a city councilmember, do to stabilize transit reliability? [00:37:43] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, well, we need to work in partnership with Sound Transit and the county to make sure that we are providing a service to residents that is robust and reliable. But we can only do so if we have strong partnerships, because to your point - we make investments, but Sound Transit is the entity that's responsible for implementing, right? So we need to have really strong partnerships with these entities. And I will say reliability is a huge issue, but I'm gonna say my experience is public safety is a huge issue as well. Right now, public safety, in my opinion, has impacted people's not wanting to take the light rail and buses. And then we've also seen bus drivers that have been impacted because of folks doing drugs on the buses and the light - well, bus drivers on the buses and the operators on the light rail. So we need to do, we need - I think public safety is an equally important piece to address when we're looking at trying to increase ridership of the light rail and buses across the city. [00:39:10] Crystal Fincher: How would you- [00:39:11] Maritza Rivera: And we need to work with our partners on that as well. [00:39:14] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. How would you improve pedestrian and bicycle safety? [00:39:20] Maritza Rivera: We need to make sure we have the robust bike lanes and we need to do things like the signal - I don't know what you call it - but the signal, when it changes, it lets the pedestrian, it gives some time for the pedestrian to cross before it changes for the driver. And so we need to do more of that across the city. We have that in certain places, but it's not robust. And so we need to do that - those kinds of things - to promote pedestrian and bike safety. [00:39:52] Crystal Fincher: Now, we have a vibrant economy and a vibrant business community in the city and in the district. We have some of the largest companies headquartered here and nearby, but also really diverse and varied small businesses. What are the highest priorities for small businesses in your district, and what can you do to better support those businesses? [00:40:17] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, the small business owners that I've talked to in the district are really concerned about public safety because they've had to deal with, like I said earlier, windows broken into. There's a business in the D5 that I know has gotten broken into five times and have been robbed. And so - those five times - so we need to support the public safety issues. We would need to provide support for the public safety issues that these small businesses are facing. You know, as you said, we have a vibrant economy. And I think that the lifeblood of any city is it's small businesses - it really - the small businesses keep a city vibrant. Obviously big business provides jobs, so that's important too. But right now I think what the small businesses are mostly facing are those public safety issues. And so we need to really work with them to make sure that we are addressing those issues so that folks are coming out and going to those businesses, and the business owners aren't losing money just trying to deal with the public safety issues that they're experiencing. [00:41:43] Crystal Fincher: Now I do wanna talk about another issue crucial to our local economy and that's childcare. Many families are dealing with a high cost of childcare - it's the number two cost behind housing for most families. And we recently got reporting that shows that childcare is more expensive than college now. Families are breaking their budgets trying to afford this, and we can't talk about inflation or affordability without contending with childcare. What can you do to ease the burden on families for childcare costs? [00:42:18] Maritza Rivera: Yeah, so it - I mean, I experienced firsthand just the childcare issues, a lack thereof. And I'm particularly concerned - I mean, I'm lucky that I actually took some time off to be able to care for my children because it wasn't penciling out - what I was making was going toward childcare. And it was difficult to even find the childcare to begin with, so we need to be supporting the opening of more childcare centers. We need to make sure that childcare providers are working - workers I mean, are making living wages because it's a hard job and, you know, folks are not gonna wanna do it if it's not, you know, a living wage. And so we need to support those things. And I know that the City has some childcare subsidies and my understanding is not everyone is aware - so making sure that community folks, you know, in low - in our underserved communities are aware of the services is really important too on the childcare front. But we definitely need more childcare options and we need to make sure workers are making a living wage so that they will want those jobs. [00:43:40] Crystal Fincher: Now, as we move to close this interview, there are still a lot of people trying to make up their minds between you and your opponent. When a voter is asking - Why should I support you? Or what is the difference between you and the person you're running against? - what do you say? [00:43:58] Maritza Rivera: What I say, Crystal, is that there is a stark difference between us in that - my opponent does not support the mayor's proposal to hire more police officers to address public safety. My opponent doesn't support the drug possession law, which is supported by the mayor and which I do support - and which our current councilmember in the D4 brought forward, actually, with Councilmember Nelson as well. That is huge. If folks - public safety, I have a sense of urgency of public safety. I've said, and I've been consistent, this is why I got into the race to begin with - was the public safety issues because of what happened at my daughters' school. And my opponent is not supporting the laws that would address public safety right now in the city - and that's what we're suffering the most from in the city currently - are the public safety issues. So that is a huge difference. I also think that my opponent's rhetoric is divisive. He's named-called councilmembers. And I talked to a voter the other day who said - my opponent went to her door and was, you know, name-calling and being derogatory on some councilmembers and they didn't like that my opponent was doing that. So I don't think that - you know, you can agree to disagree on the city council and still work together. I worked for Tom Rasmussen when Tom was first elected. And, you know, one thing I saw with that group of city councilmembers - they didn't all agree, you're not always gonna agree, but they did work together to find compromise and move forward. And there was civil discourse. And that's what's missing from the city council right now. And, you know, my opponent's divisive rhetoric is more of the same of the city councilmembers who are engaged in that type of behavior. And so those are two stark differences between us. [00:46:31] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much for joining us today, candidate for Seattle City Council District 4, Maritza Rivera. Thank you so much. [00:46:39] Maritza Rivera: Thank you, Crystal. Have a great day. [00:46:42] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe 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, 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.

On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Seattle political reporter and editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett! The show starts with the infuriating story of Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) leaders joking about a fellow Seattle Police Department (SPD) officer running over and killing Jaahnavi Kandula - how the shocking comments caught on body cam confirm suspicions of a culture in SPD that disregards life, that the SPOG police union is synonymous with the department, and whether a seemingly absent Mayor Bruce Harrell will do anything about a troubled department under his executive purview. Erica and Crystal then discuss Bob Ferguson officially entering the governor's race with Jay Inslee's endorsement, Rebecca Saldaña jumping into a crowded Public Lands Commissioner race, no charges against Jenny Durkan or Carmen Best for their deleted texts during the 2020 George Floyd protests, the latest on Seattle's drug criminalization bill, and flawed interviews for KCRHA's Five-Year Plan for homelessness. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Erica Barnett, at @ericacbarnett.   Resources “Rob Saka, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 1” from Hacks & Wonks   “Maren Costa, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 1” from Hacks & Wonks   “"Write a Check for $11,000. She Was 26, She Had Limited Value." SPD Officer Jokes with Police Union Leader About Killing of Pedestrian by Fellow Cop” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola   “‘Feel safer yet?' Seattle police union's contempt keeps showing through” by Danny Westneat from The Seattle Times   “Handling of Jaahnavi Kandula's death brings criticism from Seattle leaders” by Sarah Grace Taylor from The Seattle Times   “Political consultant weighs in on growing Washington governor's race” by Brittany Toolis from KIRO 7 News Seattle   “Jay Inslee endorses Bob Ferguson to succeed him as WA governor” by David Gutman and Lauren Girgis from The Seattle Times   “Rebecca Saldaña Jumps into Weirdly Crowded Race for Lands Commissioner” by Rich Smith from The Stranger   “No Charges Against Durkan and Best for Deleted Texts; Investigation Reveals Holes in City Records Retention Policies” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola   “After Watering Down Language About Diversion, Committee Moves Drug Criminalization Bill Forward” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola   “Harrell's “$27 Million Drug Diversion and Treatment” Plan Would Allow Prosecutions But Add No New Funding” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola   “The Five-Year Plan for Homelessness Was Based Largely on 180 Interviews. Experts Say They Were Deeply Flawed.” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola   Find stories that Crystal is reading here   Transcript [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 our 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 this week's topical shows, we kicked off our series of Seattle City Council candidate interviews. All 14 candidates for 7 positions were invited. And over the last week, we had in-depth conversations with many of them. This week, we presented District 1 candidates, Rob Saka and Maren Costa. Have a listen to those and stay tuned over the coming weeks - we hope these interviews will help voters better understand who these candidates are and inform their choices for the November 7th general election. 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 and editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett. [00:01:37] Erica Barnett: It's great to be here. [00:01:39] Crystal Fincher: Great to have you back. Well, I wanna start off talking about just an infuriating story this week where Seattle police officers - a union leader - joked about killing of a pedestrian by another Seattle police officer - and just really disgusting. What happened here? [00:01:58] Erica Barnett: The Seattle Police Department and the King County Prosecutor's Office actually released this video from the night that Jaahnavi Kandula was killed by Officer Kevin Dave. It is a short clip that shows one-half of a conversation between Daniel Auderer, who is the Seattle Police Officers Guild vice president, and Mike Solan, the president of the police guild - as you said, joking and laughing about the incident that had just happened. And also minimizing the incident - so from what we can hear of Auderer's part of the conversation, he makes some comments implying that the crash wasn't that bad, that Dave was acting within policy, that he was not speeding too much - all of which was not true. He was going 74 miles an hour. The incident was very gruesome and just a horrible tragedy. Then you can hear him saying in a joking manner, "But she is dead." And then he pauses and he says, "No, it's a regular person." in response to something that Solan has said - and there's been a lot of speculation about what that might be. Then he says, "Yeah, just write a check." - after laughing - "Yeah, $11,000. She was 26 anyway, she had limited value." I'm reading the words verbatim, but I really recommend watching the video, which we posted on PubliCola.com, because you can hear the tone and you can hear the sort of cackling laughter - which I think conveys the intent a lot more clearly than just reading a transcript of it. [00:03:23] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, we will link that PubliCola story with the video in our show notes, but it's just infuriating. And just to recap what happened just in the killing of her initially - that was a tragedy and an infuriating event. An officer was responding to a call that arguably police aren't needed at - in other jurisdictions, they don't seem to be needed on those types of calls - but without lights and sirens blaring, going over 70 mph on just a regular City street. And yeah, that's illegal for regular people for a reason - common sense would dictate that would be against policy - we give them lights and sirens for a reason to alert people that they're coming really fast and to clear the way. And it just seemed like Jaahnavi didn't have a chance here. And then the slow leak of information afterwards - just the event itself seemed to devalue their life and the way it was handled - and then to see this as the reaction. If their job is to keep us safe, they seem gleefully opposed to that. [00:04:28] Erica Barnett: Yeah, I think that in the aftermath of the story going national and international, I think that one of the reactions I've heard is - Well, this is how we've always thought - from people who are skeptical of the police, I should say - this is how we've always assumed they talk, but to actually hear it on tape is shocking. And I think what happened in this video, the reason we have it is because Auderer perhaps forgot his body cam was on. 'Cause after he makes his last comment about $11,000, she had limited value, he turns off the camera and we don't hear any more of that conversation. This is a rare look into one such conversation between officers. And I will say too, that there was a - Jason Rantz, a local radio personality, right-wing commentator, tried to pre-spin this by saying that this was just "gallows humor" between two officers, and this is very common in professions where you see a lot of grisly and terrible stuff. And I will just point out, first of all, gallows humor is like making a joke about, I don't know, like a 9/11 joke, you know, 20 years after the fact. It's not on the night that someone was killed, joking about her being essentially worthless and trying to minimize the incident. That's not gallows humor. That's just the way, apparently, the police union VP and president talk amongst each other. It just shows that the culture of the department - we talk a lot about City Hall, which I cover - they talk a lot about recruiting better officers and getting the right kind of police. But the problem is if the culture itself is rotten, there's no fixing that by just putting 5 new officers, 10 new officers at the bottom of the chain. It comes from the top. And that is then - these two officials are at the top of that chain. [00:06:09] Crystal Fincher: It does come from the top. And this also isn't the only time that it seems they have really distastefully discussed deaths at the hands of their officers or other people's deaths. There was a story that made the news not too long ago about them having a tombstone in one of their precincts for someone who was killed. There have been a couple officers who've had complaints for posting social media posts that seem to make fun of protesters who were run over. We have had a protester run over and killed here in the city. This is something that we've talked about that we - as a community - project that is against our values, but we continue to let this police department just mock people's safety in the city. I mean, you know something wild is happening when even Danny Westneat - who I think most people consider to be an extremely moderate, feels in-line with the Seattle Times editorial board, columnist for The Times - even he thinks SPOG has gone too far, and he's notoriously sympathetic to the police department. [00:07:15] Erica Barnett: Yeah, I think that in that article, he almost got there. The article was basically - we desperately need more police, but this darn police union just keeps messing up and saying these terrible things, so we've got to reform this police union - which I just thought was a bizarre note in an otherwise pretty reasonable article because the police union is the top. It is the people that create the culture for the rest of the department in a lot of ways, perhaps more so than the police chief and the command staff. It's made up of cops. The cops vote in the head of the police union, the vice president - they are the ones that are choosing these folks. So if the police union's culture is broken, I think that means that SPD's culture is broken. [00:07:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, unions are the culture. I feel like that's a trickle-down effect of anti-labor forces trying to paint unions as separate entities as workers. They are the workers. They're elected and selected by workers. So if anything, they seem to be the distillation of the culture. And there is a problem - I don't think that's controversial to say, I don't think that's even in dispute anymore - widely across this. And there've been, again, lots of people pointing out these problems for years and years. And it feels like this is where we arrive at if we ignore this for so long. As I talked about in the opening, we just got done with a large round of Seattle City Council candidate interviews. And it was really interesting to hear, particularly from a few of them - there's three that I'm thinking of, that people will eventually hear - but who will talk about the need for more cops, who will talk about how important it is to rebuild trust with the community. But over and over again, it seems like they put it completely on the community to be responsible for coddling, and repairing the relationship, and building trust. And it seems like that needs to start on the other side. This is not even something that in polite society would happen, right? These are disgusting comments and disgusting beliefs, no matter who has them or where they come from. And we basically have sanctioned and hand over the power to violate people's civic rights to a department where this happens. And it's just a real challenge. And we have several councilmembers right now who have talked about needing to bring accountability and reform the police department in campaign materials when they were running. And it just seems like that dropped off the face of the earth. This should be a priority. But more than everything else, I wanna talk about the responsibility that the mayor has here - it's like he disappears in these conversations and we talk about the council and we talk about the police department. Bruce Harrell is their boss. Bruce Harrell is the executive in charge here. Chief Adrian Diaz serves at the pleasure of, is appointed by the mayor. This is the executive's responsibility. The buck literally stops with him on this. And he seems to just be largely absent. I think I saw comments that he may have issued an apology this morning, but - Where is he on talking about the culture? Where is his outrage? Where is he in dealing with this? And this is happening amid a backdrop of a SPOG contract negotiation. How is he going to address the issues here in this contract? Or are we gonna paper over it? There's a lot talked about - one of his chief lieutenants, Tim Burgess, a former police officer, and how sympathetic he's been to police - and is that going to create a situation where this is yet another event that goes unaddressed in policy, and we don't put anything in place to prevent this from happening again? [00:10:45] Erica Barnett: Harrell's statement was very much like a "bad apple" statement without completing the thought, which is that a bad apple ruins the bunch - that we're disheartened by the comments of this one officer. As you said, not addressing the culture, not addressing the fact that he can actually do something about this stuff. He is the person with the power. And as you mentioned, he was basically absent - made a statement in response to some questions, but it was pretty terse, and it didn't get at the larger cultural issues that I think this does reflect. [00:11:14] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And I know there were comments, I saw comments from a couple of City councilmembers as of last night - calls to hear from more on their opinion on this issue. I have not seen more - we'll see if those trickle in over the coming day or two. But Bruce Harrell has the responsibility and the power to do something about this. Is he going to use it? - that's the question people should be asking, even more than what Chief Adrian Diaz is gonna do. This is unacceptable behavior. This absolutely speaks to the culture, and it's time we have someone who takes that seriously as an executive. Now, I also wanna talk about news that came out this week - that wasn't necessarily surprising, but certainly a benchmark and a milestone in a campaign - and that is current Attorney General Bob Ferguson officially announced his candidacy for governor and came with the endorsement of Jay Inslee. How do you see him as a candidate and his position in this field so far? [00:12:17] Erica Barnett: It's a big deal. I think Ferguson has been waiting patiently - or not - to run for governor for a while. He's had this trajectory - waited for Inslee when he decided to run again last time - this is the reward. I think it puts him very much in the front of the field as Inslee's successor. Obviously we'll see, but I think Inslee is a fairly popular governor. You see this in a lot of races, where you have an anointed person - the King County Council, Teresa Mosqueda is kind of similar - comes in with all the endorsements and I think is well-placed to win. So yeah, I think this puts Ferguson in a really strong position. [00:12:52] Crystal Fincher: He is in a really strong position. As we know - I wish it wasn't the case, but unfortunately it is reality - that money matters a lot in politics right now. It's the only reliable way to communicate with voters en masse. There's earned media, but there's less reporters around the state than there used to be. So paying to put communications in front of voters is something that needs to be done. Paying a staff that can manage a campaign of that scale is something that needs to be done. And Bob Ferguson is head and shoulders above everyone else - he has more than double what all of the other candidates have combined in terms of finances, so that puts him in a great position. Obviously having the endorsement of the most visible Democrat in the state right now is something that every candidate would accept - I'm sure almost every candidate on the Democratic side would accept right now. It's gonna be interesting. But I do think we still have a lot of time left, there's still a lot of conversation left. It is an interesting field from Hilary Franz to Mark Mullet, a moderate or conservative Democrat. And then on the Republican side, Dave Reichert and Semi Bird - one who I think is trading in on his reputation, at least in a lot of media stories as a moderate, but from being pro-life, anti-choice, to a number of other viewpoints - I don't know that realistically he's a moderate, just kind of a standard Republican. And then Semi Bird, who's endorsed by people like Joe Kent and others, who are definitely on the far right-wing side. So this is gonna be an interesting race. There's a lot of time left. And I still think even though Bob Ferguson - I think it's uncontroversial to say he's the front runner - still important to really examine what they believe, to talk to the voters around the state. And it seems like he's taking that seriously and vigorously campaigning. So we'll continue to follow what this race is, but it is going to be an interesting one. [00:14:54] Erica Barnett: I will say really quickly too, that Reichert does not seem to be running a particularly active campaign. He's not, from what I hear, out there doing a lot of on-the-ground campaigning the way that Ferguson has. So while I think you're gonna hear a lot about him on TV news and more right-leaning publications, I think that we're talking about the Democratic side of the field because it's very unlikely that we'll have a Republican governor - even one who has a lot of name recognition like Reichert. [00:15:20] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. So we'll continue to follow that. And just as an aside, I thought I would mention that in the race, another statewide race, for Public Lands Commissioner, State Senator Rebecca Saldaña jumped into the race - joining State Senator Mona Das, Makah Tribal member Patrick Finedays DePoe, King County Councilmember Dave Upthegrove, and current State Senator Kevin Van De Wege. As well as on the Republican side - I'm not sure how to pronounce her name - but Sue Kuehl Pederson. It's a crowded race that's going to be an interesting one. And I'm really curious to continue to see what Senator Rebecca Saldaña has to say, as well as the other ones. But that's a crowded race, and that one could be very interesting. [00:16:03] Erica Barnett: Absolutely. Weirdly crowded race. [00:16:05] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, very interesting. [00:16:06] Erica Barnett: Or surprisingly - I don't know about weirdly - but surprisingly crowded. [00:16:09] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, surprisingly. Rich Smith of The Stranger did an article about that this week, which we will link in the show notes. Now, I also want to talk about news we received this week about another long-standing issue tied to both public safety and a former mayor. And that's news that we received that former Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and former Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best will not be facing charges for deleting texts. What was the finding here and what does this mean? [00:16:39] Erica Barnett: Yeah, as we all know, they deleted tens of thousands of texts, many of them during the crucial period when 2020 protests were going on, when they were amassing troops - so to speak - and reacting with force to people protesting police violence after George Floyd was killed. And the finding essentially was that the King County Prosecutor's Office could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that these deletions had been intentional and that they were trying to effectively conceal public records. It's a pretty high standard of proof that they have to meet at the prosecutor's office. I read the entire report from the investigator - what was released to reporters earlier this week - I have to say they put a lot of faith, I think, in or at least trust in public officials' statements that they sort of didn't know anything about the City's retention policy for cell phones, for text messages. The excuse was often - Well, I thought they were being preserved in a server somewhere, so it was fine to delete them. And I asked - because I think we all know when we delete our text messages, they're gone. You can't just get them back. AT&T doesn't have a server for us somewhere where we can get our text messages. So I said - Do they not understand how cell phones work? Was there any training on this? - and the response was - Well, I would dispute that they understand how cell phones work and there was training, but it was mostly about email. There's some stuff in here that kind of strains credulity a little bit, but again, it's a high standard of proof they had to meet, so that was their argument. There's a civil case where a federal judge said that it was unlikely that they didn't know what they were doing, but he had a lower standard of proof. So that's why it's a slightly different conclusion from basically the same facts. [00:18:17] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think these are always interesting situation - when it comes to an actual charging decision and what's needed there. I'm sure they're considering - unfortunately in our society today, they can afford significant defenses that are not available to a lot of people - that may have factored into their decision. But overall, it just once again seems like there is a different standard for people with power than those without power. And we're having conversations about people dealing with addiction, about people shoplifting for financial reasons - and even not for financial reasons - people being assaulted and in some instances killed for petty theft, or eviction, or different things. And it seems like we have no problem cracking down and expecting perfect compliance from people without power. But those that do just don't seem to be held to the same standard of accountability. And I think that's damaging and troubling. And I think we need to explore that and make sure we do hold people accountable. And it also just doesn't, once again, escape my notice that these aren't the first controversies that either one of them dealt with that did not have the kind of accountability attached to them. And so yes, it's a slippery slope. And if you keep sliding, you're gonna wind up in a low, dirty place. And once again, this is part of what undermines people's trust in power, and in institutions, and in democracy. And we need to be doing all we can to move in the opposite direction right now - to build trust and to conduct actions with integrity. And it just doesn't seem like that is a priority everywhere - they know they can get away with it - and it's really frustrating and disheartening, and we just need to do better overall. [00:20:05] Erica Barnett: To put a fine point on one of the things that the investigation revealed to me that I was not aware of actually about public disclosure - which is that text messages, according to the City, can be deleted if they are "transitory" in nature. And "transitory" is defined as not relating to policy decisions or things of substance like that, which means that according to Durkan and Best, it was fine to delete anything that was not like - We are going to adopt this policy or propose this policy, or our policy is to tear gas all protesters or something like that. So if it's tactical in the moment, that was not preserved. But I do records requests - I get text messages from officials - and a lot of times they include stuff that Durkan and Best are defining as transitory, like text message - I mean, I'm just making this up - but an official saying this other official is a jerk or somebody. There's all kinds of sort of process related text messages and texts that give some insight to decision-making that would be considered transitory. It is entirely possible that Durkan and Best are deleting all of those kinds of messages, which is not something I think should be deleted, and that I think is in the public interest to know about if people are requesting it. So I found that very disturbing - this notion that you can just destroy records if they aren't related to policy. I think in practice, most officials know better than that - and that's just based on records requests I've done - but apparently that's a big loophole that I think should be closed in the policies at the City, if at all possible. [00:21:33] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now I wanna talk about the return of the drug criminalization bill in the City of Seattle. What's happening with this? [00:21:43] Erica Barnett: The City Council's Public Safety Committee voted this week to basically move it forward to the full council. There's a new version that has a lot of nice language - in the sort of non-binding whereas clauses - about we don't wanna start another drug war and we definitely, for sure for real, prefer diversion. But essentially the impact of the bill is the same as it has always been, which is to empower the city attorney to prosecute and empower police to arrest for people using drugs in public and for simple possession of drugs other than cannabis. There's some language in the bill - and including in the text of the bill itself - that says there will be a policy in the future that says that police should try to put people into diversion programs first. And there's a couple kinds of diversion programs that we fund - inadequately currently - to actually divert the number of people that would be eligible now. So the impact of this bill is, I think, going to actually be pretty limited because - unless the mayor proposes massive investments in diversion programs like LEAD, potentially like some of these pretrial diversion programs that City Attorney's Office wants to fund. But we're facing a huge budget deficit in 2025 and years out, so it feels like a lot of kind of smoke-and-mirrors talk. We really love diversion, but we're not gonna fund it. And maybe I'll be proven wrong in two weeks when the mayor releases his budget, but my bet is that there's not gonna be massive new funding for these programs and that this is gonna end up being mostly talk. [00:23:19] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, mostly talk. And just on that specifically - that the mayor did announce $27 million to help support this effort. Is that $27 million - is it what it sounds like? [00:23:33] Erica Barnett: Yeah, this is like one of the things that I feel like I've been shouting from the rooftops, and all the other local press - I don't know why - keep reporting it as if it is a $27 million check of new money, but it's actually $7 million that's left over in federal CDBG [Community Development Block Grant] grant funding that has to be spent, but the City has failed to spend it so far. So that's a lump sum - some of that's gonna go to an opiate recovery site run by DESC that I wrote about at PubliCola a couple of weeks ago. And then the rest is a slow trickle, over 18 years, of funding from a previously announced opiate settlement. And so that's gonna be on average about $1 million a year. As City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda was pointing out earlier this week, a lot of that - 20% of that goes to administrative overhead. So you're really looking at more $700,000-$800,000 a year, and it diminishes in out years - that is what they call budget dust - it is not enough to pay for virtually anything. I don't know what they're going to ultimately spend that trickle of funding on, but it's definitely not $27 million. That's what I mean by smoke and mirrors - that's a good example. It looks like a fairly big number, but then you realize it's stretched out into the 2030s and it's not nearly as big looking - actually, sorry, the 2040s, I believe, if I'm doing my math right - it doesn't look nearly as big when you actually look at what it is. So I encourage people to do that, and I've written more about this at PubliCola too. [00:24:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. We can also link that article. The most frustrating thing to me about Seattle politics, I think - in addition to just the endless process and reconsideration of things instead of making a decision and doing it - is this thing right here where there is a problem and people seem to actually, in public, rhetorically agree with the problem. Arresting people just for drug offenses does not solve that problem - it destabilizes people more, jail is not an effective place for drug treatment. Does that mean no one in the history of ever has ever become clean in jail? - there have been people, but they're few and far between. And experience and research and common sense, when you look at what actually happens there, really shows that is more of a destabilizing experience, that people who are in addiction need treatment, effective treatment, for that addiction and substance use disorder. And for people who may be recreationally using, sending them to jail doesn't help them when it comes to - and in fact, it's very hurtful - when it comes to finding a job, to securing housing, a variety of things. And that often has a more negative effect when it comes to forcing people into needing assistance, into needing help or completely falling through the cracks and becoming homeless - and dealing with the challenges there that we all pay for as a society. And so here we are again, where we actually did not solve the problem that everyone is articulating - and it seems like we just punted on that. But we're funding the thing that we say is not going to solve the problem, that we're confident is not going to solve the problem - and wrapping words around everything else, but that action isn't there. And I think what's frustrating to a lot of people, including me, it's sometimes - people on the left or Democrats are in this larger public safety conversation get painted as not wanting to do anything. And that's just so far from the truth. This is a problem, we need to address it. I just want to do something that has a chance of helping. And it seems like we're throwing good money after bad here and investing in something that we know is not going to be very helpful, meanwhile not funding the things that will be. And so we're going to be a year or two down the line and we'll see what the conversation we continue to have then is, but wondering at which point we stop doing the same thing that keeps getting us these suboptimal results. [00:27:20] Erica Barnett: And this is one place that you can blame the city council. I know the city council gets blamed for everything, but they are out there saying that this is a massively changed bill and it's changed in meaningful ways - in my opinion, it really hasn't been. [00:27:32] Crystal Fincher: I agree with that. I want to conclude by talking about a story that you wrote at PubliCola this week, talking about challenges with the way interviews for the Regional Homeless Authority's Five-Year Plan. What happened here and what were the problems? [00:27:49] Erica Barnett: Yeah, the new Five-Year Plan for homelessness, which was pretty controversial when it first came out because it had a $12 billion price tag, was based largely on 180 interviews that the homelessness authority did with people who are unsheltered in places around the county. And the interviews were basically 31 questions that they were supposed to vaguely stick to, but some that they really needed to get the answers to - for demographic reasons - and didn't always. The interviews were conducted primarily by members of the Lived Experience Coalition with some KCRHA staff doing them too. I've read about 90 of the 180, so about half of the 180 so far - and I would describe them as primarily being very discursive, very non-scientific. And it's not just that they are qualitative interviews 'cause it's fine for a qualitative interview to ramble - I talked to a couple of experts about how this kind of research usually works - and the idea is to make it more like a conversation, and that was the goal here. But in a lot of cases, the interviewers were doing things like suggesting answers, like interrupting, like talking at great length about themselves and their own experience, making suggestions, making assurances or promises that they could help them with services. There are just all kinds of things going on in these interviews that are not best practices for this type of interview. And then the interviews, which generally, people didn't tend to answer the question - there was a question about what has been helpful or harmful to you - and the goal there was to get people to say things that would suggest a shelter type, for example. They almost never said a specific shelter type except for a tiny house village, but the interviews were then coded by researchers to sort of lead to a specific set of shelter types. And without getting into too much technical detail, the idea was if somebody said they wanted X type of service or they had Y type of problem, that would suggest they needed Z type of service. So you're living in your car, you probably need a place to park your car safely. You're living in an RV, you need an RV safe lot. And the problem is, first of all, you're extrapolating from 180 interviews. And second, some of these solutions are pretty determinative. If you live in an RV, do you wanna live in an RV forever? Maybe not. Anyway, it just, it was not a great process to come up with this plan that ultimately is a plan to spend billions of dollars, even if it doesn't have that price tag, on a specific breakdown of types of service. And so I think they're not gonna do it again this way next year, but I think it did really inform this plan in a way that was not always super helpful. [00:30:23] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I do know a little something about qualitative and quantitative research. As you said, doing qualitative interviews - in a narrative format, having a conversation - is not in itself a bad thing, but you can't interject your experience. You can't help inform the answers of the people you're talking to and that seemed to happen. And it really did seem like it was - they had an ambitious plan, maybe the training for how to do this was not as comprehensive as it needed to be - that certainly appears to be the case. Initially, they actually did hundreds, multiple hundreds of interviews for this, but a lot of them had to just be discarded - they were so outside of the bounds of what was supposed to happen, they were not able to be included in what they considered their final data set. And that's really unfortunate. It's a lot of time, it's a lot of effort - especially with populations that are harder to consistently contact and follow up with, any chance you have to connect with them is really meaningful. And so if you don't utilize that time correctly, or if you can't do anything with that, that just seems like an extra painful loss. I understand the ambition to get this done, but the execution really suffered. And I hope that there are lessons learned from this. Even in the ones that were done wrong - I say it seems like an issue of training and overambition, 'cause usually there is a lot of training that goes into how to do this. Usually these are people's professions that actually do this. It's not - Oh, hey, today we're gonna do some qualitative interviews and just walk up and have a conversation and check some things off the list. - it doesn't work that way. So that was unfortunate to hear. And the recommendations from this - I don't know if they change or not after review of this whole situation - but certainly when you know that eyes are going to be getting wide looking at the price tag of this, you really do have to make sure that you're executing and implementing well and that was a challenge here. So how do they move on from this? Was it at all addressed? Are they gonna do this again? What's going to happen? [00:32:25] Erica Barnett: I don't think they're gonna do the qualitative interviews, at least in this way again. I think this was something that Marc Dones really emphasized - the former head of the KCRHA - really wanted to do. And it got rolled into also doing the Point-In-Time count based on extrapolations from this group of folks they interviewed. They call these oral histories and really emphasized the need to get this data. I don't think it's gonna happen again based on what KCRHA officials told me, but qualitative data - I mean, I should say, is not as you mentioned a bad thing - it can be very useful. But the training that they received was a one-time training, or perhaps in two parts, by Marc Dones - I don't think they have anybody on staff right now that is trained in the kind of stuff that Dones was training them on. So I think this is probably one of many things that we'll see that happened under - in the first two years of the agency - that's gonna go by the wayside in the future. So doubt we'll see this again. [00:33:22] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I hope - there usually is really useful information and insight that comes from doing qualitative research. I don't think that we should necessarily throw the baby out with the bathwater here overall, but certainly this was a big challenge. And I hope that informs how they choose to move forward in the future. But with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, September 15th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is the wonderful Dr. Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today is Seattle political reporter and editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett. You can find Erica on Twitter @ericacbarnett, or X formerly known as Twitter, as @ericacbarnett and on PubliCola.com. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can find me on multiple platforms as @finchfrii, that's F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks wherever 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, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get the 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.

In a stunning defeat for public transparency and public records sunshine laws, there will be no legal charges against former Seattle mayor, Jenny Durkan, for deleting text messages on a city taxpayer funded phone while she was in office. KVI's John Carlson and Ari Hoffman speak about the new decision by the King Co. Prosecutor, Leesa Manion, to not charge Durkan after the deletion of the text messages was discovered by a city of Seattle employee whistleblower. Hoffman explains what's so insidious about deciding that no criminal charges will be brought, how this prosecutorial decision appears to condone conspiracy and racketeering, why Gov. Jay Inslee deserves extra scrutiny after this decision to not charge Durkan.

No charges over Durkan's missing texts, WA's ballot signature law gets a court challenge, and new Covid boosters should arrive within days

Welcome to the this new episode of ScaleUp Radio. I'm Granger Forson, www.bizsmart-gloucestershire.co.uk or find me on LinkedIn . Today, we're venturing into the riveting domain of insolvency with Michael Durkan. He's a veteran in the field and has been casting safety nets for businesses and individuals in financial turmoil for over 15 years with his business Durkan Cahill.   Now, insolvency often carries a sombre undertone, but what if I told you it's a domain where professionalism meets kindness? Durkan Cahill as a practice isn't just about crunching numbers; it's about extending a lifeline, alleviating the weight off troubled shoulders, and navigating through financial mazes. The firm places humanity at the heart of its financial expertise.   In this episode, we're also lifting the curtain on the inner workings of Durkan Cahill's firm - a place where camaraderie, innovation, and work-life balance hold sway. Discover how Michael fosters a thriving environment, praises his team, and how monthly formal meetings fuel the flame of progress!   Hold your breath as we unravel what it took for Michael to set sail on his own, after parting ways with a former employer, and how his unyielding spirit shaped a shaped his business that champions the importance of relationships and early intervention in financial difficulties. Prepare to be inspired and enlightened, as we navigate through turbulent financial seas to the shores of hope and rejuvenation at Durkan Cahill!   Michael can be found here: linkedin.com/in/michael-durkan-5b610823 https://durkancahill.com/ enquiries@durkancahill.com   Resources:   Inside the Nudge Unit by David Halpern - https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/inside-the-nudge-unit-how-small-changes-can-make-a-big-difference-david-halpern/4236590?ean=9780753556559   The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki - https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-wisdom-of-crowds-why-the-many-are-smarter-than-the-few-and-how-collective-wisdom-shapes-business-economics-society-and-na-james-surowiecki/4095577?ean=9780349116051   Malcolm Gladwell - https://www.gladwellbooks.com/   Scaling up your business isn't easy, and can be a little daunting. Let ScaleUp Radio make it a little easier for you. With guests who have been where you are now, and can offer their thoughts and advice on several aspects of business. ScaleUp Radio is the business podcast you've been waiting for.   If you would like to be a guest on ScaleUp Radio, please click here: https://bizsmarts.co.uk/scaleupradio/apply   You can get in touch with Granger here: grangerf@biz-smart.co.uk   Kevin's Latest Book Is Available!    Drawing on BizSmart's own research and experiences of working with hundreds of owner-managers, Kevin Brentexplores the key reasons why most organisations do not scale and how the challenges change as they reach different milestones on the ScaleUp Journey. He then details a practical step by step guide to successfully navigate between the milestones in the form of ESUS - a proven system for entrepreneurs to scale up.    More on the Book HERE - https://www.esusgroup.co.uk/  

Deir an grúpa gníomhaíochta “Into the West” atá páirteach sa bhfeachtas le h-infrastructur iarnróid an Iar Thuaiscirt a athbhunú go leanfaidh siad ag cur brú ar na húdaráis ar chaon taobh na teorann leis an tseirbhís a chur ar fáil ar bhonn práinne.

On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank!  They cover WA gubernatorial candidate Bob Ferguson's controversial and publicly-mocked  endorsement from former Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best, an escalating battle over an illegal encampment between the Burien City Manager and King County Executive legal counsel, how a proposed “Renter's Bill of Rights” from Tacoma for All is gathering signatures in Tacoma for a local initiative, the Seattle City Attorney and a right-wing councilmember's plan to rush through a restart of the failed War on Drugs, Seattle's new tree protection ordinance and the first meeting of the Seattle Social Housing Developer Board..  As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Robert Cruickshank, at @cruickshank.   Resources Sarah Reyneveld, Candidate for King County Council District 4 from Hacks & Wonks   @BobFergusonAG on Twitter: “I'm grateful to have the support of former Seattle Police Chief”   @davidstoesz on Twitter: “I recently had a long email exchange with the AG's office about why they didn't investigate Best's and Durkan's missing texts, a felony”    “King County Executive accuses city of Burien of 'lease scheme' to evict people from homeless encampment” by Nia Wong from Fox 13 Seattle   “King County expresses 'substantial concerns' about City of Burien's intention to sweep campers off city-owned lot; won't allow police to help” by Scott Schaefer from The B-Town Blog   “Burien City Manager responds to King County's letter warning that police won't help with encampment sweep” by Scott Schaefer from The B-Town Blog   “Dueling Tenant Rights Measures Square Off in Tacoma” by Kevin Le from The Urbanist   “Tacoma city officials discuss updates to Rental Housing Code” by Lionel Donovan from KING 5   “Slog AM: Seattle City Council Rushes to Vote on Drug War Reboot, Tacoma Landlords Try to Squash Tenant Bill of Rights, and DeSantis's Twitter DeSaster” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger   “Here's how the new drug possession law in Washington is different that what was on the books“ by Jim Camden from The Spokesman-Review   “Washington's War on Drugs Starts Up Again in July” by Ashley Nerbovig from The Stranger   “'Real people being represented': Seattle's social housing board is just getting started” by Joshua McNichols, Libby Denkmann & Noel Gasca from KUOW   Find stories that Crystal is reading here Transcript [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 Friday almost-live shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen. 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 Sarah Reyneveld about her campaign for King County Council District 4 - why she decided to run, the experience she brings as a public sector attorney and community advocate, and her thoughts on addressing frontline worker wages and workforce issues, the need for upstream alternatives in the criminal legal system and substance use crisis, how to improve policy implementation, climate change and air quality, and budget revenue and transparency. Today we're continuing our Friday almost-live 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: Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank. [00:01:30] Robert Cruickshank: Thank you for having me back, Crystal. It's always fun to be on the show. [00:01:33] Crystal Fincher: Always great to have you on the show. So this has been an eventful week, but wow - last night, there was a little event that popped up that kind of took the notice of everyone who follows politics basically in Washington state, whether they were on the progressive side, conservative side, or somewhere in-between. That was Bob Ferguson's announcement of his endorsement by former Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best. Why did this attract so much attention, Robert? [00:02:03] Robert Cruickshank: Because Carmen Best is one of the most controversial figures in Seattle right now, coming out of the summer of 2020. And as Alexa Vaughn, for example, noted - she runs The Needling - this was posted on the anniversary of George Floyd's murder. And when Minnesota police murdered George Floyd three years ago, as we recall, it sparked a major wave of protest here in Seattle to demand reforms here. And in that response, that protest, Mayor Jenny Durkan and Chief Best systematically deceived the public, deleted their texts in what ought to be a felony, and essentially got away with it. Carmen Best then left her job as Police Chief of Seattle and is now making a fair amount of money as a TV pundit. And so Carmen Best, coming out of that summer, is seen as one of these leaders who sided with the cops against people demanding urgently-needed reform, and is seen as avatar of we-need-to-get-tough-on-crime policies - who has a very poor reputation among a lot of people in Seattle, including Ferguson's base. And that's what happened yesterday, in the reaction, was Ferguson's base - progressive people in Seattle who've been cheering him on as he takes on Trump, as he takes on big corporations - all of a sudden surprised to see him just bear-hugging one of the most notorious figures in recent Seattle history. [00:03:29] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and adding on top of that - the challenges during those protests, the deleted texts that you mentioned, but also the tear-gassing of neighborhoods. I don't think people understand how radicalizing that was for some neighborhoods in Seattle. They didn't tear-gas protesters. They tear-gassed entire geographical areas. People in their homes couldn't breathe, were severely impacted by that. And where do you go at that point in time? There are protests out on the street. You're at home with your kids, with your family, and getting tear-gassed in your home. That's what happened in Seattle, and people have not forgotten that. That was a radicalizing moment. I think you've seen instances afterwards in just relations and demonstrating that the trust with the police department is completely evaporated. Neighbors banding together to question people being detained for what seems like no reason because they no longer view them and the police as being on the same side after that. They felt attacked. You aren't attacked by people you trust - yeah. [00:04:33] Robert Cruickshank: Well, they were attacked. They absolutely were. And you talk about the stories of tear-gassing the neighborhood. I will never forget hearing at one of the City Council meetings in early June 2020, when this was all going on, a father who lived in an apartment on Capitol Hill talking about how the tear-gas got into his apartment and his newborn baby started crying and having fluid coming from its nose and mouth because it couldn't handle the tear-gas that had seeped in. This is an example of just complete disregard that Carmen Best had for the public. When the Council tried to ban the use of tear-gas, ban the use of blast balls that had been fired at peaceful protesters in June 2020, Carmen Best spoke out against that. So it is a legacy of attacking - with vicious weapons of war - the people of Seattle engaged in peaceful protests during this crucial moment in our City's history. And for Bob Ferguson to tout her endorsement comes off as the state's leading law enforcement guy - that's what he is as Attorney General - embracing Carmen Best and her narrative of what happened. And I think it's a real wake-up call and a shocking moment that maybe needed to happen. Bob Ferguson has had 11 years in office of very good press. He's fought hard for LGBTQ rights. He's fought hard to ban assault weapons. We talked about his lawsuits against Trump and against big tech companies. And rightly, he's gotten a lot of credit for that. But we haven't seen much about his other views on other issues. He hasn't been asked to take a stand on housing, transit, policing. I don't believe he weighed in, at least certainly not in a loud public way, on the question of what to do about the Blake decision. And so as he's launched his "exploratory campaign" for governor, racking up endorsements all over the place - literally left and right - Pramila Jayapal and Carmen Best. He hasn't gotten a lot of scrutiny yet. I think yesterday's move to announce the endorsement of Carmen Best means he's going to start getting a lot of scrutiny. I think the honeymoon for Ferguson, at least in Seattle, is over. Now that may not be a bad thing in Ferguson's political calculation, but I think you saw the governor's race shift substantially yesterday. [00:06:41] Crystal Fincher: I think so too. What do you think went into this political calculation to seek, and accept, and publicize this endorsement? [00:06:51] Robert Cruickshank: I think Bob Ferguson is trying to shore up his right flank. He's probably looking at what he saw south of the border in Oregon last year, where the Oregon governor's race was dominated by questions of public safety. He's seen similar things happen around the country where Democrats are attacked on this. I think he is also seeing that right-wing Democrats, like Mark Mullet, are making noise about running for governor. I think Ferguson feels he has to shore up his position on the right and the way that he can do that is by touting law and order. And in fact, the day before he announced Carmen Best's endorsement, he also announced the endorsement of Federal Way Mayor Jim Ferrell, who had run for King County Prosecutor last year - losing to Leesa Manion. And Ferrell ran on a more law and order right-wing approach, so there's clearly a calculated effort here by Ferguson to show - at least maybe the media and a certain segment of the electorate - that he's not like those other Democrats. He's not a Seattle Democrat who's, in the parlance on the right, soft on crime. He's going to be tough on this stuff, and I think it means that quite a lot of scrutiny now should be directed his way in terms of asking him where he stands and what he believes on the major issues of crime and public policy. [00:08:03] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. When you see this, especially with such a - at least from the online vocal right - also such a backlash from them. This is one of those where you look at the ratio and people are like, My goodness - there was not a positive reaction to this. It was pretty negative across the spectrum. It was universally negative across the spectrum. Who does this help him with? Who do you think - there's their calculus - but in reality, do you think this helps with anyone? [00:08:36] Robert Cruickshank: I think that Ferguson has been waging a low-key but significant effort to try to win the support of The Seattle Times. He was a supporter of legislation in Olympia this year that would have created some tax breaks for media companies, including The Seattle Times, and Times lobbied hard for it. The bill was also sponsored in the Senate by Mark Mullet, so I think Ferguson is looking at this - trying to make sure that he has The Seattle Times in his corner, certain right-wing Democrats in his corner. But they're not a huge portion of the electorate. The sense I have is Ferguson wants to try to just clear the field as much as he possibly can in advance of the actual election. But there is a huge risk here because in building that coalition, you can't alienate another piece of it. Now, all of a sudden, he's got Seattle voters, who are pretty shocked by the Carmen Best endorsement, taking a second look at Ferguson. That's going to give an opportunity to someone like Hilary Franz, who launched her campaign but otherwise hasn't had much energy or momentum - gives her an opening to maybe try to win some of those Seattle voters over. [00:09:42] Crystal Fincher: There's another element of this that I find interesting, and actually this is the element that I would be concerned about backfiring over the long term - that it could play into a narrative that could turn out to be harmful. It's that - while questions were swirling around what happened with the East Precinct and how that happened, finding out the texts were deleted - which is a significant crime, really - and lots of people asking, Hey, Bob Ferguson, why aren't you investigating this? And him saying, I can't. But as has been covered several times - again recently - he has either referred, or spoken up, or suggested that in other instances. And so if a narrative catches on that - Yeah, Bob's tough if he doesn't have a friend doing something - you know, if a friend is doing one of those things that lots of people find objectionable, it's a different story if it's a friend. If it's a different story, if it's a donor, perhaps. It's a different story - that kind of thing. I would be concerned about that kind of narrative catching on. And so that to me is why - I don't understand - realistically - look, if you're trying to project law and order, he could have done what Jim Ferrell did. That didn't work for Jim Ferrell, but it didn't have this kind of backlash where - hey, different police chiefs - but to choose Seattle's Carmen Best, it just - my goodness, that is an unforced error, it seems. Lots of time left, more than a year in this campaign. Who knows who else is going to get in the race? Lots of time, so I am in no way suggesting this is fatal. He obviously financially enjoys a significant advantage and there's lots of time left. We have seen plenty of politicians at all levels step in it and make their way out. So I'm not saying that this is damning, but it's certainly - to your point - is going to invite more scrutiny than there had been before. [00:11:42] Robert Cruickshank: It is. And I was thinking about this earlier today - we haven't had a contested primary for governor on the Democratic side in Washington state in nearly 20 years. Last time was when Ron Sims and Christine Gregoire ran against each other in 2004. Inslee didn't have a challenge in 2012, and obviously hasn't been challenged since. We might have one now and I think that would be healthy - healthy for the Democratic Party, healthy for the state - to have different ideas out there, candidates running on policy and having to have discussions and debates about that. I think it'd be really helpful. Ferguson has had a lot of momentum early. He's racked up a ton of endorsements, as we've talked about, but he hasn't really been challenged on policy and he hasn't - made very few statements on policy. It was surely a deliberate thing on his campaign's part. That needs to change - that'll make Ferguson a stronger candidate in the general election. And it'll make all of us - whether we're big D, small D Democrats, or just voters who care about the direction of our state - better off when there's a real policy discussion happening in the primary. [00:12:42] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. We will continue to follow what's going on with the gubernatorial race, but in the meantime, in the City of Burien, there is a really contentious situation going on right now between the Burien - really interestingly - between the City and King County Executive's legal team. Can you just cover what is going on here? In a nutshell, what is the issue and what's currently happening? [00:13:13] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, the City of Burien - and it seems to be the City Manager in particular in Burien - is trying to sweep a homeless encampment. Now, here in the western United States, we're governed by a Supreme Court - or not, I'm sorry, not a Supreme Court decision, that's important - a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision, which is one level below the Supreme Court, against the city of Boise, saying that you cannot sweep a homeless encampment without having made real good faith offers of shelter to those people you're trying to remove. At some point, one would imagine some city somewhere will try to take that to the US Supreme Court, which would be a nightmare, because I don't think we'd get a good ruling out of that. But here in the western US, we are all governed by that decision - which is binding from the Ninth Circuit - which means you can't just sweep people without giving them a place to go. That doesn't justify sweeps, but that's the legal ruling that cities operate under. Now, what Burien appears to have tried to do was redefine a city park as a dog park - as private park - in order to get around having to actually offer shelter. Because they don't have an offer, they have nowhere to go - that's why encampments exist - they exist because people have nowhere else to go. And so the City Manager said this is the plan we're going to do. Well, King County Executive's Office slapped down Burien pretty hard and said - You can't do that - that violates the court ruling - and we're not going to provide police support. Burien, like many cities in King County, many smaller cities, doesn't have its own police force. They contract with the King County Sheriff's Office. And the King County Sheriff's Office, after 2020 charter reform, the Sheriff is now appointed by the Executive. So the Executive now has more direct control over the King County Sheriff's Office than it had before. And so what Dow Constantine's office is saying is - We're not going to have police there to help do your sweep. Without police, you're going to have a hard time actually getting people to move. The City of Burien is striking back. The City Manager is disagreeing with this. But interestingly, people like Hugo Garcia, who are on the City Council in Burien, are saying - This is not us. We didn't authorize this. This is the City Manager going out and doing this on his own. And so now you have really a fight over power in Burien and who actually controls these important levers of city government - when it comes to people's shelter - is in question here. So Burien has a lot to sort out. [00:15:28] Crystal Fincher: A lot to sort out. And a little context further with this is - where the encampment is now - arrived there because Burien did previously conduct a sweep at one location that was city-owned. And because sweeps don't do anything to solve homelessness - housing solves homelessness - in an entirely predictable turn of events, the people who were swept wound up in an adjacent city lot because there's nowhere else to go. There was no offer of housing, no shelter. Where do you think they're going to go? Obviously, they're just moving place to place. We know that's how this works - over and over again - it's been covered several times, just locally here. So that happened. And so the Council in a 4-3 - they kind of have a 4-3 moderate to conservative majority there - they decided to enter into a lease with a private entity, and who billed themselves as dog park caretakers, in an attempt to allow them to trespass the people who are on that property as private owner-operators, basically, in a way to get around the City's requirement to do that. Well, that was just blatantly an end-run attempt, which Dow Constantine - wisely and following the law - decided not to adhere to. But now this is an interesting situation. As you said, there are councilmembers who said - Wait, wait, wait, this is not happening. The response to the King County Executive's legal advisor is not coming from us. The City Manager decided to respond on their own. The lease with the C.A.R.E.S. Organization - Burien C.A.R.E.S. Organization - is not executed yet. We don't think it should be. We need to reconsider and talk about this. But it's a legitimate issue. And Burien - frankly, there are a number of cities skirting the requirement to provide housing. That's why we see the whole theater around - they were offered housing and they refused, even if they know that the housing is not adequate, even if they know the shelter is available - them trying to check that off as them basically - checking on their list - okay, we have technically done the thing that will not get this sweep called unconstitutional, hopefully. Even though when it has been brought to court, it's been successfully challenged before. So we'll see how this continues to unfold. But it's kind of a - the equivalent of a constitutional crisis, almost - in a city, like a charter crisis. Who does actually have the authority to do this? Can the city manager act, in his capacity, response to this? Can he act independently of the Council on this response? Who knows? They were talking about an emergency meeting. We'll see what results from that. But certainly a lot of people and organizations are paying attention to this. And it is - it's a conundrum. [00:18:24] Robert Cruickshank: It is. And I think it is another example of the ways in which the regional approach to solving homelessness isn't working right now. The King County Regional Homelessness Authority lost its executive director last week and is spending a lot of money, but what is it showing for it? It's taking forever to get people into shelter. The idea behind the regional approach is - this is a regional problem - let's pool our resources and act quickly to cut through all the bureaucratic silos so we get people into shelter. It's what we all want. It's not happening. And I think - yet again, we're seeing another grand effort to solve homelessness not succeed because we haven't actually tackled the root of it. We're not funding enough supportive, permanently supportive, temporary shelter, whatever it is - it's not being done. The state isn't kicking in the money that's needed. It's hard to get the permitting. It's hard to find the zoning because we've been glacially slow to change zoning. We finally got some of that fixed here in the 2023 session, but - Ed Murray declaring a state of emergency over homelessness in 2015. I remember when I moved to Seattle, a little over 20 years ago, we were in the middle of the 10-year plan to end homelessness. We have these grand efforts that go nowhere. Meanwhile, people are in crisis. People living outside, whether it's in the cold of winter or the heat and smoke of summer, aren't getting their needs met. These are our neighbors who deserve shelter. And government just trying to pass the buck, just trying to appease a few cranky people who don't want to see a tent, but not giving people the help that they need and have needed for a long time. And we need to find actual solutions to get people housed and pay what it takes to do it. Otherwise, we're just going to keep seeing more stuff like this happen. [00:20:01] Crystal Fincher: We are. And we have to contend with the use of resources here. Burien's in a bind now. If they do buck this - and there's been some early talk - we don't need the Sheriff, we can stand up our own department. The reason why they haven't stood up their own department is because it's prohibitively expensive. And they're already spending a significant portion - I think almost half of their general budget - on policing currently. And so the money that we put into these sweeps, the money that we put into litigation, and the challenges of just working through this is all money that is being spent on things that we know are not going to do anything to make this problem better. At the most, you can make it disappear only in the sense that - yes, you sweep someone from one location, they're going to move to another one. Lots of people hope they just move to another one in another city so they don't have to deal with it, but they do. And now every city - look at housing prices, which are the biggest determinant of our levels of homelessness. Lots of people, employed people, families cannot afford housing. There is nowhere for them to go. So if we continue to waste our resources on the things that don't work, we don't have the resources for the things that do. And we're hearing excuses - Oh, we would love to do this. We would love to have more supportive housing. We would love to have more behavioral health supports. We would love to have more people to help shepherd them through this. Well, then stop spending the resources on the things that don't work, and start spending them on the things that do. That's not an excuse when you're making the decision to spend the money on the things that don't work and that are harmful - that should be a point of accountability right there. And instead they're using it to excuse and explain their actions - it doesn't fly. And I hope they do have a robust conversation about this. I know there are definitely councilmembers there who want that to happen, who want to focus on providing housing, and working collaboratively with the King County Executive to get that done. But the majority of the council, unfortunately, did not take that position at that time. I hope some come around and see the light. [00:22:04] Robert Cruickshank: I agree, and I think ultimately this is where the state needs to step in - you talk about how this is a problem everywhere. I took a train up to Vancouver, British Columbia, earlier this year and you could see under overpasses along the entire route, including in Canada, people living in tents, people trying to make - get themselves shelter under an overpass, whether it's rural Skagit County or the suburbs of Vancouver. This is a problem everywhere because we haven't built enough housing. We know that homelessness is primarily a housing crisis. When you don't build enough housing, when you don't have enough affordable housing, you get homelessness. There are the other reasons why an individual may wind up or stay in homelessness - people who have mental health needs, people have drug addictions - and a lot of that develops when you're out on the streets. Plenty of people fall into homelessness without being addicted to a single drug, without having any outward signs of mental illness. But once you're on the street, in what is a fundamentally traumatic situation where you are unsafe and do not have security or shelter, it becomes very easy to develop those other problems. And so housing is that essential piece of solving homelessness, solving addiction, solving all these other things that people need help with. And it's not being done. And asking cities to solve it themselves without giving them the financial support from the state government, or certainly not coming from the federal government - we're about to see massive spending cuts out of the stupid debt ceiling deal. Once again, it falls back on the State Legislature, and ultimately on our next governor, to figure out how they're going to solve it. Because when you leave it up to cities, you're going to get bad decisions. You're going to get things like we're seeing in Burien right now. It has to be solved at a higher level. [00:23:48] Crystal Fincher: It absolutely does. In another city development, there is an attempt to put a tenant's bill of rights on the ballot in the City of Tacoma. What do they want to do, and what would this mean for renters? [00:24:01] Robert Cruickshank: It's a really great thing. I think what you're seeing in Tacoma is a group coming together called Tacoma for All. And what they're trying to put together is something they call sometimes a tenant bill of rights. It's also been called a landlord fairness code. You do a number of great things such as requiring six months notice for all rent increases, relocation assistance for rent hikes over 5%, no school-year evictions of children and educators - that's a great thing to do because the last thing you want is for educators and families and students to be thrown out during the school year. It would ban deadly cold weather evictions, so if we're having a cold snap or a bunch of snow, you can't evict people out into the snow. It would cap excessive and unfair fees and deposits and ban rent hikes when there are code violations. Seattle has a lot of these things already, but Tacoma doesn't. And what a number of renters and advocates have seen in Tacoma is the need to bring those protections to Tacoma, especially because the state didn't do it - the state didn't act on a rent control bill that had been proposed earlier this year. So you're seeing a group of people come together with strong support from labor, from elected officials like Yasmin Trudeau and others, to make the Tacoma for All initiative a reality. They're getting some pushback from the City, obviously, which - the mayor doesn't really want to do this and offered a vague compromise solution but didn't provide details. And the organizers said - No, we're going to go ahead with our own initiative - which I think is the right thing to do. I believe there are three pieces to the stool of solving housing. You need more supply from the private sector. You need more supply from the public sector - things like social housing, public housing. And you also need renter and tenant protections. And Washington has started to add some more private supply, but we need more tenant and renter protections across the state. And so with the State Legislature failing, you're seeing people in Tacoma step up to act on their own, and I think it's a great thing to do. [00:25:53] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. They're in the middle of collecting signatures - early in the month, they had about half of them that they needed. They need to collect a total of 8,000 by June 15th to submit to the City, and they're actively signature gathering now. The Council could take action to put what they propose on the ballot - like you said, they're signaling that they're going to propose something, obviously. They're feeling the need to do something since there is something on the table right now, but don't know what it is. And it does not go as far - at least the indications based on what has been discussed in work groups so far - do not go as far as the Tacoma For All group's does. And it just doesn't seem like it's going to have the teeth. And so they're prepared to take this all the way, to try and collect all of the signatures - they're recruiting volunteers. And so it'll be great to see this get on the ballot and to have a full conversation about it. I do hope the City tries to take an approach that works because this is attempting to solve a real problem. And completely applaud Tacoma For All for stepping up to really address this problem. This is not a partisan issue. This is just a straight affordability issue. And it affects all of us, even homeowners who are happy with the way that their home price is appreciating - and it has quite a bit, I think home values have almost doubled in Tacoma over the past 10 years - but it's making sure that the teachers in our community, the pharmacists in our community, our transit drivers, everyone who is our neighbors, everyone who we rely on to make our communities thrive, really, rely on affordable housing. If your kid gets sick, do you want to be short a nurse because they couldn't afford to buy a million dollar home, an $800,000 home on an average salary? Lots of people are facing this and we have to contend with this. Displacement is already happening, especially on the Hilltop - it is an issue. It's not speculative. It's not in the future. It's happening now and it needs to stop. They can take action to help reduce the harm here. And I really hope they do. [00:28:04] Robert Cruickshank: Exactly. And I love that they're taking inspiration from what has happened in Seattle. A lot of these elements of Tacoma For All come from policies Kshama Sawant has championed. And Sawant, being the very clever strategist that she really is, fought hard for genuine rent control, has been denied it because the State Legislature won't do it. So she said - Okay, I'll go find other ways - any possible thing we can do under the rights that the City has, we're going to do it to protect renters. And it's worked. Not completely, but she can get these policies done and they provide some assistance to renters in Seattle. And Tacoma looking at that saying - Yeah, let's do that too. It's a good example of things we can do with stopgaps, but we still need the state to step in. California and Oregon have passed statewide rent stabilization laws capping annual rent increases. Washington needs to do the same. It is an urgent thing too. You mentioned being a homeowner - I'm a homeowner. My annual rent, so to speak, is capped. If you have a fixed term mortgage - 30 or fixed - that doesn't go up. It might go up a little bit because of property tax changes, but even those are capped - unfortunately, by Tim Eyman. So homeowners have essentially rent stabilization, but renters don't. And I think it's only fair that renters have those same protections too. [00:29:24] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now for the City of Seattle - bouncing back here - Seattle is looking to double down on the War on Drugs. What are they talking about, and how did we get here? [00:29:35] Robert Cruickshank: So this is Ann Davison and Sara Nelson and Alex Pedersen, the right wing of Seattle City government, trying to revive the War on Drugs. They believe that the answer to the fentanyl crisis, and in some ways the answer to visible homelessness downtown, is to criminalize. Let's go back to the War on Drugs - if you're using drugs, if you're a drug addict, the answer isn't treatment, it's jail. The irony here is that a lot of us progressives argue that what needs to happen is - these people need housing, they need treatment, give them a shelter, give them a room with a door that locks. Well, that's what Ann Davison wants to do - she just wants to put them in jail. Jail is a type of housing, but it's not the type of housing that's going to solve someone's addiction. In fact, it's going to make it worse, it's going to add more trauma, it's going to make it harder for that individual to escape the cycle of addiction and whatever other problems they're facing. But there is this desire among Seattle's right, which feels a little bit resurgent - over the last 10 years, the right wing in Seattle was on the back foot as we had a lot of really progressive policies come into place and they were wondering how do they strike back and now, they think they found their answer in really leveraging public concern about public drug use. But we know for an absolute fact that criminalizing the use of drugs does not solve drug problems, it does not end addiction - it's been conclusively demonstrated. Interestingly, the City Council, rather than put this to the usual committee process, is bringing it directly to a vote early next month. That could be read two ways - it could be read as either the City trying to do this quickly and put it into place before the public can react against it, or it's also possible that you have a majority in the Council that doesn't want to do this and wants to kill it quickly before it gets too close to the primary in August. Who knows? But it's an example of this absurd desire among certain people in Seattle to just go back to Reaganism - it's crack down on homelessness by jailing people for sleeping in a tent, crack down on drug abuse by jailing anyone smoking fentanyl. This is just stuff we thought we left behind, but it's an important reminder to those of us who are progressive that we're always going to have to deal with right wingers, even in our own city, even in a deep blue city like Seattle. People are going to keep trying to find ways to poke that electric fence to see where there's a weakness and where they can try to really roll back the progressive policies that they hate so much. [00:32:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's - people who listen to the program regularly know how I feel about this whole thing. It is just really a shame. It is also as important as ever for you to contact your councilmembers, contact the mayor - let them know exactly how you feel about this. I think sometimes, especially in Seattle, it's easy to take for granted once progress has been made, that it's settled. Similar to - we thought Supreme Court law was settled, right? Everything is in flux. And there are people working actively to dismantle the progress that has been made. And counting on people being asleep - they know that they're in the minority. That's why they can't say what they really believe loudly and proudly all year long. And they do tend to strike in these ways that tend to minimize public engagement, support, time - trying to rush this through and let's just get it done. We see this done over and over again. And so I just hope that people understand that there really is a threat of this happening - that Seattle isn't above this, it's not beyond this. This is not something that we can take for granted. And I do encourage everyone listening to contact your City councilperson - contact all the Council people - and let them know where you stand on this, because there's going to be an upcoming vote in early June. And right now it looks like - it seems like - they're leaning towards criminalization and seems like they're leaning towards expanding the criminalization options even from where they were before. So please get engaged. [00:33:43] Robert Cruickshank: I think it's also important to - anytime you encounter a City Council candidate - to make it clear where you stand as well. Because these are - as the campaigns really start to kick into gear here after Memorial Day, as they sprint towards the August primary - we're going to have to tell these people running for the seats, especially where there isn't an incumbent. Quite a few districts like District 1, District 3, District 4, District 5 - let the people know that you are not a fan of criminalizing drugs. You do not want to go back to the Drug War. A lot of Seattle's state legislative representation voted against the gross misdemeanor provisions in the Blake fix that finally came out of the Legislature earlier this month. That was courageous of them - it's a good thing they did. We need to show similar leadership here in Seattle rather than just waltz back down the path of Reaganism. [00:34:32] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. Also in Council action this week was a tree ordinance that was passed. How did this develop and what ended up passing? [00:34:42] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, this has been in gestation for a long time. I remember we were talking about tree ordinance back when Mike McGinn was mayor, but it finally came to pass this week. And what the ordinance does - I credit the Harrell administration for this, and I credit Dan Strauss as well for finding a good middle ground that isn't perfect, but a middle ground that tries to harmonize tree policy and housing policy. What's really been going on is a number of people who don't want new density in our city have seized on the idea of trees as the way they can block housing. Oh, we're going to cut down all these trees to build housing. Oh, isn't this terrible? The way we can stop the density that we don't want is to make it almost impossible to remove a tree. And in their mind, a healthy urban forest is threatened not by the climate crisis, but by development. Now, we know this is wrong. The City's own research shows very, very clearly that new development is not a major factor, it's a very tiny factor in the loss of trees in Seattle. The main source of tree loss is in natural areas and parks. And why is that happening? Because the climate crisis. We had, as everyone remembers, that awful heat wave in the summer of 2021. And you saw those cedars go brown afterwards. We then had 120 days without rain in 2022 - that further stressed the trees. And some of these are old, majestic trees planted over 100 years ago in our parks and natural areas that are struggling now to survive in the climate crisis. That's where we're losing trees. Where do we need to get trees, build more trees, plant more trees? In City-owned right-of-way, and especially in southeast Seattle. So the answer here should be rather than give in to what the NIMBYs want and make it almost impossible to build anything new - you've got to harmonize these things. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, which produces those annual reports, has said numerous times that more urban density is a core element of solving the climate crisis, of reducing carbon emissions. And yet some of these NIMBYs want to use trees to undermine that. Now, we can't have one climate policy undermining another. We need to find ways to bring tree protections and housing construction together. And that's what the Harrell administration and Dan Strauss have tried to do. I know there are some housing advocates, who I respect, who are unhappy with some of the exact details of how this went down. I get that. At the same time, I and the Sierra Club believe it's a reasonable compromise that isn't going to hold back housing production. It'll help us have a healthier urban forest while avoiding blaming new density for loss of trees, right? This is a climate crisis issue. If we want to keep our great firs and cedars and other tall trees we love in the City, we've got to tackle the climate crisis. We have to build higher. We have to build denser. That's how we reduce the carbon emissions that is making everything so much hotter and putting these great trees under stress. [00:37:46] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And I think we're seeing a part of a trend here, we're seeing a tactic as part of an overall strategy. And that is from NIMBYs and from the right to co-opt progressive language, to co-opt traditionally progressive causes - and use those to try and sabotage development. And so we've seen this manifest in Seattle with different things or to get their way in a public way - we saw it with bike lanes in West Seattle - they're hard to get, but oh all of a sudden now that it could potentially displace some people who are living in campers, we're all for implementing a bike lane and an accelerated delivery timeline right here, right? We see - we've seen ADA regulations used to - in lawsuits - used to stifle transit mobility improvement. And it's really critically important - and you basically said this - to not give in to the - well, no these are more important than disability access, or this is more important than making sure we do have adequate trees. They want to create the friction between these two groups who are fighting for resources and rights and access. And the key thing to do is to basically join together in solidarity and saying both of these are necessities for our community. We need clean air, and we need everyone to be able to access everything required to live, right? So how do we figure that out? Not we just don't do one, or we just don't do the other. We fight and discount what's needed for the true issue. If we actually get together with people who are being used to do this, we can figure out solutions better and cut out the kind of astroturf middleman, who's just using a different group to try and get their way. It's really cynical, it's really just shameful - but we're seeing this happen a lot. And I - some people's immediate reaction is - I really want this, so I'm going to dig my heels in and say that other thing is bad it doesn't matter. And that's a trap that they want you to fall into, and that's a trap that hurts us all moving forward. We have to work together and make sure that we get our needs met and sometimes it's hard to thread that needle perfectly. Sometimes it's going to leave a lot to be desired, but we really need to keep working to make sure that everyone is getting what they need to be supported in this community. Also an exciting development with Seattle's social housing board having their first meeting. What happened there? [00:40:23] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah they - after the passage of Initiative 135 earlier this year - it created a new board to oversee the social housing authority. And this board is not comprised in the usual way - like typically a City commission or City board is - the mayor gets to make a bunch of picks the City Council gets to make a bunch of picks and they can pretty much pick whoever they want to. In this case though, the initiative stated that the board members had to come from certain backgrounds - he had to pick someone with urban planning experience, he had to pick someone who understands Passivhaus design which is very environmentally friendly. But most importantly, you have to pick a number of people with lived experience as renters or as unhoused folks - and that is what happened with this board. And it's a majority of people, I believe, who are not homeowners. And the idea here is to have this board represent the people, or at least the type of people, who would actually live in a social housing project once we get it built. So they had their first meeting, came together, they elected their leadership. Councilmember Tammy Morales was there and has been really the driving figure in getting this done, and I think one of the few - unfortunately - people on City Council who's really been strongly behind this. I think other councilmembers have been much more hesitant. But social housing is a key part of the solution - there's a great article in the New York Times earlier this week about Vienna - and Vienna has a ton of social housing, and it works really well in having a mix of incomes together, living in the same building where everyone's pulling together to help build a great community. It also includes space for people who are very low incomes or who are formerly homeless, so I think it's really exciting to see this process get underway - a board that is working well together, at least at the start. It seems like Initiative 135 is getting off to a great start, but the bigger question obviously going to be - How do you fund the construction of social housing? The people who wrote the initiative were advised, and I think correctly, that they couldn't do both at the same time - they couldn't create the social housing authority and have a funding source. Well now, we need the City to step up - and this is another thing that we're going to have to see City Council candidates talk about - Initiative 135 passed by pretty healthy margin in the City, it passed in every single Council district. So Council candidates should be on board, but if you talk to some of these folks - they're not all on board. So one of the things that I hope becomes a major issue in the City Council elections this fall is - how are you going to make social housing a reality, how are you going to fund it here in Seattle - because the public clearly wants it and there's clearly a huge need for it. [00:43:00] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. The public does want it - even at the forums that have happened so far - and we know that most people in the public are not tuned into elections yet but there are some who are - and shoring up this early support and making an early impression, especially in a crowded primary, makes a difference. And I will tell you, every forum that I've seen or been at - the public there has had questions about social housing. How are you going to secure funding, how are you going to make sure this implementation goes smoothly? They want to know about it, they want to know how they're going to support it. I fully anticipate this to be a significant issue throughout this entire campaign and beyond. The public voted for it, they want it, they're really curious about it, they're excited about it. And this is something that they feel could potentially put a dent in housing prices and start a blueprint - expand upon the blueprint - of what it looks like to implement this in our state and throughout the region, so really exciting. And with that, I will thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday May 26, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today is Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank. You can find Robert on Twitter @cruickshank. You can follow Hacks & Wonks @HacksWonks, and you can find me @finchfrii, with two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks wherever 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 almost-live week-in-review and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, please leave a review. 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.

This is Garrison Hardie with your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief for Wednesday, May 17th, 2023. Concordis Education Partners: Classical Christian education has reminded us to aim education at truth, but the trivium has been used as a formula rather than a way of training students in discernment. To teach well, you must coach. Concordis Foundation is offering their third annual BOOT CAMP – a faculty summit – July 11-13th in Moscow, Idaho. This is a three-day intensive teaching training where you learn to coach students, using the trivium, so that you can meet students at all learning levels. Learn more at concordispartners.com https://www.dailywire.com/news/tsa-rolls-out-facial-recognition-technology-test-at-several-major-airports TSA Rolls Out Facial Recognition Technology Test At Several Major Airports The Transportation Security Administration is testing the use of facial recognition technology at airports across the nation, a move that the federal agency claims will help employees more easily identify travelers. Passengers may soon find themselves in a security screening line where they are asked to place their identification into a slot and look into a camera, after which a small screen will take their picture and flash the words “photo complete,” permitting the traveler to continue through the security process without handing their identification to an employee. The technology is currently in use at 16 airports throughout the country, such as those in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City, according to a report from the Associated Press. Passengers are allowed to opt out of the pilot program conducted by the TSA, which is a branch of the Department of Homeland Security. TSA employees in the security lines with the technology, which examines whether the identification is real and whether the identification belongs to the traveler, will nevertheless be present to ensure that the system reaches correct conclusions. The test of the technology comes despite a February letter from five members of the Senate, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), who expressed concern over reports that the system could be implemented across the United States as soon as this year if deemed successful. The lawmakers contended that facial recognition technology “represents a risk to civil liberties and privacy rights.” Federal entities already leverage facial recognition technology in various capacities despite the privacy and security concerns: a report published last year by the Government Accountability Office found that 18 out of 24 agencies reported using facial recognition systems in fiscal year 2020, largely for computer access and law enforcement activities, while 14 out of 42 agencies that employ law enforcement officers reported using the technology in criminal investigations. Americans broadly support the “widespread use of facial recognition technology” by police officers who utilize the systems for law enforcement purposes, according to a survey from Pew Research Center, in which 27% of respondents said the policy was a “bad idea” and 46% said the policy was a “good idea.” Other state and local governments have indeed banned biometric recognition technology. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed suit last year against Google and Meta for breaches of state laws which prohibit technology firms from using data such as iris scans, fingerprints, voiceprints, or records of hand and face geometry for commercial purposes without permission. https://www.theepochtimes.com/anheuser-busch-announces-changes-company-amid-bud-light-boycott_5266255.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=BonginoReport Anheuser-Busch Makes Changes to Company Amid Bud Light Boycott Anheuser-Busch revealed that it is making attempts to change its marketing structure in the midst of a backlash after Bud Light produced a can featuring a transgender activist’s face for a social media promotion. While the firm did not make mention of the controversy and boycott, a spokesperson for the brewing giant told Fox2Now in St. Louis that it held a meeting in the city and that “we have communicated some next steps with our internal teams and wholesaler partners.” “First, we made it clear that the safety and welfare of our employees and our partners is our top priority,” the company spokesperson said before adding that a new executive was tapped to head a marketing division. “Todd Allen was appointed Vice President of Bud Light added the spokesperson. “Third, we made some adjustments to streamline the structure of our marketing function to reduce layers so that our most senior marketers are more closely connected to every aspect of our brands activities. These steps will help us maintain focus on the things we do best: brewing great beer for all consumers, while always making a positive impact in our communities and on our country.” For the past month and a half, Bud Light’s sales have taken a nosedive after transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney posted a video with the namesake can on social media, writing “#budlightpartner” in the caption. That led many to believe the light beer was officially partnering with Mulvaney and would launch a campaign with the activist, who is a biological male. Anheuser-Busch executive Brendan Whitworth said in an April 14 news release that the beverage firm had had no intention of sparking division or wading into a political debate. However, Whitworth made no mention of Mulvaney or the backlash. Weeks later, Anheuser-Busch InBev CEO Michel Doukeris told investors in a call that there was no partnership with Mulvaney and that only “one can” was produced with Mulvaney’s face. In a subsequent Financial Times interview, Doukeris claimed that the slumping Bud Light sales were sparked by social media-driven “misinformation.” Continuing, the CEO said that people believed it was a campaign. “It was not: it was one post. It was not an advertisement,” he remarked, contradicting the #budlightpartner hashtag that Mulvaney had written. Sales of the product dropped 26 percent year-over-year in the week ending April 22, according to Bump Williams Consulting based on Nielsen IQ data. Meanwhile, sales of rival beers Coors Light and Miller Light both saw their sales rise by about 10 percent each, according to the data. In the midst of the backlash, two Bud Light executives—Alissa Heinerscheid and Daniel Blake—took a leave of absence, the company said. “Given the circumstances, Alissa has decided to take a leave of absence which we support. Daniel has also decided to take a leave of absence,” the company said last month. https://thepostmillennial.com/seattle-to-pay-out-2-3-million-to-whistleblowers-who-revealed-mayor-engaged-in-chaz-cover-up-by-deleting-texts?utm_campaign=64487 Seattle to pay out $2.3 MILLION to whistleblowers who revealed mayor engaged in CHAZ cover-up by deleting texts The city of Seattle will be forced to pay $2.3 million to settle a lawsuit brought by city employees who were mistreated after they helped reveal that thousands of then-Mayor Jenny Durkan’s text messages had been deleted during the violent riots that rocked the city and the deadly Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in the summer of 2020. A whistleblower complaint by the employees helped to reveal that the texts of Durkan, former Police Chief Carmen Best, Fire Chief Harold Scoggins, and other top officials from the summer of 2020 were intentionally deleted. Though the King County Superior Court case was resolved last month, the terms of Seattle’s settlement with Stacy Irwin and Kimberly Ferreiro weren’t finalized until this week and the details were released to The Seattle Times through a public disclosure request on Friday. The $2.3 million payout is in addition to over $770,000, as of April, spent by the city on attorneys to defend the case, the outlet reported. According to the suit, Irwin and Ferreiro claimed that they resigned as public-records officers in Durkan’s office due to hostile conditions and retaliation. The pair claimed they were “subjected to scorn, ridicule, abuse, and hostility … and the demand to perform illegal acts.” The pair sounded the alarm in 2021 when they complained to the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission that the mayor’s office was mishandling records requests. An investigation by the SEEC determined that the mayor’s legal counsel, Michelle Chen, had violated the state Public Records Act by using narrow interpretations of certain requests to exclude Durkan’s missing texts and diverged from best practices by not informing requesters the texts were missing. Under state law, texts and other communications about public businesses by local elected officials must be kept for at least two years and anyone who willfully destroys a public record that’s supposed to be preserved is guilty of a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. The settlement agreement includes $25,000 in lost wages each to Irwin and Ferreiro, while the remainder of the $2.3 million is for general damages and attorneys’ fees. As part of the settlement, the plaintiffs are required to drop the case, destroy city documents in their possession, and never pursue jobs in the city again. Additionally, both parties are barred from talking publicly about the settlement amount. Irwin told the Times that records disappeared and yet, “There’s been no accountability. These officials basically got away with it and the taxpayers are paying.” Ferreiro said, “It’s still a loss for the citizens of Seattle,” because some questions about the actions of city officials “will never be answered.” In August 2022, then-King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg requested that Sheriff Patti Cole-Tindall investigate the city officials’ deleted texts, but Cole-Tindall’s office has yet to announce the results. Durkan’s office previously claimed that an “unknown technology issue” caused the texts to go missing but a city-commissioned forensic report found that Durkan’s phone was changed in July 2020 to delete texts automatically after 30 days as well as texts stored in the cloud. Durkan also previously claimed that she dropped her phone in a tide pool on the July 4 weekend of that year. A subsequent forensic report commissioned by business owners and residents suing the city over the deadly autonomous zone revealed that Durkan texts were manually deleted. In February, the city settled that lawsuit for $3.65 million, including $600,000 in penalties for the deleted texts. The settlement came swiftly after a judge sanctioned the city for destroying evidence and noted that Durkan’s excuses “strained credibility.” Over 27,000 texts were deleted from Best’s phone and the most recent forensic reports show that phones used by Scoggins and others were reset in October 2020. In 2022, Seattle paid nearly $200,000 and pledged to improve its public records processes to settle a lawsuit brought by The Seattle Times that alleged the city had mishandled requests from reporters who asked for the messages between city officials. In February, the owner of a Korean restaurant filed a federal lawsuit against the city for the loss of business and expenses incurred during the notorious autonomous zone. Litigation against the city as a result of the zone has already cost Seattle over $11 million. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/bipartisan-bill-pentagon-mexican-drug-cartels-pushing-fentanyl Bipartisan bill would empower Pentagon to take down Mexican drug cartels pushing fentanyl Democrats and Republicans from the House and Senate will debut legislation that would declare fentanyl a national security threat and allow the Pentagon to take new action targeting Mexican drug cartels. Senate Armed Services Committee members Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) shared exclusively with the Washington Examiner Tuesday morning their forthcoming bipartisan, bicameral bill to use their oversight authority of the Department of Defense to force the federal government to take stronger actions against Mexican transnational criminal organizations. "The amount of lives lost in Iowa and across the country due to this deadly drug has far surpassed the federal government’s response, and we must scale immediately to combat this national security threat," Ernst said in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner. "This bipartisan work will engage Mexico as an active partner to counter fentanyl trafficking and put the Pentagon’s tools to use to save American lives.” The Disrupt Fentanyl Trafficking Act would require the Pentagon to develop a fentanyl-specific counterdrug strategy, including how to work directly with the Mexican military and to increase security operations with Mexico. Fentanyl is largely moved into the U.S. from Mexico, and the ingredients to make the powerful drug originate in China and are then shipped to producers in Mexico. Ernst and Kaine maintained that enlisting the Mexican government as an equal partner in the war on fentanyl is critical, given the southern neighbor has failed to get a hold of the problem over the past five years. Between 2017 and 2021, fentanyl seizures at the U.S. border increased by 950% — most of which occurred under Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Fentanyl has become the leading cause of death in U.S. adults between 18 and 45. President Joe Biden, in his State of the Union address earlier this year, vowed to do more to tackle the epidemic. Now before we end today, it’s time for a new segment I like to call the rundown: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/15/microsoft-activision-deal-eu-approves-takeover-of-call-of-duty-maker.html European Union regulators on Monday approved Microsoft’s proposed $69 billion acquisition of gaming firm Activision Blizzard, subject to remedies offered by the U.S. tech giant. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said that Microsoft offered remedies in the nascent area of cloud gaming that have staved off antitrust concerns. These remedies centered on allowing users to stream Activision games they purchase on any cloud streaming platform. Europe’s green light is a huge win for Microsoft, after the U.K.’s top competition authority last month blocked the deal. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/05/15/china-sentences-78-year-old-us-citizen-life-prison-spying-charges.html China sentenced a 78-year-old United States citizen to life in prison Monday on spying charges, in a case that could exacerbate the deterioration in ties between Beijing and Washington over recent years. Details of the charges against John Shing-Wan Leung, who also holds permanent residency in Hong Kong, have not been publicly released. Such investigations and trials are held behind closed doors and little information is generally released other than vague accusations of infiltration, gathering secrets and threatening state security. https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2023/05/15/81-year-old-martha-stewart-poses-for-sports-illustrated-swimsuit/ Martha Stewart, who is 81-years-old, posed for the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit, making her the oldest cover model in SI swimsuit issue history. That’s it… that’s all there is with that story. https://www.foxnews.com/sports/horse-euthanized-churchill-downs-broken-leg-becomes-8th-thoroughbred-die-track-last-2-weeks Another horse is dead after running at Churchill Downs, the site of the annual Kentucky Derby. Rio Moon broke his leg on Sunday near the finish line and had to be euthanized. The horse became the eighth to die in the last two weeks at the racetrack - seven died of multiple causes in the days, and hours, leading up to the May 6 Derby. https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/ja-morant-could-face-significant-suspension-to-start-2023-24-nba-season-over-latest-controversy-per-report/ In NBA news… The Memphis Grizzlies could start next season without their best player for a period of time. After an Instagram Live video circulated online that showed Grizzlies superstar Ja Morant holding what appeared to be a gun in a car, the All-Star guard was suspended by Memphis from all team activities. But that's not the only suspension Morant could be facing. The franchise centerpiece could be facing a "significant suspension" from the league, according to Adrian Wojnarowski. The video in question was from an Instagram Live on Saturday, and it shows Morant in a car with friends and for a brief second as the camera pans to him it appears that he is holding a gun. After the video made the rounds on social media, the Grizzlies suspended their star guard. The league then announced it was launching an investigation into the situation.

This is Garrison Hardie with your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief for Wednesday, May 17th, 2023. Concordis Education Partners: Classical Christian education has reminded us to aim education at truth, but the trivium has been used as a formula rather than a way of training students in discernment. To teach well, you must coach. Concordis Foundation is offering their third annual BOOT CAMP – a faculty summit – July 11-13th in Moscow, Idaho. This is a three-day intensive teaching training where you learn to coach students, using the trivium, so that you can meet students at all learning levels. Learn more at concordispartners.com https://www.dailywire.com/news/tsa-rolls-out-facial-recognition-technology-test-at-several-major-airports TSA Rolls Out Facial Recognition Technology Test At Several Major Airports The Transportation Security Administration is testing the use of facial recognition technology at airports across the nation, a move that the federal agency claims will help employees more easily identify travelers. Passengers may soon find themselves in a security screening line where they are asked to place their identification into a slot and look into a camera, after which a small screen will take their picture and flash the words “photo complete,” permitting the traveler to continue through the security process without handing their identification to an employee. The technology is currently in use at 16 airports throughout the country, such as those in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City, according to a report from the Associated Press. Passengers are allowed to opt out of the pilot program conducted by the TSA, which is a branch of the Department of Homeland Security. TSA employees in the security lines with the technology, which examines whether the identification is real and whether the identification belongs to the traveler, will nevertheless be present to ensure that the system reaches correct conclusions. The test of the technology comes despite a February letter from five members of the Senate, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), who expressed concern over reports that the system could be implemented across the United States as soon as this year if deemed successful. The lawmakers contended that facial recognition technology “represents a risk to civil liberties and privacy rights.” Federal entities already leverage facial recognition technology in various capacities despite the privacy and security concerns: a report published last year by the Government Accountability Office found that 18 out of 24 agencies reported using facial recognition systems in fiscal year 2020, largely for computer access and law enforcement activities, while 14 out of 42 agencies that employ law enforcement officers reported using the technology in criminal investigations. Americans broadly support the “widespread use of facial recognition technology” by police officers who utilize the systems for law enforcement purposes, according to a survey from Pew Research Center, in which 27% of respondents said the policy was a “bad idea” and 46% said the policy was a “good idea.” Other state and local governments have indeed banned biometric recognition technology. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed suit last year against Google and Meta for breaches of state laws which prohibit technology firms from using data such as iris scans, fingerprints, voiceprints, or records of hand and face geometry for commercial purposes without permission. https://www.theepochtimes.com/anheuser-busch-announces-changes-company-amid-bud-light-boycott_5266255.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=BonginoReport Anheuser-Busch Makes Changes to Company Amid Bud Light Boycott Anheuser-Busch revealed that it is making attempts to change its marketing structure in the midst of a backlash after Bud Light produced a can featuring a transgender activist’s face for a social media promotion. While the firm did not make mention of the controversy and boycott, a spokesperson for the brewing giant told Fox2Now in St. Louis that it held a meeting in the city and that “we have communicated some next steps with our internal teams and wholesaler partners.” “First, we made it clear that the safety and welfare of our employees and our partners is our top priority,” the company spokesperson said before adding that a new executive was tapped to head a marketing division. “Todd Allen was appointed Vice President of Bud Light added the spokesperson. “Third, we made some adjustments to streamline the structure of our marketing function to reduce layers so that our most senior marketers are more closely connected to every aspect of our brands activities. These steps will help us maintain focus on the things we do best: brewing great beer for all consumers, while always making a positive impact in our communities and on our country.” For the past month and a half, Bud Light’s sales have taken a nosedive after transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney posted a video with the namesake can on social media, writing “#budlightpartner” in the caption. That led many to believe the light beer was officially partnering with Mulvaney and would launch a campaign with the activist, who is a biological male. Anheuser-Busch executive Brendan Whitworth said in an April 14 news release that the beverage firm had had no intention of sparking division or wading into a political debate. However, Whitworth made no mention of Mulvaney or the backlash. Weeks later, Anheuser-Busch InBev CEO Michel Doukeris told investors in a call that there was no partnership with Mulvaney and that only “one can” was produced with Mulvaney’s face. In a subsequent Financial Times interview, Doukeris claimed that the slumping Bud Light sales were sparked by social media-driven “misinformation.” Continuing, the CEO said that people believed it was a campaign. “It was not: it was one post. It was not an advertisement,” he remarked, contradicting the #budlightpartner hashtag that Mulvaney had written. Sales of the product dropped 26 percent year-over-year in the week ending April 22, according to Bump Williams Consulting based on Nielsen IQ data. Meanwhile, sales of rival beers Coors Light and Miller Light both saw their sales rise by about 10 percent each, according to the data. In the midst of the backlash, two Bud Light executives—Alissa Heinerscheid and Daniel Blake—took a leave of absence, the company said. “Given the circumstances, Alissa has decided to take a leave of absence which we support. Daniel has also decided to take a leave of absence,” the company said last month. https://thepostmillennial.com/seattle-to-pay-out-2-3-million-to-whistleblowers-who-revealed-mayor-engaged-in-chaz-cover-up-by-deleting-texts?utm_campaign=64487 Seattle to pay out $2.3 MILLION to whistleblowers who revealed mayor engaged in CHAZ cover-up by deleting texts The city of Seattle will be forced to pay $2.3 million to settle a lawsuit brought by city employees who were mistreated after they helped reveal that thousands of then-Mayor Jenny Durkan’s text messages had been deleted during the violent riots that rocked the city and the deadly Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in the summer of 2020. A whistleblower complaint by the employees helped to reveal that the texts of Durkan, former Police Chief Carmen Best, Fire Chief Harold Scoggins, and other top officials from the summer of 2020 were intentionally deleted. Though the King County Superior Court case was resolved last month, the terms of Seattle’s settlement with Stacy Irwin and Kimberly Ferreiro weren’t finalized until this week and the details were released to The Seattle Times through a public disclosure request on Friday. The $2.3 million payout is in addition to over $770,000, as of April, spent by the city on attorneys to defend the case, the outlet reported. According to the suit, Irwin and Ferreiro claimed that they resigned as public-records officers in Durkan’s office due to hostile conditions and retaliation. The pair claimed they were “subjected to scorn, ridicule, abuse, and hostility … and the demand to perform illegal acts.” The pair sounded the alarm in 2021 when they complained to the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission that the mayor’s office was mishandling records requests. An investigation by the SEEC determined that the mayor’s legal counsel, Michelle Chen, had violated the state Public Records Act by using narrow interpretations of certain requests to exclude Durkan’s missing texts and diverged from best practices by not informing requesters the texts were missing. Under state law, texts and other communications about public businesses by local elected officials must be kept for at least two years and anyone who willfully destroys a public record that’s supposed to be preserved is guilty of a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. The settlement agreement includes $25,000 in lost wages each to Irwin and Ferreiro, while the remainder of the $2.3 million is for general damages and attorneys’ fees. As part of the settlement, the plaintiffs are required to drop the case, destroy city documents in their possession, and never pursue jobs in the city again. Additionally, both parties are barred from talking publicly about the settlement amount. Irwin told the Times that records disappeared and yet, “There’s been no accountability. These officials basically got away with it and the taxpayers are paying.” Ferreiro said, “It’s still a loss for the citizens of Seattle,” because some questions about the actions of city officials “will never be answered.” In August 2022, then-King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg requested that Sheriff Patti Cole-Tindall investigate the city officials’ deleted texts, but Cole-Tindall’s office has yet to announce the results. Durkan’s office previously claimed that an “unknown technology issue” caused the texts to go missing but a city-commissioned forensic report found that Durkan’s phone was changed in July 2020 to delete texts automatically after 30 days as well as texts stored in the cloud. Durkan also previously claimed that she dropped her phone in a tide pool on the July 4 weekend of that year. A subsequent forensic report commissioned by business owners and residents suing the city over the deadly autonomous zone revealed that Durkan texts were manually deleted. In February, the city settled that lawsuit for $3.65 million, including $600,000 in penalties for the deleted texts. The settlement came swiftly after a judge sanctioned the city for destroying evidence and noted that Durkan’s excuses “strained credibility.” Over 27,000 texts were deleted from Best’s phone and the most recent forensic reports show that phones used by Scoggins and others were reset in October 2020. In 2022, Seattle paid nearly $200,000 and pledged to improve its public records processes to settle a lawsuit brought by The Seattle Times that alleged the city had mishandled requests from reporters who asked for the messages between city officials. In February, the owner of a Korean restaurant filed a federal lawsuit against the city for the loss of business and expenses incurred during the notorious autonomous zone. Litigation against the city as a result of the zone has already cost Seattle over $11 million. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/bipartisan-bill-pentagon-mexican-drug-cartels-pushing-fentanyl Bipartisan bill would empower Pentagon to take down Mexican drug cartels pushing fentanyl Democrats and Republicans from the House and Senate will debut legislation that would declare fentanyl a national security threat and allow the Pentagon to take new action targeting Mexican drug cartels. Senate Armed Services Committee members Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) shared exclusively with the Washington Examiner Tuesday morning their forthcoming bipartisan, bicameral bill to use their oversight authority of the Department of Defense to force the federal government to take stronger actions against Mexican transnational criminal organizations. "The amount of lives lost in Iowa and across the country due to this deadly drug has far surpassed the federal government’s response, and we must scale immediately to combat this national security threat," Ernst said in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner. "This bipartisan work will engage Mexico as an active partner to counter fentanyl trafficking and put the Pentagon’s tools to use to save American lives.” The Disrupt Fentanyl Trafficking Act would require the Pentagon to develop a fentanyl-specific counterdrug strategy, including how to work directly with the Mexican military and to increase security operations with Mexico. Fentanyl is largely moved into the U.S. from Mexico, and the ingredients to make the powerful drug originate in China and are then shipped to producers in Mexico. Ernst and Kaine maintained that enlisting the Mexican government as an equal partner in the war on fentanyl is critical, given the southern neighbor has failed to get a hold of the problem over the past five years. Between 2017 and 2021, fentanyl seizures at the U.S. border increased by 950% — most of which occurred under Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Fentanyl has become the leading cause of death in U.S. adults between 18 and 45. President Joe Biden, in his State of the Union address earlier this year, vowed to do more to tackle the epidemic. Now before we end today, it’s time for a new segment I like to call the rundown: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/15/microsoft-activision-deal-eu-approves-takeover-of-call-of-duty-maker.html European Union regulators on Monday approved Microsoft’s proposed $69 billion acquisition of gaming firm Activision Blizzard, subject to remedies offered by the U.S. tech giant. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said that Microsoft offered remedies in the nascent area of cloud gaming that have staved off antitrust concerns. These remedies centered on allowing users to stream Activision games they purchase on any cloud streaming platform. Europe’s green light is a huge win for Microsoft, after the U.K.’s top competition authority last month blocked the deal. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/05/15/china-sentences-78-year-old-us-citizen-life-prison-spying-charges.html China sentenced a 78-year-old United States citizen to life in prison Monday on spying charges, in a case that could exacerbate the deterioration in ties between Beijing and Washington over recent years. Details of the charges against John Shing-Wan Leung, who also holds permanent residency in Hong Kong, have not been publicly released. Such investigations and trials are held behind closed doors and little information is generally released other than vague accusations of infiltration, gathering secrets and threatening state security. https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2023/05/15/81-year-old-martha-stewart-poses-for-sports-illustrated-swimsuit/ Martha Stewart, who is 81-years-old, posed for the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit, making her the oldest cover model in SI swimsuit issue history. That’s it… that’s all there is with that story. https://www.foxnews.com/sports/horse-euthanized-churchill-downs-broken-leg-becomes-8th-thoroughbred-die-track-last-2-weeks Another horse is dead after running at Churchill Downs, the site of the annual Kentucky Derby. Rio Moon broke his leg on Sunday near the finish line and had to be euthanized. The horse became the eighth to die in the last two weeks at the racetrack - seven died of multiple causes in the days, and hours, leading up to the May 6 Derby. https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/ja-morant-could-face-significant-suspension-to-start-2023-24-nba-season-over-latest-controversy-per-report/ In NBA news… The Memphis Grizzlies could start next season without their best player for a period of time. After an Instagram Live video circulated online that showed Grizzlies superstar Ja Morant holding what appeared to be a gun in a car, the All-Star guard was suspended by Memphis from all team activities. But that's not the only suspension Morant could be facing. The franchise centerpiece could be facing a "significant suspension" from the league, according to Adrian Wojnarowski. The video in question was from an Instagram Live on Saturday, and it shows Morant in a car with friends and for a brief second as the camera pans to him it appears that he is holding a gun. After the video made the rounds on social media, the Grizzlies suspended their star guard. The league then announced it was launching an investigation into the situation.

5pm - Seattle to pay $2.3 million to employees who blew whistle on Durkan's deleted texts // Win or lose in Game 7, this Kraken playoff run has turned Seattle into a hockey town // Taylor Swift Defends Fan from 'Aggressive' Security Mid-Performance in Viral Clip: 'Hey, Stop!' // LETTERSSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Learn about the latest in local public affairs in about the time it takes for a coffee break! Brian Callanan of Seattle Channel and David Kroman of the Seattle Times discuss the state special session and its work on fixing Washington's drug possession law, a facelift for Memorial Stadium, a settlement in the case against former Mayor Durkan's deleted texts, the filing deadline for Seattle City Council candidates, and a battle over... lawn mowing on the east side of Lake Washington. If you like this podcast, please support it on Patreon! 

An Interview With Blacksmith Artist Ellen Durkan

On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by political consultant and urban farmer, Heather Weiner. They talk about the newly uncovered messages that reveal former Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan allegedly ordered the abandonment of SPD's East Precinct, where the “Blake fix” stands after its failed vote in the legislature, the remaining need to address renter protections after the legislature passed major legislation to address the housing supply and affordability crisis, the success of the King County Crisis Care Centers levy, and the failure of the Kent School District bond underscoring the need for bond reform and for putting school measures on primary and general election ballots. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Heather Weiner at @hlweiner.   Heather Weiner Heather Weiner (she/her) is a political consultant with 30 years of experience on labor, environmental, LGBTQ, racial justice, and reproductive rights issues. She focuses on ballot initiatives, independent expenditures, legislative, union organizing and contract campaigns. She's a recovering lawyer.   Resources Teresa Mosqueda, Candidate for King County Council District 8 from Hacks & Wonks   ““Please Stop on the Teams Chat”: New Records Expose Mayor Durkan's Role and Others in Abandonment of East Precinct” by Glen Stellmacher from The Urbanist   “WA Legislature fails to pass new drug law; special session likely” by Joseph O'Sullivan from Crosscut   “No Clear Path Toward Criminalizing Drugs in Washington” by Ashley Nerbovig from The Stranger   “5 big things Washington's Legislature passed in 2023” by Melissa Santos from Axios   “Final state transportation budget boosts funding for highways, ferries, traffic safety and the Climate Commitment Act” from Washington State House Democrats   “Washington Legislature increases support for free school meals” by Griffin Reilly from The Columbian   “Washington State Rakes In Revenue From Capital Gains Tax” by Laura Mahoney from Bloomberg Tax   “Voters approve King County's crisis center levy” by Michelle Baruchman from The Seattle Times   “Voters turn down Kent School District bond measure” by Steve Hunter from The Kent Reporter   Find more stories that Crystal is reading here   Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I am 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 our Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is to 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 chat with Teresa Mosqueda about her campaign for King County Council District 8 - why she decided to run, the experience and lessons she wants to bring to the County from serving on the Seattle City Council, and her thoughts on the major issues facing residents of the County. Today, we are continuing our Friday shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show, today's co-host: political consultant and urban farmer - who now even has chicks - Heather Weiner. [00:01:26] Heather Weiner: Hi, Crystal - so nice to talk with you again. [00:01:29] Crystal Fincher: Nice to talk with you again. I guess I should clarify - chicks as in mini-chickens. [00:01:32] Heather Weiner: Well, I have had many chicks, but now I'm married. Yeah, I have four baby chicks in my office right now under a heat lamp - getting them settled and we'll move them out to the henhouse probably in about five or six weeks. So you may hear a little bit of baby chirping in the background here. [00:01:48] Crystal Fincher: A little bit of baby chirping. I did hear the chirps - they are adorable. I actually got a sneak peek and now I want some chicks. [00:01:57] Heather Weiner: Everybody does - you can't go back. [00:01:59] Crystal Fincher: Yes, yes, yes. Okay, I guess we'll start out talking with the news that broke yesterday on a long-standing story - stemming from the abandonment of Seattle PD's East Precinct, which happened in the middle of the 2020 protests amid a lot of controversy - sustained abuses and excess physical abuse by police against protesters and residents of the City. And in the middle of that, the abandonment of the East Precinct - which was at first almost tried to, spun as protesters forced them out - lots of hyperbole on Fox News and conservative media, all that kind of stuff. But for quite a long time, they said they had no idea who made the call to abandon the precinct. [00:02:48] Heather Weiner: But you know that Spiderman meme - where the Spiderman is, all the three Spidermans are standing in that triangle pointing at each other? This was a live-action Spiderman meme where we just had all of these high-ranking officials, high-paid officials within Seattle City government and the department pointing at each other and saying - It's your fault. No, it's your fault. No, it's your fault. But look at this news from internal chats that are coming within the Seattle IT department - who know better than to delete their text messages and their chats - saying the order came directly from Durkan, at exactly the same moment that Chief Best, then-Chief Best, was telling reporters there's no order to evacuate the East Precinct building. So liars are lying. [00:03:31] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, so it turns out Jenny Durkan ordered the Code Red and wow, there's been a lot of obfuscation about this. And even in these - in this records request and what was released - it is clear they are bending over backwards to avoid discussing this in a disclosable way, to avoid discussing this in a way that would be illuminated by issues like this. But they didn't get everyone in on the conspiracy in time. However, they did catch someone being like - Hey, hey, hey, hey, don't discuss this on the Teams chat. [00:04:01] Heather Weiner: Right. It literally says - Do not discuss this on the Teams chat - which was revealed in the public disclosure request. [00:04:07] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and - [00:04:08] Heather Weiner: I wonder why all those text messages between Best and Durkan were lost forever. [00:04:13] Crystal Fincher: Lost forever. [00:04:14] Heather Weiner: Oops, I dropped my phone in saltwater. [00:04:17] Crystal Fincher: And there's still an ongoing investigation into that. As a reminder, public employees can't delete records, not disclosable records. And this may be something for - we've talked about this before in the program - but for people outside of government, outside of politics, outside of that world may be like - Texts, they're deleted. I delete texts all the time. Everyone in the public sector knows that you don't do this. There are people in positions who handle these. You're constantly getting - Hey, this request came, do you have this document? Or where was this? We're responding to this. This is a regular course of business, and they clearly were trying to hide what was happening. Big controversy - texts from Carmen Best, from Mayor Durkan were deleted. Mayor Durkan is a former federal prosecutor who has been living in this world forever, who had to be retrained even on prior issues when she was with the City. And then those mysteriously deleted texts, which looks more and more like they were intentionally deleted in order to hide this information. [00:05:19] Heather Weiner: And now former Chief Best is now directing security at Microsoft, right? She got a nice hefty landing pad there for when she left. And so despite the fact that her veracity and her transparency are now deeply in question, she is getting paid - I'm going to say a lot of money - [00:05:38] Crystal Fincher: Oh, a ton of money. [00:05:39] Heather Weiner: -working across the water for Microsoft. I saw former Mayor Durkan at LAX a couple of weeks ago walking by and I have to say - [00:05:48] Crystal Fincher: I was about to be like - in Seattle? I could just see her - [00:05:50] Heather Weiner: No, at LAX - she was walking at LAX. [00:05:51] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that doesn't surprise me at all. [00:05:53] Heather Weiner: I just kind of stopped and looked at her. Of course, she didn't recognize me - who would? But I just - [00:05:57] Crystal Fincher: I would, Heather Weiner. [00:05:58] Heather Weiner: Ah, thank you - how many five foot tall - anyway, I'm not going to put myself down. So anyway, I did see her walking by and I did almost want to walk up to her and be like - What were you thinking, lady? But I didn't - nobody's happy transferring planes at LAX - even somebody who did that, I don't need to heckle them. It's also super interesting because there are so many lower-level employees, whether they're employees of the Seattle Police Department or Parks Department or wherever, who know that they will lose their jobs if they delete emails, text messages, anything that is subject to public disclosure requests. And so to have your highest ranking people doing that - you know who has not been mentioned in any of this is the current Chief of Police, who was an Assistant Chief at that time. How is, how, I'm always curious about why Diaz somehow was either not included in this chain, or hasn't ever been implicated in what's going on here. Was he just really - just not involved at all? That's crazy to me. [00:06:56] Crystal Fincher: I have no idea. Also haven't seen his name mentioned in this, but - [00:07:00] Heather Weiner: No, I know. I've asked reporters - Is Diaz literally nowhere here, or did he just do a spectacular job of cleaning out his records? [00:07:08] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. [00:07:09] Heather Weiner: Don't know. [00:07:09] Crystal Fincher: Don't know, but this is the saga that won't end. And to your point, this is really about accountability. This is about - do rules apply to everybody, and do people - do public servants have an obligation to the people? [00:07:22] Heather Weiner: You're starting to make a case now about what's happening in the State Legislature with transparency there, and where reporters and open government folks are really putting a lot of pressure on the State Legislature to open up their records. And legislators say - Look, I can't make decisions, I can't go through drafts, I can't do any of this - if I feel like all of it's going to be subject to public scrutiny when it's not final yet. It's legal - involving lawmaking, so therefore it is protected under legal exemptions. What do you think about that? [00:07:52] Crystal Fincher: I wonder why that's different than any of the other legislative bodies, like city councils across the state or county councils, who have more generous and open transparency policies. And again, this is happening on the public dime. There is a measure of accountability here, especially when so consistently through these records requests, we find out such egregious information. Just as a reminder - it wasn't any external investigation, it was a public records request that - in the City of Kent - uncovered that there was a Nazi assistant police chief. And that is a literal statement - literal Nazi, with Nazi symbols, and a Hitler mustache, and literally all of that - that only came to light because of public disclosure requests. And in this time where we have so many fewer reporters covering what's happening across the state and they only make it to the biggest things because they're stretched that thin, transparency becomes even more important. Because there may not be someone there to answer the questions, to cover how something came to be - this is our only record of how it came to be. And people should see who is influencing policy. [00:08:58] Heather Weiner: Right, and how the sausage was made. Listeners, you will be shocked to hear that good and bad politicians out there get around this by using their personal phones. Now, they're not supposed to use their personal phones for official taxpayer funded business, but they do. And so even if we did get a lot of those text message records about what was happening around the East Precinct, one can imagine that probably there was a lot of conversations going on - unrecorded conversations on the phone, in person, undocumented conversations, but also conversations on personal cell phones. Now again, I just want to point out - if any other lower-level employees were caught doing this, they would be fired, right? Cops would be sent to OPA. All kinds of things would happen. But when you're a higher-level political appointee, apparently, you get off scot-free. [00:09:41] Crystal Fincher: You do. [00:09:42] Heather Weiner: Speaking of cops - you want to talk about the Blake - what's happening with Blake, and what's happening there? [00:09:49] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, let's talk about what's happening with the Blake decision. So we just had the end of the legislative session - a lot of bills were passed before then, but some of the most contentious bills took 'til the very last day or two to get decided. [00:10:04] Heather Weiner: Last hour. Oh my - as usual - I just feel for everybody working three in the morning, four in the morning. It must be just absolutely exhausting. [00:10:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, when the Legislature does that - just the amount of work that support staff have to do to support the entire operation, to keep information moving under these incredibly tight deadlines. They're working so hard and so long. I think - so the Blake fix, in year's time? Time is an interesting thing for me these days. A few years back - yeah, our State - [00:10:35] Heather Weiner: Not yesterday, but also not 10 years ago. [00:10:37] Crystal Fincher: Yes. More than a year ago, less than 10 years ago - which anything in that zone consistently gets confused for me now. Yes. Our State Supreme Court invalidated - basically said the law about personal possession of substances, of drugs, was invalidated - took the law away. And so it instantly made possession of drugs legal. There was nothing illegal to do with the possession that didn't do with anything with paraphernalia, with selling or distribution, all those other peripheral things still remained in place. But for possession - [00:11:14] Heather Weiner: Personal use possession. [00:11:16] Crystal Fincher: Yes. And so under a certain threshold, or thresholds that come into play sometimes in policy with this. So in year before last, our Legislature - this happened during the legislative session, actually. And so they said - Oh my goodness, we can't let this stand. Even though best practices, sound public policy says that our really expensive and damaging War on Drugs has failed and treating substance abuse issues like a public health crisis and problem is the way to make progress in actually dealing with addiction, actually getting people off of drugs and getting people healthier, and reducing all the impacts surrounding that by crime and different things. But our Legislature basically said - We are not comfortable with that, and so we're going to re-institute a penalty - a misdemeanor - add some diversion in there, fund some kind of diversion-root-cause-drug-court-type things across the state. But they put a sunset clause in that law and said basically - Summer 2023, this is going to sunset, basically expire and terminate on its own. And in the meantime, that'll give us time to figure out something else that we want to do, or stay on the course. But the concern about invalidating that law at the state level was that municipalities, localities, counties, and cities, and towns can make their own laws if they want to in the absence of a state law on that issue. So some have said - Well, it's going to be more confusing to have a patchwork of different drug possession laws across the state, which is not ideal. It's not ideal. But the question is - is that more harmful than what this proposed fix was, which wound up being a gross misdemeanor - which is different than a simple misdemeanor and can come with sometimes financial penalties and jail time that exceeds that of the lowest level felonies. And so from a - we have talked about on this show - but jail, carceral solutions, do not reduce recidivism any more than non-carceral solutions. Throwing someone in jail doesn't reduce their likelihood of committing a crime in the future. And certainly in the case of substance use disorder, it does not address any of the issues about that. And all it does is destabilize and usually throw people further into addiction, further away from being able to rebuild their lives and get healthy again. So this debate is taking place, while evidence and data and lots of people are saying that. But you also have people who really advocate for punitive punishment measures. And even though we have spent decades and billions, if not trillions, of dollars on this War on Drugs, domestically and internationally, it's as bad as it's ever been. [00:14:06] Heather Weiner: Yeah, and it's a war on people who have an illness. It is a disease. And it's a public health issue, not a crime issue. And so to put people in jail who have alcoholism - we've already been shown that does not work. It's the same thing with addictions to other substances. It just doesn't work. And in fact, you're right - it makes it worse. So now we see local folks - Reagan Dunn, three of our City Councilmembers here in Seattle - who are proposing instituting their own gross misdemeanor rules in their jurisdictions. And it's going to cost more in taxpayer dollars to house people in jail - who are going through withdrawal, who are going to have massive health problems, and then are going to get out and not have money and not have support - than it would to put them in housing. [00:14:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And to - [00:14:56] Heather Weiner: And if the real problem here is that we, as the public, don't want to see people suffering on the street - how is it that paying more for them to go into jail than to put them into supportive housing is going to solve the problem? It doesn't make any sense to me. It's not a solution. It is painting over the parts of your house that are disintegrating, that are moldy and disintegrating, and they're trying to paint it over instead of dealing with the leak in the first place. Wow. That was a really stretched out analogy. Not sure that anybody should use that. All right, anyway. So it doesn't make any sense to me - you're right. It's political posturing, coming into election time and municipal election time. Yeah, it's going to be super interesting to see how this is used. And the local news media has been doing this, not just here in Washington state but around the country, has been using this fear around people who have a disease - and they are using that as a fear to other people, but also to cause political dissension in our country. And it is not as bad in Seattle as everybody is saying. Yes, we do have a problem, but it is not as bad as what the news is portraying. It is part of the fear mongering. [00:16:10] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I don't think there's anyone who really, who doesn't want to do more to address this problem or doesn't acknowledge that substance use disorder is a problem - that we don't want to be seeing this, that it can lead to other things. We all know and understand that. We just want to do something that actually fixes it instead of landing us in the same place we've been for the last 30, 40 years under this War on Drugs, where we just punitively punish people for that. And - [00:16:38] Heather Weiner: For a disease. [00:16:39] Crystal Fincher: For a disease and I - or, there are also people who just use substances who are not addicted and based on what we classify as an illegal drug or not - there are people who drink alcohol socially. [00:16:53] Heather Weiner: I'm one. [00:16:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that's a drug. [00:16:54] Heather Weiner: I'm one. I have been seen with - the fact that the mayor is now proposing open container rules in certain neighborhoods, where people can walk around with open containers - but they're not allowed to be seen with a different substance? Yeah, just the irony, the inconsistency - call Alanis Morissette. [00:17:10] Crystal Fincher: The irony and inconsistency and - look, drug laws, very punitive drug laws have been a major contributor to mass incarceration, to an incredibly disproportionate impact on Black and Brown people. And what we're seeing now. Yeah, I have some thoughts. So one - [00:17:32] Heather Weiner: Do you? [00:17:33] Crystal Fincher: I do. [00:17:33] Heather Weiner: Maybe you should start a podcast. [00:17:35] Crystal Fincher: This should not be a surprise to a lot of people. But this posturing and grandstanding, just - number one, there is talk of a special session. And they're trying to figure out if they can get to a place on this, where they can agree and do something that's actively being talked about. There may be a special session. This has been reported on. So because they're working on this and because people at the county level are talking about dealing with this - all this talk from mayors and city council members is just premature. It's putting the cart before the horse. And it's grandstanding. And it's so plain to see. Allow the people who are working on this to continue working on this. Notice they didn't have any issue with doing that over the past few years. They just recognize that - Ooh, maybe this is an issue we can capitalize on. But I would caution them that it didn't turn out too well for them last year when they tried to bombard, to flood the zone with all of the voter, direct voter contact, media talking about crime and drugs. And they're gonna try and crack down and make drugs illegal again, all that kind of stuff. [00:18:48] Heather Weiner: Look, let's go ahead and let's blame people who are actually symptoms of the larger problem. And the problem is number one, we don't have enough affordable housing. Number two, we have a ton of people who are suffering from trauma and for all different kinds of way - whether it's in the military, in their own households, in their own family. And one of the ways that the body responds to trauma is to try to find a way to not feel the trauma. And that's a lot of what substance use disorder is. Three, we - the Republicans and some Democrats 12 years ago - cut massive funding from mental health and addiction services. And now we don't have enough places for people to go, as we see where the hospitals are overloaded with people who are suffering from mental health disorders. And now the chickens have come to roost. Look, I brought it back to chickens. [00:19:33] Crystal Fincher: There you go. You have brought it back, we're full circle. [00:19:36] Heather Weiner: Brought it back to chickens, to the chickens. [00:19:39] Crystal Fincher: To the chickens. [00:19:40] Heather Weiner: So these are all symptoms of this massive problem. Inslee tried to do something where he wanted to float a massive bond to raise money for housing - that didn't pay out. Some Democrats at least tried to raise some money from a REET on luxury housing and massive buildings that would fund affordable housing - a tax on real estate sales. The real estate lobby killed, the realtor lobby killed that. We tried to get rental caps this year to make sure that landlords, corporate landlords are not egregiously raising rents and causing economic evictions and destabilizing communities - that didn't pass. So let's just crack down on people and put them in jail. Are the jails empty? Is that what's going on? Is there a massive demand? [00:20:20] Crystal Fincher: Oh, totally empty. We're totally not experiencing issues of overcrowding, suicides, deaths from illness, injuries, understaffing - none of that is a problem that they're actively having to spend millions of dollars to deal with and facing lawsuits. No, not a problem at all. But yes, that whole situation is there. So we'll see how this unfolds. But I also want to - some people have tried to characterize this as a Democrat versus Republican issue - on the drug - it is not. This is an issue where there are a variety of stances on the Democratic and Republican side, really. And Democrats control the Legislature and they came forward with a bill, after all the talk and compromise, that landed at gross misdemeanor. The sky-is-falling argument was - Well, we have to do this because otherwise they're going to really criminalize it locally. So this is good enough. I have noticed that no proposal from conservative or Republican mayors or city councils have gone further than the Democratic legislature did. So were they negotiating themselves down? Again? [00:21:21] Heather Weiner: Fair. [00:21:22] Crystal Fincher: And is what we're actually going to wind up with worse than having that statewide? Would we rather have a significant recriminalization statewide, or have lower penalties and more treatment access across the board, or in more places in the state? That's something that they're going to have to deal with, but - [00:21:41] Heather Weiner: When do we think this special session might be called? It feels like there is a hard deadline, right? Of June. [00:21:47] Crystal Fincher: It feels like it, but I don't know. I have no inside information on those conversations or anything. [00:21:53] Heather Weiner: And when they have a special session, they can only address the issue that the special session has been called for. So there's no sneaking other things in there at the same time, which is good. Although there's a lot of things that were left unfinished. [00:22:04] Crystal Fincher: There is. And also legislators don't like special sessions often because it takes them away from campaigning - because they can't raise money while they're in session. [00:22:14] Heather Weiner: That's another reason why we need a full-time legislature and not a legislature where people have other jobs that they have to go do. They're paid so little, they have to have other jobs. And as a result, they just don't have time to do all the things that need to get done. And they don't have time to do it in a really thoughtful way, unfortunately - that things do get rushed. [00:22:30] Crystal Fincher: And that's why we have a disproportionate amount of wealthy and out-of-touch people in our legislators. [00:22:36] Heather Weiner: And white. Yes. And why we keep losing our legislators of color. [00:22:40] Crystal Fincher: Talking about some of the other things you touched on that we were able to see at the conclusion of the Legislature, of this legislative session - certainly, as we talked about last week, some significant movement on some housing bills. But as you mentioned, no relief for renters, which is a major component of keeping people in housing, preventing displacement, and keeping housing more affordable. [00:23:03] Heather Weiner: Yeah. 40% of Washingtonians are renters - 40%. That's a significant portion. And our rents are skyrocketing. There's articles in Crosscut about Walla Walla - retirees who are getting pushed out, they're having to do all kinds of crazy things in order to keep their housing. And a lot of this is because corporate landlords are using algorithms - kind of like what Airbnb does - to jack up prices in response to how the other corporate landlords are doing things. And so I wouldn't really call it collusion, but they are using these formulas to maximize the amount of profit that they make. And as a result, what we're seeing is massive community destabilization. Single parents with children have to move their kids from school district to school district. Retirees, our elders are leaving their neighbors - they don't know anybody around them, they don't know how to ask for help. Our veterans, who may already be facing a lot of challenges, are also being moved and destabilized. It's not good for communities. It's not good for Washington state. And when I see things like in today's news where they say - Half of people are thinking about moving out of Washington state - they don't really say why, but the reason is the rent is too high. It's time for the State Legislature to do something to provide relief for 40% of the state's residents. And I myself am a landlord - I have a small house that I rent out and I 100%, like many landlords, support rent caps and rent stabilization. [00:24:35] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I didn't even know you were a landlord. [00:24:36] Heather Weiner: Well, landlady. I don't know. It's kind of gendered. [00:24:40] Crystal Fincher: And yeah - I could talk a lot about that. But there are, we are suffering certainly at the hands of big corporate landlords. And they love nothing more than to try and paint all of the landlords - it's we're just little ma and pa, just we just had an extra house, and we're just out of the kindness of our hearts, just being housing providers. Some lobbyists are calling them housing providers. They're not housing providers. They're housing dealers. [00:25:05] Heather Weiner: I know - it's like job creators, right? [00:25:07] Crystal Fincher: Which is fine, but let's call it what it is. [00:25:10] Heather Weiner: Look, the way that the law was drafted, that was supported by the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance, the way that the law was drafted is for the first 10 years of a building's - that a building is, or a unit, is being rented out - there's no rental cap on there as it adjusts to the market rate, figures out what's going on. And then you could always increase the rent once somebody moves out. But if somebody is living in that unit, you can't raise the rent - according to this law, you couldn't raise the rent more than 7% based on inflation and essentially economically evict them. And there is nothing wrong with that. There were lots of landlords who came out - family, mom and pop landlords, like me - who came out and said - Yeah, that sounds completely reasonable. That's what I would like to do. But it's the big corporate real estate lobby that once again came in and killed it. [00:25:56] Crystal Fincher: Yeah - once again. And so I guess what I would say is - there was a big, broad coalition that was put together by the legislators who sponsored this legislation - by organizations, activists, Futurewise certainly was huge in helping to get this passed. I hope that coalition stands up as strongly over the next year - through the next session - for mitigations, for rent relief, for helping people stay in their homes. Because that is as critical to getting costs in line, to keeping people in the communities where they are and their houses where they are, and reducing homelessness. It is as critical - this isn't an either-or - this is we absolutely need both. And so I hope this coalition continues to show up for the communities that have showed up for them and work to get this passed. Also, just want to talk about a couple other things they were highlighting. The budget was worked on until the very end. Democrats are touting investments in ferries, some modest investments in traffic safety. We had the first allocation of funds from the Climate Commitment Act that came in - still need to dig more into that to see where it's going and if they are living up to their promises to make sure that they are centering communities that are most impacted by climate change and pollution. And also workforce investments, workforce equity investments across the board. They did increase the cap for special education, which does increase funding, but not nearly at the level that is needed. There was a bill that didn't make it through that started off as free lunch for everyone, which we've talked about a few times before on this show, which - was a huge supporter of and thinking that - Of course, that totally makes sense. How is this controversial? Unfortunately it was - there was a trimmed down bill that increased access, that increased the number of people that could get school lunch programs. Basically, I think it's in schools or districts that met a certain threshold - if a kid asked for a free lunch, then it could be given to them in those districts. I want to say that it was 50 - I'm just throwing out numbers, but I'll figure that out and put it in the resources and show notes. But it was a trimmed down bill. A lot of good things happened - like many sessions - a lot of good things happened. A lot of disappointing things happen, and we just move forward and we continue to work and we continue to push and we hopefully continue to hold our legislators accountable for the decisions that they're making. [00:28:29] Heather Weiner: Let's have - let's end on a good note, on a positive note. Here's some good news. So article just came out in Bloomberg Tax - I know you read that every morning, Crystal, I know you do - and the new capital gains tax that was passed about two years ago is now finally being collected. The Washington Supreme Court ruled that it was legal and it's now being collected for the first time. There were estimates by policy experts that it would be, probably in the first year, somewhere around $450, maybe $500 million raised from taxes on the sales of huge stock market gains. Doesn't apply to 99.8% of us. And they thought it would raise maybe $500 million. According to the Department of Revenue, $833 million raised for schools, childcare, preschool, and other education. Amazing amount of money. But here's what you got to think about is how rich are people that they are having stock market gains where a 7% tax on their stock market gains over a quarter of a million dollars is raising nearly a billion. That's a lot of money being moved between stocks over there in rich people land. I couldn't believe it. It blows my mind. [00:29:37] Crystal Fincher: It is - absolutely, and more there. So I also hope that the work of the wealth tax picks up next session because it's absolutely needed and we can see how much of an impact that it does make. Also, we had a special election this week. In King County, there were - depending on where you were at - everyone voted on the Crisis Care Centers Levy, which passed. And so we are going to be having five new regional crisis care centers in the County. There are also provisions for helping to boost the workforce, increase the staffing levels in an area that's already really stressed and really hurting for staff. And what was your take on this? [00:30:18] Heather Weiner: I think it's great, but also people are going to come into these crisis centers and where are they going to send them? There's not any housing. So I think it's a great idea. It's a good first step to get people through. But I'm concerned that you're still in crisis at the end of the day. [00:30:32] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I feel similarly - a lot is going to be about the implementation. We absolutely need more resources. And if this is done well, and if this is done right, it'll be helpful. We have also heard a ton of stories about challenging care, especially when that care is involuntary - when someone is in a major crisis. And so I think it's going to be really paying attention to the implementation of this and making sure that they are following best practices, and that people are treated with dignity and respect, and really the focus is on their healing over everything else. We'll see how it turns out, but I deem it to be a helpful - these are absolutely resources that we need. And we can do this better than we have done it before. And we should - we owe it to everyone to do that, so we'll see. Also, Kent School District had a bond vote, also on this same ballot, that failed. School bonds raise for buildings, for capital expenditures - those races, elections carry a higher threshold to pass a bond. It's 60% as opposed to 50% - which is a big, big difference between 60% and 50%, when you just look at elections across the board. This one actually didn't even make 50%. And I, once again, am begging school boards, people in school districts to stop putting these ballot measures on special election ballots. Put it on the general election ballot. If you must, put it on the primary ballot. But stick to those, especially in a district like King County, when turnout is everything. When it comes to these school levies, school bonds - having them in higher turnout elections obviously is going to increase the support. In the same way that we know in Seattle - if it's a very high turnout election, that's going to be a more progressive election than a really low turnout election. So let's just stop doing this, please. Do you have any thoughts about special elections and school levies? [00:32:25] Heather Weiner: Look, the big thing is we keep going back to the people over and over again to pass what are essentially regressive taxes, whether it's for the school levies or for the crisis center. I want to point out that one of the major funders of the crisis center levy - which I supported - one of the major funders was John Stanton, who is on the wall of shame for his work to kill the capital gains tax, to hit up the taxpayers to pay for his stadium to the tunes of hundreds of millions of dollars. And yet he wants to put a regressive tax on the rest of us. The solution here is not to keep passing, or trying to pass, these little regressive taxes to patch the leaky roof. See, I'm back to that analogy. It is to pass wealth tax and other taxes on the incredibly super rich billionaires and ultra millionaires that we have in this state. [00:33:13] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, April 28th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today is political consultant and urban farmer, Heather Weiner. You can find Heather on Twitter @hlweiner, that's W-E-I-N-E-R. You can follow me on Twitter at Hacks & Wonks - that's @HacksWonks. Or you can follow me on Twitter @finchfrii, or on Blue Sky, or basically any platform at finchfrii - that's F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical and Friday week-in-review shows to your podcast feed. If you like us, 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 official hacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, political consultant and host Crystal Fincher is joined by friend of the show and today's co-host: Executive Director of The Urbanist, Doug Trumm!  They look at WA traffic policy discussions, middle housing arguments, the Working Families Tax Credit, Shasti Conrad as the new WA Democrats Chair, King County and Seattle Council elections, and new Durkan/Best controversy news.  This week, Washington state lawmakers met to discuss ways the state can work to decrease traffic deaths, mostly focusing on education and traffic enforcement, as well as banning turning right on red at certain intersections. Lawmakers also spoke out against the legislature's middle housing bill. 46th LD Rep Gerry Pollet, and Seattle City Council Member Alex Pedersen have come out against the push to increase housing density. Also this week, lobbyist Cody Arledge wes barred from the Capitol campus after a judge found he was stalking State Rep. Lauren Davis of Shoreline. Despite this not being his first issue with stalking and threatening behavior, Arledge had some big clients, including the City of Seattle.  The Working Families Tax Credit went live this week! Please look at the resources below to find out if you're eligible and apply. Automatic tax programs like TurboTax might not automatically alert you of eligibility for the tax, so be on the lookout.  Washington State Democrats elected Shasti Conrad as their new chair last Saturday, following Tina Podlodowski's successful run in the role. Meanwhile, Seattle councilmember Tammy Morales announced that she will be running for re-election on the Seattle City Council, while councilmember Teresa Mosqueda announced her run for King County Council. This news continues to show that this year's elections will bring major change to our state and council leadership.  In other election news, King County voters have until February 14th to vote in the race for King County Conservation District board. Crystal and Doug break down what the board is and why it's an important decision. Voters in the county will also be voting this April on whether the county will implement a $1.25 billion levy to fund crisis care networks.  Finally, Crystal and Doug wrap up the show with a new update on the controversies surrounding Former Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and Former Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best. New reporting from Carolyn Bick of The South Seattle Emerald shows that Durkan might have pushed the OPA to delay its investigations into Best, deepening the number of violations the former mayor performed.  As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Doug Trumm, on Twitter at @dmtrumm.   Resources “How the SPOG Contract Stands in the Way of Police Accountability with Shannon Cheng” hosted by Crystal Fincher at Hacks and Wonks    “State Road Safety Push Overlooks Design, Dwells on Enforcement” by Gregory Quetin from The Urbanist    “Pollet, Pedersen, and Blethen Assail State Housing Push” by Ray Dubicki from The Urbanist    “Prominent lobbyist barred from WA Capitol after ruling he stalked state representative” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times   “Applications for the WA Working FAmilies Tax Credit are live. This is who is eligible” by Jared Gendron from The News Tribune    “How to sign up for WA's new Working Families Tax Credit” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times     “WA Democrats choose Shasti Conrad as new leader”  by David Gutman from The Seattle Times     “Incumbent Tammy Morales seeks re-election in Seattle District 2” - by Josh Cohen from Crosscut   “Mosqueda Announces Run for Vacant King County Council Seat” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist     “King County voters to decide on Crisis Care Centers Levy in April” by CHS from Capitol Hill Seattle Blog   “Meet the candidates for the little-known King Conservation District board” by Guy Oron form Real Change News   “Fmr. Mayor May Have Pushed OPA to Delay Investigations Into Fmr. Police Chief” by Carolyn Bick from South Seattle Emerald  Transcript [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 Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show 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 midweek show, I had a conversation with Hacks & Wonks' very own Dr. Shannon Cheng, also of People Power Washington - Police Accountability. Shannon taught us about the intricacies of how the Seattle Police Officers Guild contract stands in the way of police accountability and what the City can do to try and create more accountability. Today, we're continuing our almost-live Friday show 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: Executive Director of The Urbanist, Doug Trumm. [00:01:21] Doug Trumm: Hi Crystal - thanks for having me. [00:01:22] Crystal Fincher: Great to have you here, Doug. We have a full week of news to review when it comes to politics and policy in Washington state. Wanted to start just following up on something that has - we've just gotten a drumbeat of news week after week, day after day - in a couple of very high profile recent pedestrian collisions, cars hitting pedestrians in the Seattle area. It's skyrocketed both in Seattle and in the region. This is a crisis. And there was a press conference this week about that. What happened? [00:01:56] Doug Trumm: Yeah, the state is taking a look at safety. They know that the statewide safety data is really bad. It's going up. The state also has a goal of trying to get to zero traffic deaths by 2030 and it's had that goal a long time and it's just not going anywhere quick. So the state lawmakers gathered, Governor Inslee was there, you had the two Transportation Chairs - Marko Liias in the Senate and Jake Fey in the House. And they had a lot of proposals - there's a lot of legislation proposed this session. But most of it is focused on enforcement and education, and most cities that have done Vision Zero really well have really focused on design in addition to those things. It's definitely some troubling signs and our contributor, Greg Quetin, had a piece on that - just talking about, Hey, we need more design focus. So I encourage folks to check that out for more. But there is some good stuff proposed, like banning right turn on red in busy areas - pedestrian heavy areas - is a good idea and would be very happy to see that pass. But some of these other bills - if we're just talking about giving state troopers bonuses and putting state troopers out on more roads, there's really diminishing returns on that. And might make sense to ramp up enforcement of drunk driving and things like that and lower the limit - that's a good idea. But I think if we're trying to get to zero, we have to start looking at design too. [00:03:18] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Pedestrian fatalities have actually increased during these few recent years while this Vision Zero program has been in place. And like you talked about, there's stuff about education, there's stuff about enforcement. You did talk about the right turn on red - cars turning red into pedestrians, into bikes is a really big problem. So that's why the banning the right turn on red is a proposed solution and really looking at balancing - Okay, we're talking about a minute delay potentially for a driver and that can make the difference of saving someone's life or preventing someone from being maimed in a collision with a car. And so really looking at - hey, we have to balance - yes, people are trying to get around in cars on roads and freeways, but also we have a lot of people who are getting around on foot, on bike, who are waiting for transit, who are very vulnerable to cars - and they can inflict lethal damage. They're doing that with increasing frequency and something has to be done. Now, when you talk about design choices, what kinds of things are you talking about? [00:04:31] Doug Trumm: Yeah, I think the lowest hanging fruit - the state has pretty much full control over state routes, highways throughout communities. And those do - they have an important role to play as far as moving people between metro areas and cities, and moving freight and everything. But when they come through heavily populated areas, the state could easily slow traffic there by - either redesign the street to be narrower because people tend to go slower when there's narrower roads, doing things like bump outs at intersections so pedestrians have shorter crossing distances. There's things with a ton of data behind them to show that this decreases the likelihood of a high speed crash. And shorter pedestrian crossing distances is often something that will help with that - you're just exposed less time. It also sends a cue to a driver - Hey, oh, there's something in my field of vision here. I'm not just on this wide rainbow road, like in Mario Kart. I have obstacles here. There was Amber Weilert, a parent of a kid - a 13-year-old kid - who got killed in Pierce County on his bike. Very sad story. That was the best part of the press conference - is they let someone speak from her own experience. And she was nice enough to share her story, which is very tragic. But that road is a super wide road, and that probably contributed to her son being killed. So if we were to redesign that road to be narrower, maybe Michael Weilert would still be alive. [00:06:15] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So we will continue to follow the progress on action taken as a result of this. We heard news that the City of Seattle recently received a grant for traffic safety improvements. We will see how those end up being implemented, but this is absolutely a problem that needs a solution. Also at the state level in our Legislature, there continues to be a housing push for middle housing, for some price mitigation, renter protection factors. But we saw Gerry Pollett - who is currently a state legislator in the 46th district, who is rumored to be considering running for city council - Alex Pedersen, and The Seattle Times oppose the housing push. What were they saying? [00:07:02] Doug Trumm: Same old, same old, Crystal. They're mad that someone's making money off of this that's not them, as homeowners. But The Seattle Times kicked the ball off there with this kind of screed about how this bill is a giveaway to developers, and it's not going to create affordable housing, it's not going to meet whatever - everything is wrong with it. You never can win with folks like that because they want all new development to fit in this perfectly narrow box, which Ray Dubicki did a good job of laying out in our coverage over this week that - what would it take for The Seattle Times to be happy with it? We do live in a capitalist society. We don't go to the grocery store and expect all the wholesalers to make no money doing what they're doing. The reality is until the socialist takeover, or whatever the communist takeover - it would really have to be - if you want housing to get developed, someone's going to be making money off it. So this constant whining about developers making money off of housing people, it just seems to me like a distraction and disingenuous. The Seattle Times is all too happy for people to make money off of their single family homes. They also made a ton of money when they sold their property to developers and built a skyscraper there, so they're not immune to this themselves. It was a lot of bad arguments and of course, Gerry Pollett and Alex Pedersen loved it. Alex Pedersen had a whole long tome in his newsletter about agreeing with it and developers being evil - hitting those points hard. I'm not exactly sure what they were expecting as far as affordable housing. Alex Pedersen did have this proposal that only - basically, low-income housing should be the only thing allowed to be built above the current zoning. But those kind of proposals - when you actually talk to affordable housing providers, they realize that, No, that's not really workable. You're not going to be able to build only nonprofit housing because nonprofit houses can scale up but they can't carry the load for the entire housing needs. You don't have to be terribly sophisticated to realize that you build the housing now and eventually, it becomes more affordable. If you build no market-rate housing, you're not helping working-class folks. [00:09:39] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. There seems to be broad agreement and voter support. And looking at who voters have been supporting for various positions - for increased housing, for more middle housing, more housing for everyone. Certainly that is not the only thing that is needed to make sure that displacement stops, that people are not thrown out of housing in the short term, and that renters are treated fairly. But it's hard to find people these days, especially experts, who say that housing supply does not need to increase in order to address our affordability crisis. When you look at housing prices, when you look at rental prices - it is a crisis. The average person who's not a high wage worker in Seattle can't afford to live in Seattle, can't afford to live in many communities that used to be really accessible to a lot of people. Suburbs are skyrocketing in cost and even though the rate of increase is slowing down, it's actually still increasing. So we will see how that plays out. But Gerry Pollett certainly made news last session for his opposition and kind of being the person most responsible for the death of the middle housing bill - and seems like he would be excited to play that same role again, despite such widespread support in the community for a different path. [00:11:12] Doug Trumm: And he's just not being honest about what his position is, which is also frustrating. If you block something, at least own it - but he was trying to have it both ways. And then he does this Facebook post, which might have more to do with indicating he might want to run for city council than any serious policy discussion. [00:11:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, we will see. We know that he is not on some of the committees that he did want to be on. And that may also hasten his desire to exit from the Legislature, but we'll stay tuned on the developments there. Also this week, there was news that came out about a prominent lobbyist being barred from the Capitol after he stalked State Representative Lauren Davis. What happened here? [00:11:54] Doug Trumm: This was a surprising case where this lobbyist thinks that he can just keep doing this. And he's in a prominent firm, so I don't know if that's part of what he thinks he can get away with. He already had a domestic abuse allegation from the 90s or early 2000s, so it wasn't like this was completely out of character for him - which makes his case harder to make that, Oh, he was just trying to do his job and that's why he kept hounding Representative Davis. And he just, it's just - we need to just put this stuff behind us - people can't get away with this kind of thing. And he can certainly still do his job without violating his - terms of his restraining order. [00:12:45] Crystal Fincher: So Lauren Davis did get a domestic violence protection order. This lobbyist, Cody Arledge - it looks like kind of the textbook intimidation, threatening, stalking, veiled threats. And a judge found that there was cause for risk and concern, and granted that protective order. He ended up - he also had a number of firearms that were confiscated by the police. He actually petitioned to get them back. There was an extreme risk protection order that prevented that from happening. And as you said, this is not his first instance with domestic violence. Davis and Arledge evidently had a relationship in 2021. But before that, he was in a relationship with a woman, requested that - she requested that they stop, he stopped contacting her. He continued to do so using various email addresses, cloaking his phone number. It just seems like this person does not take no for an answer. And then with Lauren Davis seemed to move it into something that would affect her work and sending veiled threat that was alleged to her office. And so it just looked like it was escalating behavior. And Cody Arledge of The Arledge Group is not able to be basically around the Capitol when Lauren Davis is there, has violated a protection order before - and so hopefully everybody remains safe and these measures are enough to keep Lauren Davis and other women who he may have had or will have relationships with safe. [00:14:35] Doug Trumm: And he has some big clients, including the City of Seattle. I wonder if this will end up impacting those, but - lobbyists are known for not always being the most upstanding citizens, but I think this is on another level and pretty unfortunate. Why is it always people like this who have a gun locker with 17 guns in it, you know? [00:14:57] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. I don't want to paint all lobbyists with the same brush. Some are wonderful, doing wonderful work and advocacy for excellent organizations that we support. But certainly this is alarming. This is a lobbyist that does, like you said, has a lot of big Democratic and left-leaning clients. And we still have to hold everybody accountable no matter what. [00:15:21] Doug Trumm: The Alliance for Gun Responsibility. I hope he - I hope he follows it himself, although not all of his guns are in his gun lockers - some are just on top of his fridge. [00:15:28] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Some were definitely insecurely and dangerously stored. So that has happened. Also this week - one thing that went live that we definitely want to mention is the Working Families Tax Credit for Washington state - this is a state, not a federal tax credit - is now live. And the application is live. We will link to how you can apply for that. But basically in a nutshell, families that have, or people that have children - their children living with them - are eligible for up to $1,200. There are some qualifications and income tiers that apply, but that is live now. And one thing that I definitely wanted to mention about this is that if you are using TurboTax - which is known and has been cited for deceptive practices before - will not call your attention to this, or let you know that you may be eligible for this up to $1,200 tax credit. So make sure that you separately seek out - if you have kids, take a look and see if you are eligible for this - because your tax preparation software, if you are using that or if you're doing it yourself, may not automatically flag that this is something that you're eligible for on a state level. [00:16:48] Doug Trumm: Yeah, get your money. [00:16:49] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Some tax programs will. TurboTax is definitely one that won't. But $1,200 can make a big difference to a lot of people. And I hope everyone who is eligible does apply and get what they're due. In other news this week, Shasti Conrad, former Chair of the King County Democrats, was elected as the Washington Democrats Chair. Was there anything notable to you about this? [00:17:13] Doug Trumm: Yeah, I thought that was a great pick - had a chance to meet Shasti a few times. I think it signifies they are - as someone who's young, who's a woman of color - that's exactly where they should be going. And she has worked on a ton of great campaigns, pretty strong ties to progressives and the mainstream as well. But I think that's a great pick and there certainly has been angst in the past about how King County Democrats have been run, but I think she's someone who can come in and do a great job. [00:17:44] Crystal Fincher: I do appreciate the way Shasti steered the King County Democrats, especially after the problems and controversies that they had prior to her. And really did a lot of groundbreaking work in recruiting PCOs - getting more people active at the grassroots level at the party - and doing more to support candidates, recruit and support more diverse candidates in lots of different ways - younger candidates, working well with labor. She really seemed to understand building coalitions and increasing majorities and increasing Democratic representation around the county. Certainly, Seattle is a place where mostly Democrats get elected, but elsewhere in the county, there are a number of swing districts and certainly saw movement in that direction with those. Shasti is taking over after Tina Podlodowski decided to step down. After her largely successful term at the King County Democrats, I'm really looking to hear what Shasti is planning to do statewide. I know she has talked about plans for not just King County or Western Washington, but the entire state and making inroads with that. And I'm looking forward to Democrats showing up everywhere in Washington and being really competitive, particularly when we see what the opportunity is after very successful elections like the ones we just saw in 2022. In local news, we had one councilmember announce that they are running for reelection, another Seattle City Councilmember announced that they're running for office at the county level. Who's doing what? [00:19:27] Doug Trumm: I think it was Wednesday we got the news that Tammy Morales is running for council, which was only the second of the seven councilmembers up for reelection right now to announce, Hey, I'm actually sticking around for another term. The other was Andrew Lewis so far, which just leaves Dan Strauss as the person who hasn't officially announced their plans. But pretty much looks like Dan is going to run, but we'll wait for the official announcement for that. But yeah, there's four retirements - so Tammy Morales brought that up in her announcement - that I don't begrudge my colleagues for hanging it up. It's a tough job. It's gotten vitriolic lately with, especially I think related to the defund the police backlash where - the biggest example of that I think was Lisa Herbold getting a brick thrown through her window. These folks - they definitely pay a price for their public service. We know that people are drawn to it, as Morales mentioned - they are willing to overcome those obstacles, but it takes a toll on their families, I'm sure. So was excited to see that Tammy was going to run. And she had made that announcement in Beacon Hill at Plaza Maestas, and had some other progressive leaders with her, and had a pretty good announcement - not everyone always does a big splashy thing like that, but I thought it spoke to the strong connections she has to those organizations, which include a frequent partner of ours in Seattle Neighborhood Greenways. The nonprofits themselves don't endorse, but Clara Cantor has partnered with her in a number of events, a number of projects - so Tammy has been a leader on transportation for sure. And she's not chair of that committee. Unfortunately, we have a chair who's not much of a leader in transportation, but Tammy stepped up. Her district has been the epicenter of the traffic safety crisis we talked about statewide earlier. And she's really risen to the occasion and is demanding more to be done to make southeast Seattle safer to walk, roll, and bike through. [00:21:29] Crystal Fincher: She has been an effective progressive leader, both in being a partner to Teresa Mosqueda - who we're going to talk about more in just a moment - in things like passing the JumpStart Tax, worker protections, renter protections, investments, even trying to push and move forward allocating more money to affordable housing, to supportive services - just from soup to nuts, and has really been rooted in community. Talked a lot about her vision for more walkable neighborhoods, for mitigating environmental harm and other harms, and like you said, has been the most vocal councilmember on the absolute urgency of addressing our pedestrian and bike fatalities and making getting from one place to another in the City safer for everyone. So looking forward to seeing that campaign. There have been a number of different people who have filed for the various vacant positions. Five of the seven council positions are up this year - all of the districted positions, and the citywide positions will be up in two years. And we have heard from, like you said, all but two of the councilmembers up that they are stepping away or stepping down. You mentioned the brick through Lisa Herbold's window. Councilmember Sawant also had people making threats, potentially threats involving guns, with her at her house. It can be a very thankless job, but it can also create a lot of meaningful improvement and progress and opportunity for a lot of people in the City. And so I hope with this new council - with a lot of people coming in - if Tammy is re-elected, she will be one of the senior members of the council. And so that will be interesting to see how that dynamic translates and how this new council shapes up. And what Bruce Harrell does as the executive in the meantime. I think that this is also another good time to just reiterate the - a lot of times we talk about the council - more opportunity to talk about it a lot of times, because there are several, they're all running. They have public hearings and so they're more visible a lot of times than the person in the executive seat, but they set the direction and fund things. The mayor is responsible for enacting policy, for following through, for the implementation, for spending the money, using the money, actually implementing his version of the programs that fit within what the council has authorized funding for. [00:24:15] Doug Trumm: And the local press corps doesn't always do a good job of making that clear because at Morales's press conference, the first question was a gotcha style question on - Oh, defund the police. What are you doing for safety? Then what are you doing to fix the homeless encampments? And she certainly has the power of the purse on that one, as far as being one of nine votes on the budget. But when you get down to actual - what are the departments of the City doing? That's really up to the mayor. And it's very hard for the council to come in and override that kind of authority because all the agencies' heads are going to be answering to the mayor rather than them, so they're definitely not trying to be redirected by the council in that way. So that was interesting. But yeah, and then we were getting to Teresa Mosqueda, who announced that she's leaving the council - potentially - if she wins. But when you announce with 80, 90 endorsements, it's probably a good sign. That's what she did - including everyone from Dow Constantine to Pramila Jayapal, our Congressperson in part of Seattle anyway. And she's running for King County Council District 8, which is now vacated with McDermott retiring. And her list of endorsements was a lot. And four of her colleagues on the County Council, four of her colleagues on City Council, so it definitely looks like a high powered - I wonder who will try to step up. You never can say anyone's a sure thing for election. But if she is elected, that would mean that that county, or citywide seat, on council would - I think you would have a temporary replacement. I should have checked this before this. You'd have a temporary replacement for her seat. And then I think there'd have to be a special election because of the two year gap. But it would create an extra wrinkle in - what is the council makeup going to be? It also would take what would have been the senior-most member and - yeah, and turn someone like Tammy into the senior-most member because it would just take two terms, I think at that point, because the long running councilmembers are all leaving. [00:26:30] Crystal Fincher: That was an announcement. And the amount of support that - looking at these two announcements that we did have this week - came with a lot of support. And Teresa Mosqueda certainly coming out with I think it was 90ish endorsements from across the spectrum. [00:26:45] Doug Trumm: It keeps growing - yeah. [00:26:46] Crystal Fincher: Justifiably - I understand how that happens. She has a lot to run on. Really big consequential accomplishment in getting the JumpStart Tax through - that was something that was opposed initially by a lot of the business community. Even the mayor, Bruce Harrell, was not in favor of it - talked about doing that - [00:27:09] Doug Trumm: And still endorsed her, by the way. [00:27:10] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely popular with residents of the City. And really saved the City from some really painful cuts with a budget that has taken a downturn, revenue taking a downturn. It was revenue from the JumpStart Tax that really was able to plug those holes, which the mayor utilized and seemed to come around and understand that - Yeah, this is a good positive thing. It is okay if businesses and those who are profiting from the public investments that have been made in the City do contribute back to address the challenges that we're having. And that shouldn't rest solely on each resident's back - that everyone has a role to play in this and that businesses can also contribute - and so that, certainly looking at that. Talking about behavioral health and public health being a big priority. Teresa has a long background in that and looking forward to tackling that at the county level - because the county is primarily responsible for that. And it's going to take some big action trying to move forward a housing levy, trying to - depending on if this upcoming behavioral health levy passes - how to implement that effectively. And implementation is a big thing. It's one thing to pass something, but it still takes skill and focus and expertise to implement it countywide in the way that it was intended. So will be interesting to see how this does, continue to proceed - like you said - with that kind of list of endorsements, backing even of people who had previously not been as supportive with people, like you said, including Mayor Harrell. It is going to be a tall task for a challenger, but we'll see if one steps up and decides to take her on - one or more. But certainly shaping up to be very interesting elections with so many open seats and such change possible there. One thing I do want to note - that I think was a good idea - that Teresa mentioned was looking at changing how these city council elections happen in the City. Right now, with all of the districted seats up in one year, and then two years later - on the other cycle - the two citywide seats up - it really creates the situation where you can have massive turnover. Which can be a challenge in terms of continuity of knowledge, implementation of things, and just more stability with the council. So maybe staggering that where a couple of the districted ones and one of the citywide seats being up in one year, and then two years down the line staggering the other ones - which I think would be a good idea, would bring about more stability, and we don't have this seeming lurching back and forth with policy. And again, like we talked about before, I don't want to overstate what the council is actually responsible for - the mayor is going to be responsible for implementing so much, but it will help to have more stability at council and maybe not be looking at a body that looks different except for one or two people. [00:30:29] Doug Trumm: Yeah, and if they can switch it to even years - even better. [00:30:31] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - and I definitely hope that happens. And in a few years we'll also be seeing ranked choice voting for those elections, so that will be another thing that we will be following through. [00:30:42] Doug Trumm: One last thing I'll sneak in on Mosqueda - I think she made a good case of - why run for county council. You mentioned that health care being a big one, behavioral health - setting up those crisis centers is huge. And she also mentioned transit, which is a huge thing for the county council to tackle - they run the King County Metro budget. And she put in a good word for round-the-clock transit service, better service between peaks - we honestly could use better service at all hours - but I think that was a very good point from her. And if the county council can focus on expanding transit service, I think that would be a huge win and a huge thing for her to be part of - along with it being a big year for that is because you have probably the strongest champion for transit on the council, Claudia Balducci, up for re-election and Girmay Zahilay up for re-election. And then in the - I think it's the 6th - you have Sarah Reyneveld running for the seat held by Jeanne Kohl-Welles, so you potentially could have four transit champions depending on how those folks run - so we'll be watching that very closely. [00:31:47] Crystal Fincher: We absolutely will be. Another thing we'll be paying attention to is what was just authorized by the King County Council - a decision to put crisis care centers, a levy for crisis care centers, on the ballot this April. What would this do? [00:32:04] Doug Trumm: I think it - I mean, it's huge investment - raise $1.25 billion, am I getting that right? Yeah - that's a lot of money. It would set up crisis centers in multiple parts of the county, and it would be a place for us to actually have folks who are having behavioral health crisis or mental health crisis to actually go - because so many times right now we're treating that with jail, or just moving people around to different - Here, have your crisis somewhere else, you know. That's not a way to actually solve this problem so I think that would be a important step for our county to take. Unfortunately, the federal government has abdicated its responsibility on health care, and on the mental health side of that especially, so that puts counties in the spot of having to raise the money themselves and I'm glad that King County is in the position to step up and do that. [00:32:55] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And this levy, if it passes, would fund 24/7 walk-in clinics, short-term observation stays of 23 hours, stabilization stays of up to 14 days, also would increase the pay of these health workers at these clinics - up to 20% more than comparable facilities - which is a major thing because there is a shortage of providers that we're also trying to address here. It's really important - as we talk about a lot of times and focus on undoing a lot of the harmful practices, like you mentioned - they say that they're trying - right now, one of the main ways to address this is through jail, which is not effective. It's actually destabilizing. And so it's important to undo the harm, but it is also just as critical to build the systems that help. We can't just undo the harmful things, we have to build the helpful things. This will do it - I would love to see this funded out of the general fund and just be a regular course of business, but if this is how it has to happen I think it's absolutely worth it. And poll after poll, election after election - we see voters say, We see this is a humongous need. We absolutely support more behavioral health, mental health interventions. And we can see, all over the place, the need for this - people in crisis - having these behavioral health crises where we know that calling the police or sending them in jail is not going to address the root cause. These people need more fundamental intervention and we should make that possible. So that will be on the ballot in April. We have talked about before Seattle's Initiative 135, which will be on the ballot for the election ending on Valentine's Day - you should have your ballots in hand for that. There is also another election that often goes unnoticed and that votes a bit differently - it's actually an online vote for the King Conservation District. What is at stake? What does the King Conservation District do? And how can people vote for this? [00:35:07] Doug Trumm: Yeah, this is a weird one as far as how you can vote for it, because you have to - you don't just get the ballot in the mail. You have to sign up or ask for the ballot to be mailed to you - what you get is just an announcement thing. So it's not terribly hard, but it's just an extra step that isn't there for other elections. I still haven't done it this cycle, so I gotta go and actually do that. But you just - you get the link, and you go online, and you vote there. And it is very much the type of thing where it is hard to tell - what do these folks actually do? You have to do your actual research on it. And conservation, obviously, is a big one since we just passed this big levy in this region - Conservation Futures - so these conservation commissioners obviously would have a say in how to do all that, I suppose. But yeah - maybe you should say, Crystal, because I feel like I don't even fully understand what they do. [00:36:14] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I mean it's - unfortunately, because of the way these elections are held - which is largely online, and we will put a link to this information - that is challenging. And Guy Oron actually had a great article about the King Conservation District Board and the candidates - information on the candidates running - but the King Conservation District is one of Washington's 45 local conservation districts. They assist cities and private landowners to advance conservation goals through programs like grant making, technical assistance education. Some recent programs that they've spearheaded have been assistance to small local farmers - especially those from marginalized backgrounds - coordinating volunteers to help with natural and ecosystem restoration, funding projects to mitigate the amount of pollution that enters the region's waterways - these are things that actually help all of us, and certainly Washington is known for its natural beauty - this is helping to protect and preserve that, which is very important as we see the continued pressure of sprawl and external development that is paving over so much of what we used to have - protecting what is left is absolutely critical. It's funded through a small property tax - it averages about $13 per parcel of land - and so it encompasses all of King County except for a handful of cities. So odds are you do this - we are electing its board of supervisors - they're unpaid, but they oversee what happens. And there are three candidates for this position - and we'll link a Q&A with them in the chat - but Chris Porter, April Brown, and - I hope I'm pronouncing this correctly - Csenka Favorini-Csorba are running there. And they each have various backgrounds, they're bringing different things to the table - but this is an elected body that has control of resources and directs how they're allocated - that impacts our environment. Like I said - mitigation of health impacts - we've talked before about how much air pollution, water pollution has impacted life expectancy in the region. Your life expectancy can vary up to seven years based on the zip code that you live in in King County. A lot to clean up, a lot to do - and so I hope people do engage with this. It does fly so under the radar because it's a different kind of election, but we'll link to it - ballots are due by Valentine's Day. This is a county-wide thing, so even though Seattle residents get a ballot in the mail, there is also - for everyone in the county, almost everyone in the county - an online voting process for this. There's potentially some talk about in the future moving this to the regular ballot, but for this election it's online. So I encourage you to get involved with that - we will link the article so you can get more familiar with the various candidates. And then also - last thing we will cover today is - these news stories about former mayor Jenny Durkan, former police chief Carmen Best - we just continue to get a drip, drip, drip of those. And Carolyn Bick of the South Seattle Emerald and their Watchdragon investigative reporting reported that Jenny Durkan may have pushed OPA, an oversight arm that investigates incidents and officers, to delay investigations into the former police chief. How did that happen? [00:39:57] Doug Trumm: It took a lot of digging into emails for Carolyn Bick to get this story, but - it becomes pretty apparent in the emails that she completely leaned on OPA Director Andrew Myerberg to shut down this investigation. And he was raising concerns that - Oh, this is going to have - not just be wrong on its face, but also slow down other investigations that they were trying to do. And Mayor Durkan sometimes - through her attorney - was requiring him to slow walk that and make that go away. And yeah, that's exactly how the Office of Police Accountability should not be operating - I mean, it's supposed to be an independent arm of accountability - but it takes a ton of criticism. And this just unfortunately makes that criticism seem very warranted - supposedly there's three legs of the stool in the accountability for after the police supposedly reformed under the consent decree. And the OPA is supposed to be one of them, but it - to be honest - doesn't really hold up its end of the bargain so - yeah, it's just very disappointing to see. And they were getting in the way of another body too, so that makes it even worse because you have the Sentinel - is SER Sentinel, was it Event Review or something? I forget what the E is - [00:41:22] Crystal Fincher: Sentinel Event Review - yes. [00:41:24] Doug Trumm: Sentinel Event Review - yeah, they always have such odd names. Yeah, they were trying to investigate former police chief Carmen Best and in that - maybe they're flailing with desperation - the mayor's office had the OPA trying to try to squash that, and it's just not their role. I mean, they're supposed to be encouraging accountability and instead they're shielding the police chief. It's just not what you want to see. [00:41:46] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it is alleged - based on a public disclosure request and documents that were obtained by Carolyn Bick in the South Seattle Emerald - that yeah, Durkan did slow walk this, advocated for completion of kind of a tangential investigation that could take years before moving on to an investigation of Carmen Best as an individual - some of this is related to the abandonment of the East Precinct. We've heard lots and lots about deleted texts that look like they were intentionally and illegally deleted - that is being investigated to see what happened there. But waiting for this one type of investigation - which this type of investigation explicitly says - Hey, this is not for investigating individual officers, this is for more systemic issues. And waiting for an investigation of former chief Best - maybe hoping that - hey, they'll both be out of office by the time they get back around to this and we can avoid any kind of accountability - looks like it's alleged to potentially be part of the motivation. We will continue to follow this. There are other investigations that have opened up. And to our local media's credit, you all continue to pay attention to this and look into this, because it is - this is a major issue for accountability - whether some people are above the law and others aren't. And especially when it's people who are tasked with upholding the law - we have a former police chief and a former mayor, who is also a former federal prosecutor - who by all accounts seem to be intimately familiar with the law, yet are alleged to have violated it in several different instances. So not surprising but disappointing - a continuation of that - I don't know. We'll see what happens with that. [00:43:49] Doug Trumm: Yeah, and Andrew Myerberg also failed up out of this one as well - becoming, getting a cabinet post in the Harrell administration, I think - which has now been, he's now been moved on or whatever from already, but he was like Director of Public Safety or some position like that for Mayor Harrell. And it was sort of - well, did he do such a good job at OPA that he deserved this position? It was sort of unclear. I mean, he did put up a fight in this email, but it looked like he ultimately caved and let the OPA kind of be this shield instead of this accountability mechanism. [00:44:22] Crystal Fincher: Yep, so with that - we will conclude the news this week. And we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, February 3rd, 2023. I cannot believe how time is flying - time just evaporates - maybe it's just because I'm so old. Hacks & Wonks is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. Our insightful co-host today is Executive Director of The Urbanist, Doug Trumm. You can find Doug on Twitter @dmtrumm - that's two M's at the end. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii - that's two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the podcast - the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, 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 episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

Martin Maloney (Eddie Durkan) On Hardy Bucks Return to Comedy and McGregors Twitter Spats Paul Nealon is joined on episode #10 by Martin Maloney who plays the lead role of #HardyBucks star #EddieDurkan tells the story of his life so far including hilarious times when they just decided to make the hardy bucks and how it came to fame! Check out our other social media or listen to the podcast here: https://linktree.com/Nealonnotstanding #foryou #FypEpisode Notes Notes go here

Ruby Walsh and Rory Delargy join PK to discuss the weekend's racing, in the hope that it does actually go ahead… If you'd like to take part in our next Punters' Panel episode, let us know by emailing fthm@paddypower.com It's Weekend Tipping, coming to you straight "From The Horse's Mouth"... Enter Paddy's Pick Five here: https://news.paddypower.com/horse-racing-news/ 18+ | begambleaware.com

David Duncan and Arnavaz Barshan Discuss Durkan's BDNY Presentation by Floor Focus Magazine

12PM - Big Lead @ Noon // We Heart Seattle success story // Durkan vs other public officials // GUEST:  Andrea Suarez, We Heart Seattle, on lawnmower man's success story // Covid vax liesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A newly disclosed forensic analysis has found that 191 texts were manually deleted from an iPhone of former Mayor Jenny Durkan in the months after her administration's controversial response to racial justice protests in June 2020, according to the latest filings in a federal lawsuit.The previously unknown manual text deletions from Durkan's phone — along with other new details, including that “factory resets” were performed on phones of six other city officials in fall 2020, resulting in the deletions of thousands of other text messages — are among the revelations contained in the findings of an expert's 32-page report completed in April.LIKE & SUBSCRIBE for new videos daily. https://bit.ly/3KBUDSK

If the role of school is to prepare students for their adult lives, then academics are only a part of what they need to learn. We're going to look at an innovative program that is working hard to bring SEL (social emotional learning) to the forefront of our thinking as we look at transforming our school structure. Bridget Durkan Laird is the chief executive officer at Wings for Kids, an organization that recognizes how emotional intelligence was a missing component in schools and sought out to give kids these skills by the time they're teenagers. We discuss why Wings for Kids was founded, their approach toward teaching SEL, and the impact they are hoping to have. To learn more, visit: http://pastfoundation.org (pastfoundation.org) We unbox: The goal of Wings for Kids and the importance of social emotional learning How Wings for Kids works to bring SEL into the classroom in engaging ways Partnering with teachers who are passionate about SEL The importance of adult buy-in when teaching kids Finding the kids that need the most help Resources: Learn more at https://www.wingsforkids.org/ (wingsforkids.org) https://www.soarwithwings.com/ (soarwithwings.com) Mentioned in this episode: Learning Unboxed Audience Survey Thank you for listening to Learning Unboxed! As we work on the next 150 episodes we want to hear how we can best tailor this podcast to your needs. Please go to https://www.pastfoundation.org/survey to share your insights. https://learningunboxed.captivate.fm/luaudiencesurvey (Audience Survey)

On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by former Seattle mayor and current Executive Director of America Walks, Mike McGinn! Starting with the local strike news, Seattle teachers ended their strike earlier this week, and Seattle public school students returned to classes on Wednesday morning. The strike was successful in getting district negotiators to the table, and getting some of their concerns accounted for. Beyond pay, teachers were fighting for manageable class sizes, special education and mental health resources, and adequate non-teacher staff like nurses and counselors.  In strike news on a national scale, the railroad workers strike has been averted by a tentative agreement between unions and railroad companies with the help of the Biden administration. Railroad workers were fighting for better time off policies, to not be penalized for taking sick days, and for reduced workloads, which ballooned due to staffing shortages. These strikes, and others happening across the country, come at a time when unions have a decades-high approval from US citizens. Inequality has continued to worsen in this country, affecting more and more of us, and our appetite for collective action and unionization has grown as a result.  At the same time, large corporations are engaging in increasingly harsh anti-union tactics. Also this week, King County Council Member Girmay Zahilay published an op-ed in the Seattle Times about the politicization of crime disguising solutions that actually lower crime. He argues that the push for more police and more arrests won't solve our crime issues, and points out that research shows us that other solutions like Restorative Community Pathways are actually more effective in reducing recidivism. And as hiring bonuses fail to bring the new police the city was expecting, it seems more and more unreasonable to promise that ‘more police' is the solution we need. In the police alternatives conversation, the city council is working on a plan for an alternative 911 response pilot program in Seattle, but the Public Safety and Human Resources committee responsible for the plan has felt the need to create a "term sheet" agreement between the council and the Mayor's office. The need for this term sheet shows how frayed the relationship between the mayor and the council in Seattle, a relationship that has been worsening since the Durkan administration. The business community has been pushing this media narrative that the council inhibits the mayor's ability to tackle issues like crime and homelessness, but this doesn't track. The mayor is the executive, responsible for seeing policy carried out and for helping to craft the policy itself. The mayor leads the city's major departments, and is responsible for coordinating them to solve the city's problems - they should be held primarily responsible for meeting their goals.   On October 4th at 7:00pm, Crystal will be moderating a debate, run by the South Seattle Emerald, between 37th LD State Representative candidates Chipalo Street and Emijah Smith! for more information, see this link: https://southseattleemerald.com/2022/09/14/news-gleams-seattle-teachers-union-strike-is-over-emerald-to-host-debate-with-37th-congressional-district-candidates/ A quick reminder: the Seattle Municipal Court will bring court and social services to Rainier Beach Community Center on Monday, September 19th from 10:00am to 6:00pm. Tell your friends! Also next week is the Week Without Driving! Everyone is invited to refrain from driving themselves in any vehicle, for any activity, for a week in order to increase awareness of the needs of non-drivers. Finally, in eyebrow-raising news, The Royal Esquire Club, where Harrell was board president for six years, received almost $800,000 from the city through the Economic Development Initiative. While Mayor Harrell may not have been involved in this specific decision, it reinforces the concerns people have about his priorities and where he's putting resources after his controversial comments to SPD the other week. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Mike McGinn, at @mayormcginn. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.   Resources “Seattle Educators Vote to End Strike, Classes Begin for the School Year” from The South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2022/09/14/news-gleams-seattle-teachers-union-strike-is-over-emerald-to-host-debate-with-37th-congressional-district-candidates/#Seattle-Educators-Vote-to-End-Strike   “National Railroads Labor Dispute Affects Northwest Passenger Rail, But Full Shutdown Has Been Averted” by Stephen Fesler from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/09/14/national-railroads-labor-dispute-affecting-pacific-northwest-passenger-rail/   “U.S. railroads, workers avert shutdown, but work remains to finalize contract deal” by Lisa Baertlein from Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-railroads-workers-avert-shutdown-hard-work-remains-finalize-contract-deal-2022-09-15/   "U.S. Approval of Labor Unions at Highest Point Since 1965" by Justin McCarthy from Gallup: https://news.gallup.com/poll/398303/approval-labor-unions-highest-point-1965.aspx   “Public safety is about solving tough problems, not scoring political points” by Girmay Zahilay from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/public-safety-is-about-solving-tough-problems-not-scoring-political-points/   “Seattle May Get Its Alternative Response Pilot in 2023 After All” by Amy Sundberg from Notes from the Emerald City: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/amysundberg/issues/seattle-may-get-its-alternative-response-pilot-in-2023-after-all-1346048?via=twitter-card&client=DesktopWeb&element=issue-card     Seattle Municipal Court Social Services Event: http://seattle.gov/courts/about/community-engagement/outreach-events      “State and Local Leaders to Participate in Week Without Driving Challenge” by Natalie Bicknell Argerious from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/09/14/state-and-local-leaders-to-participate-in-week-without-driving-challenge/   “Harrell Announces Grants that Include $800,000 to Private Men's Club He Chaired For Years” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2022/09/13/harrell-announces-grants-that-include-800000-to-private-mens-club-he-chaired-for-years/     "A Closer Look at City Grant to Social Club Harrell Headed” by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2022/09/15/new-sdot-director-talks-scooter-streetcar-and-sweeps-a-closer-look-at-city-grant-to-social-club-harrell-headed/   Transcript Coming soon

Follow us on our new Twitter account at @HacksWonks! Today on the show, Crystal is joined by political consultants Dujie Tahat and Kelsey Hamlin, from DTC Consulting and The Poet Salon Podcast! They start off the show discussing the King County Prosecutor race, looking at the candidates' views on the Youth Diversion Program, and breaking down the candidates' views and approaches to public safety. They also discuss how party affiliations get blurred in prosecutorial races, with some candidates filing as democratic candidates while not holding democratic views on key issues. Then the three look at how social justice, public health, and police reform are framed in political conversations, often to make progressive views look illegitimate when in reality they're popular and supported by research. Next, our hosts look at the upsetting news that the city of Seattle is using the creation of protected bike lanes as an excuse to remove and prevent homeless encampments, and how this represents a trend of homeless-hostile property owners adopting climate-friendly language to implement inhumane policies. The three discuss how the assertion that we have to choose between supporting the homeless and solving our climate crisis is false, and explain how the climate crisis and homelessness need to be solved together. Our hosts next talk about how progressive policies like Rep. Bateman's middle housing bill are wildly popular, even in places like North Seattle, and implore Democratic leaders to assert the popularity of these ideas. They wrap up with a look at the Kent teachers' strike, breaking down the issues teachers are facing with resources and staffing and the challenges their students are facing, especially after the disruptions from the COVID pandemic, as well as how the pandemic highlighted all the services schools provide outside of education that need proper funding.   As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-hosts, Dujie Tahat at @DujieTahat and Kelsey Hamlin at @ItsKelseyHamlin. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.   Resources “Jim Ferrell Turns Youth Diversion Program into a Political Football” by Will Casey from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/08/19/78033079/jim-ferrell-turns-youth-diversion-program-into-a-political-football “Progressives Unite Behind Manion for King County Prosecutor” by Will Casey from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/elections-2022/2022/08/25/78248649/progressives-unite-behind-manion-for-king-county-prosecutor  “Illegal concrete blocks removed, bike lanes to be built in Delridge” by Amanda Zhou from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/illegal-concrete-blocks-removed-bike-lanes-to-be-built-in-delridge/  "Slog PM: No Gas-Powered Cars by 2035, Bike Lanes Weaponized Against the Homeless, Trump Basically Tried to Make Mar-a-Lago the Capital of the US" by Charles Mudede from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog-pm/2022/08/25/78249246/slog-pm-no-gas-powered-cars-by-2035-bike-lanes-weaponized-against-the-homeless-trump-basically-tried-to-make-mar-a-lago-the-capital-of-the "Bike Board Member Asks for Encampment Ban Near Bike Lanes, Poll Tests Streetcar Popularity; Council Clarifies "Z-Disposition" for 911 Calls" by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2022/06/28/bike-board-member-asks-for-encampment-ban-near-bike-lanes-poll-tests-streetcar-popularity-council-clarifies-z-disposition-for-911-calls/ “Seattle Council Approves Police Hiring Bonuses Topping Out at $30,000.” by Natalie Bicknell Argerious from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/08/18/seattle-council-approves-police-hiring-bonuses-topping-out-at-30000/ “Kent teachers strike on the first day of school” by Monica Velez from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/kent-teachers-strike-on-the-first-day-of-school/ “How student loan forgiveness affects Washington” by Melissa Santos from Axios: https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/08/25/student-loan-forgiveness-washington  “WA will ban new gas-powered cars by 2035, following CA's lead” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/wa-will-ban-new-gas-powered-cars-by-2035-following-cas-lead/   “West Coast states band together to fight methane pipeline expansion” by Kim Malcolm & KUOW Staff from KUOW: https://kuow.org/stories/west-coast-states-band-together-to-fight-methane-pipeline-expansion    "King County sheriff's office investigating missing texts of Durkan, Best." by Lewis Kamb from Axios: https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/08/19/sheriffs-office-missing-texts-durkan-best   Transcript Transcript coming soon

This week we made the city's favorite pink neon elephant a landmark. Shrinkflation is impacting our favorite snack foods. And don't look away from your laptop, your boss might be watching. We're breaking it down this week with the Needling's Lex Vaughn and Seattle photographer Tim Durkan.We want to hear from you! Follow us on Instagram @SeattleNowPod, or leave us feedback online: https://www.kuow.org/feedback

1pm - The Fastest 15 // Durkan's spending problem/promises create problems // BLM at Pike's Place // Kamala asked about SCOTUS hearing // Freudian slip at WH // GUEST:  Blake Lemoine, Google AI tech on AI becoming sentient See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Martin is back on the show to talk about anything and everything and we even have an update on The Hardy Bucks and potentially a new season in the works. Check out Maloneys Digest  https://youtu.be/JyfzjzdeyGc

3PM - King County health department not ready to lift indoor mask mandate // From Amazon to Zillow, Seattle workers consider getting back to office. Or not // Demands for answers over Durkan's, Best's deleted texts // ‘My wife says I'm getting weird': Man offers free pancakes to make friends // Do You Know Who That Worker You Just Hired Really Is? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On today's week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Executive Director of The Urbanist, Doug Trumm. They discuss the death of the missing middle housing bill in the legislature and why creating affordable housing requires creating more housing, the legislative worker sickout in response to their Democratic bosses failing to pass legislation allowing them to unionize, Mayor Harrell's State of the City address and the Partnership for Zero plan to address homelessness in downtown Seattle, the end of Seattle's eviction moratorium and what that means 10,000 tenants at risk of eviction, and the end of vaccine requirements in King County. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Doug Trumm, at @dmtrumm. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.   Resources "Why Washington state's missing middle housing bill died” by Joshua McNichols for KOUW: https://www.kuow.org/stories/why-washington-state-s-missing-middle-housing-bill-died   “Over 100 Washington Legislative Workers Call Out Sick in Protest of Working Conditions” by Rich Smith for The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/02/16/66845792/over-100-washington-legislative-workers-call-out-sick-in-protest-of-working-conditions    “Harrell Pledges SPD Staffing Surge in State of City Speech” by Doug Trumm for The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/02/16/harrell-pledges-spd-staffing-surge-in-state-of-city-speech/    “Mayor Bruce Harrell Made a Bunch of Promises in His First State of the City Address” by Hannah Krieg for The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/02/15/66787839/mayor-bruce-harrell-made-a-bunch-of-promises-in-his-first-state-of-the-city-address   “Private Donations Will Fund “Peer Navigators,” Launch Plan to “Dramatically Reduce” Downtown Homelessness” by Erica C. Barnett for Publicola: https://publicola.com/2022/02/17/private-donations-will-fund-peer-navigators-launch-plan-to-dramatically-reduce-downtown-homelessness/    “Seattle's eviction moratorium to end” by Ashley Archibald for Real Change News: https://www.realchangenews.org/news/2022/02/16/seattle-s-eviction-moratorium-end    “Warning of ‘wave of evictions,' Sawant calls for extension of Seattle eviction moratorium” by Nick Bowman for MyNorthwest: https://mynorthwest.com/3351303/kshama-sawant-extension-seattle-eviction-moratorium-february-2022/    “King County will close rent assistance program to new applicants as money dries up” by Heidi Groover for The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/king-county-will-close-rent-assistance-program-to-new-applications-as-money-runs-out/    “King County to drop COVID vaccination requirements for bars, restaurants on March 1” by KING 5 Staff for KING 5: https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle-king-county-vaccine-mandate-business/281-7a9b5968-f579-4a15-b486-49161cf4ef52    Transcript [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. 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 almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program today's co-host, Executive Director of The Urbanist, Doug Trumm. How are you doing, Doug? [00:00:51] Doug Trumm: Great. Thanks so much for having me. It's always fun to be on this podcast - it's the best podcast in town, I think. [00:00:57] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much and I am a huge fan and always informed by The Urbanist - so great work, you and the entire team. I wanted to start off talking about where we're at in Olympia and in particular, some things that did not go very well - some bills that were really widely supported, certainly that I was a fan of, dying. The first being the middle housing bill that did not make it past cutoff. It looked like it might have had the votes, but it did not ultimately get a floor vote. What happened here? [00:01:39] Doug Trumm: Yeah, that one really hurt. We got pretty invested in that and hoping this would finally be here. And we knew it'd be uphill since they've tried before and it's failed, but having the governor behind it, it seemed like there was a little extra energy this year. But it totally just crapped out in the finish line. We kind of had a proxy vote for the Accessory Dwelling Unit reform bill that did make it through and it's going onto the Senate. So we kind of have a good sense of which Democrats jumped ship - we can lose some of them, we have a big enough majority. Republicans tend to oppose this kind of stuff - even though they like markets, they don't like cities, so it kind of cancels out. And they don't really like markets when it counts. So this one - a lot of the legislators on the Eastside - they didn't vote for the ADU bill, the Accessory Dwelling unit bill - so it's likely they didn't vote for the missing middle bill because that was even more density in single family zones. Even though there was all these measures to make it measured - whether it had originally started at the half mile of major transit for most of the changes - and that got watered down, it wasn't enough - watered down to a quarter mile. Just between some of those more, I guess, wealthy suburban legislators and then you had Association of Washington Cities banging the drum against it and really turning up the heat against it. It seemed like they put enough headwinds to stop it. And of course The Seattle Times deserves a shout out on this one as well - they hate anything that might offer more affordability to people who are don't already own homes. [00:03:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And this was so important because it was key to the discussion of housing affordability. And also conversations about housing affordability are also tied to those with homelessness. We don't have enough housing for the people who have moved here and continue to move here. What we can't do, even though oddly sometimes people seem to suggest it, is just turn off the spigot of new people entering into our communities. People move here, businesses start, they hire people, they create jobs, which lots of people talk about as a wonderful thing. Jobs for the people who are here - plentiful jobs is a great thing. But for people to move and live near where they work, they need housing near where they work. And we have been behind on keeping up with the amount of housing that we have, in comparison to the people moving here. That makes housing more expensive. We can't have a conversation about making housing more affordable without also making it more plentiful. All types of housing - this particularly addressed middle housing, so just market rate as - and market rate doesn't specify a price point, it basically means not subsidized - just as any to developer would build. It was so important to get moving on this - had a ton of momentum. You talked about a number of people who had advocated against it. There was also a piece that Joshua McNichols from KUOW wrote yesterday, talking about what went wrong and a lot of people are looking at Representative Gerry Pollet - [00:05:03] Doug Trumm: Rightfully so. [00:05:04] Crystal Fincher: - from Seattle's 46th legislative district, in North Seattle - and attributing the failure to his insistence on the watering down that you talked about. And basically saying, there was an agreed upon framework that did seem to have broad support and potentially the votes. But once his insistence on watering it down happened, the coalition that had been carefully brought together, and everything had been stakeholdered, and some broad agreements that were previously made were broken - and everything fell apart. In this article, it says Pollet, his changes, "took all the air out of the room ... Once you start amending what had already been agreed upon, it throws a wrench into it, and all of a sudden, this person doesn't like it, this person's not going to vote for it, and it just becomes a mess." Certainly, lots of people, lots of entities who are invested in high property values and exclusionary zoning, advocated against it. But it really is unfortunate to see that it didn't make it this year and that every city is on its own to try and address this affordability problem. And it would've been so much better to have the opportunity to spend the next year with a unified approach across the state to get more people able to afford more housing in more places - it really does benefit us all. [00:06:36] Doug Trumm: And it's really bad out there - I don't know if people who own homes have - I guess maybe they're checking their value on their home occasionally for kind of investment purposes. But we've seen home prices go up 20, 25, 30% in one year - that's insane - that kind of pace - we're going to be San Francisco very quickly. I don't think that's what we want to be - a place where only rich people can live. It really was - the timing was right, I think - and hopefully next year they can pick up where they left off. But I don't know what these legislators are looking at that they don't see this as a crisis. Because there's just not many options for people who don't own homes. [00:07:21] Crystal Fincher: There really is not. Another major issue in Olympia that seemed to have broad support - a bill with a ton of co-sponsors - you would assume given how much Democrats have talked about the importance of supporting workers, supporting unions, about workers having protections, about that being a core Democratic value and one of the things that sets Democrats apart from so many others. And so many legislators just continually talking about how important that is - that the bill to allow legislative workers to unionize would be a sure thing, would be no problem. Unfortunately, that's not what happened. And that bill, which seemed to have enough votes to pass, was prevented from making it to the floor and therefore appears to have died. Unless Speaker Jinkins brings it back by designating it Necessary to Implement the Budget - without legislative workers, I think, they would have a hard time getting out the budget and implementing it. [00:08:30] Doug Trumm: That's a good point. That's a good point. [00:08:32] Crystal Fincher: But unfortunately, as it stands now, the speaker has not indicated any desire to do that and the rhetoric has been, from the legislators - it's so close, there are just a couple things that need to be ironed out, and this year we just didn't have the time to do it, and we'll get to it next year. Which is odd because Joe Fitzgibbon was also talking about being a leader in initially introducing legislation similar to this in 2012, so if it's been worked on since 2012 - [00:09:06] Doug Trumm: 10 years now. [00:09:07] Crystal Fincher: Why is it not already ready? What is going to happen in the next year that hasn't happened in the last 10? And how are you looking your workers in the eye after talking about how important it is to allow workers to unionize, how important unions are in protecting workers and building strong families and communities, and making sure everyone has a livable wage and working conditions that are not hostile - that if bad things happen, there's fair recourse and a process that people can follow. And just say, "But not you. Not when it comes to us." This is infuriating, personally. If you follow me on Twitter, it is just hard to see how this doesn't look hypocritical. Just absolutely hypocritical. And in response, a hundred workers called out sick in protest of those working conditions. We'll see where that goes, but my goodness. How did you read this? [00:10:16] Doug Trumm: I mean, I knew that they weren't well paid, but it was shocking to me looking again at what they're listing these jobs at - still - in the year 2022. They're listing these jobs at like $42,000 to start or something like that. These are people who have to split time between Olympia - and the example they gave was someone going back to Bellingham - that's not a cheap place to live. There aren't many cheap places to live in this state. It's been expecting people to live off of $42,000 and they work insane hours all year long because when they're not in session - and when they're in session, they're expected to be at beck and call basically - but when they're not in session, they're expected to do constituent services. So it's a full gig for them even if the legislators themselves have their side hustles and their jobs they go back to. I just think it's a basic fairness principle and so many government workers do get the benefit from unions. But the people really in the trenches of making our government work better, hopefully - but they're the ones who would do it if we can - they're not getting those benefits. And it sort of reminds me of the same principle we just talked about in the housing bill, where they're for progressive things so long as it's not in their backyard. And once it's in their backyard, they kind of walk away from that. I really want to see people just start leading where it matters the most to them - start being the change they want to see in their backyard. [00:11:57] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. This is another issue where - yeah, Republicans aren't in favor of it - they're not at the front of the union parade, certainly. But Democrats have majority in the legislature. And so this is an issue where if Democrats are aligned, it happens. So who is the Democrat, or Democrats, who are opposing this? That has been opaque. And what is the party's - if not responsibility, but just kind of obligation and stance on an anti-union Democratic legislator? Should they be a Democratic legislator? Is that consistent with values? What does that say for where the party is? Lots of talk about big tents - but parties are based on values and built on coalitions around values. And some things may differ, but there are things in the party platform for a reason. There is a statement of value and principles to say - anyone can sign up if you agree with what we stand for - these principles. Certainly, allowing workers to unionize is one of them. To your point, legislative staffers work really, really hard. There are lots of stories about working 20 hours of uncompensated overtime a week, especially during session. They are working to death. If your model is based on exploiting workers - having them work for more hours than originally bargained for, in a way that turns out to be not a living wage, when you look at the hours that they're putting in and the demands of the job - why are you allowing that? That is actually completely in your control. It is not good for policy - to have policy making rely on the exploitation or the reliance on paying workers less than they deserve, less than they need to afford the basics of life. These are kind of the core basic things that we talk about and it's just - [00:14:16] Doug Trumm: Yeah, and there's a huge amount of turnover - Rich Smith's article in The Stranger pointed that out. And that's not good for policy making either. These are jobs where - if you can - in your first year, I'm sure you're just learning the ropes. If you can get someone who's been there for a handful of years, they're going to be able to really do a lot more with the position, really. Because they're the people really writing the laws and digging into these pieces of legislation, so it's just such an important position to treat like such a throwaway - like intern out of college kind of job or something - that's just an afterthought. We wonder why union rates are dropping. If Democrats aren't willing to stand up for stuff like this, what hope is there to sort of defend our rights in the private market and everywhere? This sort of erosion of unionization is sort of something we have to fight on a lot of fronts. And this is just an easy one that should be a gimme. [00:15:20] Crystal Fincher: Should be a gimme. Should have been an automatic. But for some reason we are having a challenging time with that. Next up, we will pivot to the City of Seattle - Mayor Harrell gave his State of the City speech this week and unveiled plans in a number of areas, including a surge in police staffing that he's planning. What did you take away from that element and from the rest of his speech? [00:15:50] Doug Trumm: In a way, there was some that was refreshing at this speech - I'll start with the good. Mayor Durkan's last speech was 6 minutes long and as you could expect, didn't hit on much. This speech was 32 minutes long, so in length, he wins. And he mentioned 8 Councilmembers by name. He's really trying to sort of, at least symbolically, repair some of the relationships with Council that Durkan really ran into the ground. And sometimes Council was an equal partner - they would spar on issues - but oftentimes there was some real strange hills that were died on that [inaudible]. So Harrell, at one level, just looks like an improvement over Durkan, but that's a low bar or thing. The amount of actual policy detail in the speech was low and that's not completely abnormal. But this is also a mayor who ran on how ready he was to hit the ground running and I haven't seen a lot of that yet. He teased his announcement yesterday of "Partnership to Zero" in that speech. And we now know what that announcement was - it's a $10 million donation from different corporations and rich people to run their peer navigator program. But it's only for one year, so I don't know. As far as the whole scale of the homelessness crisis, that's not a big deal really. I mean, it's a little help, but this is a billion dollar problem with a $10 million donation. He said he was going to basically bring everyone inside within a couple years, and that's not the pace that we're on right now. Really the biggest focus of his speech was giving SPD more funding and staffing them up. There was a lot of big rhetoric about how important that would be - response times going down - but the factor remains that there's really constraints that he has on how quickly he can staff up. So netting an additional 35 officers like Mayor Durkan aimed to do, and that was hoping that attrition rates slowed down - that's not going to lead to a dramatic difference in response times. Especially if there's also all this hotspot policing and all this other stuff going on as well - that all takes resources. They're pulling the same lever, but there's only so far that that can take them. I think there's some definite potential holes in his plans emerging. But it's still too early to tell with the scant amount of details exactly where he is headed and how that might kind of come apart. [00:18:43] Crystal Fincher: At least rhetorically, there's some attempt to identify issues with each councilmember that they can work on together. Coalitions are really important in politics - you don't pass policy without them. And coalitions are often around issues, and some issues you may agree with and some you don't. If you can work together with a councilmember, and it's not just friction for friction's sake, or berating out of grudges, certainly it is good to find ways to accomplish - there's so much that needs to be done. There was a lot of talk about not needing to - looking at parks and encampments of parks and the stress that we don't need to choose between treating people with compassion - compassion is becoming a word that is one of those words that's so overused - but treating unhoused people with compassion and finding them housing and clearing out parks so that regular people, people in neighborhoods with houses and resources, can enjoy them. Which is always interesting rhetoric, but that set up up with a number of these things - that we can make more people in this city feel more safe and take on issues of police reform, and have more cops and do the surge. These issues and tensions - that have been tensions for a reason, because at the end of the day, there are some choices that are very clearly made and others that aren't - but upfront saying, we can try and do this all together. Certainly, with the announcement on the $10 million for the Vision to Zero - the response to get people, particularly in downtown Seattle, housed. If you just say that as a goal, it's wonderful. One thing that we know we all need, are people to work with the population. And so funding folks who can meaningfully connect people who are out on the street with the services that they need is great. The most important thing that unhoused people need is housing. They also need all the other services to stay in that housing. But there is no solution to homelessness without housing. He had brought up that they're relying on the 2,000-3,000 units of supportive housing that's supposed to come online in the next year to two years. He also had a caveat in there that that timeline might be put in jeopardy by concrete companies not coming to an agreement with their workers and so that's got to be taken care of. We had a conversation last week on this show where - I think it was last week - Heather Weiner pointed out that, instead of just saying this may be delayed, and you guys should get back to the table and figure something out - as if they hadn't been kind of doing that the whole time. Back in the McGinn administration, he said, "Hey, either work gets done on time or we're fining you according to the contract that is there. You have an obligation to have a workforce that is prepared to work on this project. That was part of the deal. Come to a fair agreement and get to work." And putting pressure on the companies who are most in a position to make that happen. Harrell has chosen not to go that route - and just to say, get back to the table - and if it doesn't go well, has basically put an asterisk by a number of the things that they're trying to accomplish. And say if it doesn't, looks like that's going to be what I'm going to point to as the reason why. We'll see how that progresses. We'll see if we're going to do something different this time than we did before. And I think there is a recognition in some of the rhetoric that I heard from him that - like Durkan's peer navigator program was kind of a farce - in that, the term "offering services" actually didn't technically mean offering services. It means that they kind of went down a checklists and, do you need this? Do you want housing? Do you want to go to a shelter? Oh, well, the shelter may not accept their pet, their shelter doesn't let them enter after 8:00 PM, but they have a job that lasts beyond there so they can't go. The services may not fit what they need at all - they're not services available to them, but that could still qualify as offering and refusing services. I hope we see something different this time. I hope we have a bigger conversation about philanthropy not being a reliable or effective way to fund basic necessities in society. And that looking at the JumpStart Tax - is a much more effective solution. If these companies would just pay the taxes that they would fairly owe, we'd have more than enough money to address this. This is actually a tiny drop in the bucket. [00:23:50] Doug Trumm: I'm sure some of that $10 million came from corporations that were a part of that lawsuit to try to block JumpStart, so it's sort of - they're going to give you some crumbs and they try to take back the loaf. It's definitely frustrating and it seems like some of these issues - we just need a firmer stand, it can't be mealy-mouthed on it. If he wants this concrete strike to end, like you said, take a stand and do what McGinn did. I'm sure we could have the strike done a little quicker if there was pressure of fines. And on homelessness, I don't know where these encampments are supposed to go, because we know we don't have enough shelter to bring everyone inside at once and WSDOT wants them off there right-of-way, as we saw in that announcement and Harrell was excited about that. We want them out of parks and we want them out of downtown, so basically the three main places where encampments are. They're going to need a lot of shelter and housing if all three of those plans are going to be realistic, because that encompasses the majority of encampments. [00:25:04] Crystal Fincher: There are a number of organizations involved in this. A number of people in orgs who do have experience both lived and professional on how to address this - I hope they are listened to as this takes shape. There's going to be work done on how specifically all the funds are going to be allocated, there are some broad strokes - around 30 navigators pointing towards this amount of housing, in this year timeframe. We'll see how that unfolds and we'll definitely be following it as it does. But - [00:25:38] Doug Trumm: And sweeps are definitely happening, and what those folks tell us is that - that damages their relationships, especially when they're last minute. We were hearing of a lot of a last minute sweeps where they say, "Oh, this is sidewalk, so we can clear you at any time - one hour's notice." That's what I hear from Real Change and other folks that are doing that work, is that the pace of sweeps - we can call them removals if Mayor Harrell prefers, that's his preferred term - but to hire all these peer navigators and say, "Good luck. We just shuffled everyone around. Go find them." I don't know. That doesn't seem like the most efficient way to do that. [00:26:17] Crystal Fincher: We will keep following it. The other significant news which arrived earlier was that Mayor Harrell announced that he is going to end the eviction moratorium in Seattle at the end of February. And after that, the tsunami of evictions can once again resume and folks can be evicted for nonpayment of rent. As we know, lots of people - through no fault of their own, through no fault of their company - wound up out of a job for an extended period of time because of the pandemic. This was a widespread problem that necessitated a widespread solution. The goal of the moratorium was to - one, as lawmakers were trying to figure out, Hey, how do we get out of this solution? No, we can't leave landlords, especially small landlords, just holding the bag for potentially a couple years of unpaid rent. But it really is damaging to our entire society to allow people to lose their housing, and all of the problems become more expensive for us to handle when a person does that. The consequences to society when a person does that are much more expensive than just publicly doing what it takes to keep them in their homes. A solution was made. Funds were provided and distributed at the county level. Unfortunately, the county started to distribute that - and even with a slow start, the eviction moratorium was extended to help the county catch up with the problem. Unfortunately, they caught up and they ran out of money. There are over 10,000 tenants in King County who are on the list who qualified for assistance, but unfortunately, they just ran out. There has been no appropriation from anyone to backfill that. We know that we're dealing with around 10,000 tenants, who as of March 1st, can be evicted. We're doing this at a time when we're just trying to get our arms around, as we just discussed, the problem that already exists. It feels like we're trying to mop without turning off the faucet. We're just going to increase the pressure of the faucet while not doing much more mopping. It would be great if we just turned the faucet off. It'd be great if we just stopped the possibility of people being evicted and figure out how to backfill this funding, so we can maintain the stability of our regional economy, of our neighborhood businesses, and all the rest. How do you see this? [00:29:12] Doug Trumm: Yeah, I was also kind of flabbergasted that they didn't at least try to top up that eviction protection rental assistance program, as they ended the moratorium. I was hoping there would be more of a seamless hand off. But that program being out of money as they end the moratorium just seems like a bad idea. I don't know what the urgency to end the moratorium is - it's been in place for almost two years. We have a lot of data that it's been very effective in slowing the pace of evictions, in the time of great upheaval and economic turmoil and public health turmoil. I don't know why landlords suddenly need to be doing this. I mean, certainly there's been this program that was helping them too - as far as the eviction protection rental assistance program - gave them their income back. Putting more money in that would've been a win-win. But I don't know. Yeah. It's certainly likely to lead to displacement and likely homelessness. Just digging yourself in deeper, like you said. I hope that they may reconsider. I know, Councilmember Sawant's already introduced legislation. Morales sounded pretty concerned about this decision to end the moratorium so soon. There are programs in place like the Winter Eviction Moratorium that help a little bit, but not as extensive as the full eviction moratorium under the mayor's ruling. I don't know. It's going to - I guess we're just deciding the pandemic's over, as we're seeing with mask mandates and then other stuff. I know people emotionally are ready, but I don't know - this whole follow the science stuff - I'm not sure if that's exactly what's happening right now. [00:31:12] Crystal Fincher: Well, I mean, lots of people have talked about - there is a difference in between the statements - the number of cases are falling, is not the same as the number of cases are low. In fact, we still have caseload that is much higher than most other points during this pandemic. Spread is not low. It is lower than it has been. We have fallen off of our most recent peak, which is the highest peak we have had so far. We still have a lot of people in our community - people under five, immunocompromised people, just people who are vulnerable - who are relying on the rest of us still being protected, and providing protection, and providing accommodations to make sure we keep everyone safe. That has seemed to fall out of the conversation. Just kind of - it's time and if you don't like it, if you don't feel safe, then just stay home. As many people point out, especially for people who are disabled, who have chronic illness - sometimes they're relying on home health aides coming into their homes. They don't have to be masked if they've been exposed other places. You can't even stay home and avoid the risk. But we actually shouldn't be encouraging a society where some people are not allowed to participate in it. And the conversation just about living with the pandemic, as now it's endemic, does not mean you just throw up your hands and do nothing. It means that you take the precautions and the preparations to say, okay, this is a thing and let's figure out how we can operate safely for all of us. Let's make sure that we're preparing for this next variant - there's already news about a B2 variant of Omicron that may be more transmissible and more dangerous healthwise than the original - because we're doing nothing to stop the creation of all of these variants. I feel for people in that position, I feel for people in our community. I still am not in the place where I am comfortable just throwing caution to the wind and saying, "Everything is fine. We don't need any precautions anywhere." Removing the vaccine mandates - [00:33:43] Doug Trumm: Yeah, that was shocking. [00:33:45] Crystal Fincher: - from restaurants and different places. I feel for our frontline workers and retail workers, who now are going to be in a really difficult position once again - having to weigh their own safety, the safety of family, or people that they may live with or be in constant contact with, and an increasingly hostile public to public safety measures. And the onus being put on them to negotiate that, while making low wages. We're just asking so much of them. It just puts even more pressure and stress on it. We will continue to talk about this and pay attention to what's going on - and just try and be good community members and make sure all of us have the opportunity to participate in society and thrive. With that, we have arrived at our time today. Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7FM on this Friday, February 18th. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng and our wonderful co-host today was Executive Director of The Urbanist, Doug Trumm. You can find Doug on Twitter @dmtrumm, that's D-M-T-R-U-M-M. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. 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.

12PM - The Big Lead // Durkan should go to prison for deleted texts // Children here are still masked, but head of WA DOH went to Super Bowl // NBC showing a bunch of celebs - all unmasked // GUEST: Dem Rep Roger Goodman on the police reform fixes and a new bill that would make it illegal for DOC to give media info on inmates gender See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the first episode of Punk Rock Pariah in 15 months, Grendel and Greg start getting used to being around each other again and talk about what it is like to get COVID in foreign nations, what they've been up to for the last couple years, SNAKES, and so much more!

Whaaaaat is going on, friends and no bullsh*tters! This week we are chatting with Sadie Gray and Sausha Durkan from Meat Head Test Kitchen! We spend a few minutes talking about our love of music, how they went from being in the radio industry to where they are now, doing the boring shit and generally just ranting about all the bullshit in the fitness industry. Let's do this!! Follow Beth on IG: @bethferacofitness Follow Matt on IG: @mattlaarfit Follow Sadie on IG: @meatheadsadie Follow Sausha on IG: @meatheadsausha Follow the Meathead Test Kitchen Podcast on IG: @meatheadtestkitchen If you enjoyed this episode, why not share it with a friend or family member that needs to hear it? Send us a DM on Instagram to let us know what you think of episode twenty one, and with episode ideas! If we use your comment or suggestion, we'll give you a shoutout on the podcast! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/cut-the-crap-podcast/message

On today's week-in-review, Associate Editor of The Stranger, Rich Smith, joins Crystal to discuss the investigation finding that SPD improperly faked radio chatter about Proud Boys and escalated and inflamed tensions as CHOP formed, and a Kent PD Assistant police chief being asked to resign for posting Nazi insignia and his wife hiding critical social media posts on the city's official social media accounts. They also chat about bills to pay attention to as the legislative session starts on Monday, as well as what Mayor Bruce Harrell's inaugural press conference revealed about his plans and priorities.    As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.   Find the host, Crystal on Twitter at @finchfrii, and find Rich Smith at @richsssmith  Resources “Seattle police improperly faked radio chatter about Proud Boys as CHOP formed in 2020, investigation finds” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-police-improperly-faked-radio-chatter-about-proud-boys-as-chop-formed-in-2020-investigation-finds/   “Kent assistant police chief disciplined for posting Nazi insignia, joking about Holocaust” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/kent-assistant-police-chief-disciplined-for-posting-nazi-insignia-and-joking-about-the-holocaust/   “Social media posts criticized how Kent police handled Nazi controversy — but they were hidden by chief's wife” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/criticism-of-kent-police-nazi-controversy-was-hidden-on-social-media-by-police-chiefs-wife-who-ran-the-accounts/   “A Big List of Bills to Track During Washington's 2022 Legislative Session” by Rich Smith from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/01/06/64661375/a-big-list-of-bills-to-track-during-washingtons-2022-legislative-session   “Harrell Pledges Bold Agenda in Inaugural Speech” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist:  https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/01/04/harrell-pledges-bold-agenda-in-inaugural-speech/   “It's up to Harrell to Save Renters in Peril” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/01/07/64713950/its-up-to-harrell-to-save-renters-in-peril   Transcript [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. Full transcripts and resources referenced on the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a cohost. Welcome to the program again, today's cohost, Associate Editor of The Stranger and noted poet, Rich Smith. [00:00:50] Rich Smith: Good to be back - thanks Crystal. [00:00:52] Crystal Fincher: Good to have you back. Well, we have no shortage of things to talk about this week. And you know what? The SPD just keeps popping up into the news - it doesn't seem to end. And this week, we learned that police improperly faked radio chatter about Proud Boys as CHOP formed in 2020. What happened here? [00:01:19] Rich Smith: Yeah. Well, it was June 8th, which was the day that the cops had abandoned the [East] Precinct, and lifted the barriers, and allowed protestors who had been gathered at that intersection in Capitol Hill - for several days being variously gassed and beaten up for making vocal their criticisms to the police, and occasionally throwing a rock or two. They released the barricades, let the protestors walk the block that they wanted to walk, and then yeah, and then left the - and then went about their business, basically. And then after that, the cops hopped on the scanner, where they communicate with one another about crimes stuff, reports - stuff that's going on around town, and invented a hoax. They fabricated a maraudering gang of Proud Boys, a violent group known to brawl people in the streets, seek out anti-fascists and beat them up, suggested that they were armed with guns - and it was four cops who were enacting this ruse. And the ruse was overseen and approved by the two commanders, including the Captain of the East Precinct, which was the one that the cops had just abandoned. On Wednesday, the Office of Police Accountability determined that this ruse improperly - or not improperly, sorry - this ruse added fuel to the fire of the situation - it was not a de-escalation tactic to claim that there was a roving gang of white supremacists looking to crack some Antifa skulls downtown. But there was no recommended discipline for the cops who participated in the ruse, and the two cops who signed off on the ruse are no longer employed at SPD. And so- [00:03:48] Crystal Fincher: It's all good, evidently. [00:03:49] Rich Smith: That's what's going on - right, yeah. [00:03:52] Crystal Fincher: I mean, from the OPA, their finding was just, "Shouldn't happen, but don't do it again. We're not looking at this in the context of everything else that has happened." And I mean, just underscoring that - no, it absolutely was not a de-escalation tactic. Yes, it absolutely inflamed tensions. Because this was not some nebulous threat, this was not some theoretical violent threat - these were people who had enacted violence upon protesters recently before that. There was a legitimate fear. [00:04:32] Rich Smith: Absolutely, yeah. I mean, I walked through with the protesters - the barriers that were lifted - when they were happening. I was interviewing people, hearing the chatter and the gossip as that place where eventually the Free Capitol Hill that became CHAZ, that became CHOP - that autonomous zone around the precinct was forming. And the number one thing I heard, the number one concern I heard were these rumors of Proud Boys coming around the neighborhood. They're armed, they're dangerous, they're looking for Antifa. And there was concern that the Proud Boys were going to burn down the precinct and blame it on the Black Lives Matter movement, so suddenly there was this need to protect, ironically, the precinct from an attack. And a need to kind of hunker down and barricade the zone, and protect themselves against the threat that the cops had just invented over the scanner. And you're right, that they also had further reason to believe that these rumors were true, because the day before, a man named Nikolas Fernandez allegedly drove his car into the side of the protests, had shot with an extended clip a man named Dan Gregory, and then ran to the front of the police line, where he was welcomed with open arms, potentially because his brother worked at that very precinct. Now, the defense for that case says that the guy was just confused, and he was on his way to work, and there was road blockages, and so he didn't know what to do, and he suddenly ran into this protest - yada, yada, yada - he's got his story. But, this is all to say that the protestors were very afraid of people attacking them in cars, were very afraid of Proud Boys coming, burning down the precinct, shooting them up in retaliation for the protesting. And this ruse by the SPD was just bad policing - it inflamed the situation, to quote the OPA, but it also was the reason that CHOP formed. It might not have been the only reason, of course, it was non-hierarchical structures there - everyone was there for their own shit. But, that was the word on the street in the moment - was Proud Boys are coming, we've got to circle up, we've got to protect ourselves - and that was the staging grounds for CHOP. [00:07:21] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and certainly aided the fortification, obviously. Everybody was there, principally initially, mainly, to protest violence against Black lives, particularly from the state. But in the moment, certainly, especially looking at tactics to maximize the effectiveness of this direct action, fortification was what made the most sense when you have an armed threat approaching you, and you're trying to assert your First Amendment right to protest. That is what they inflamed, what they created. And I don't even think, certainly in the aftermath of this, "Hey, this is a commonly used de-escalation tactic." Clearly they wanted to just mess with these protesters and to create chaos, and to provoke action that they could act against. [00:08:26] Rich Smith: Yeah. What was his name - Brian - he was the captain of the East Precinct who now works for ADT, I think, down in Texas - the home security firm or whatever. Anyway, the guy who perpetuated, or who approved the ruse - when asked about it by Myerberg, or investigators with OPA - said that the reason for the ruse was they wanted to let the protestors know that cops were still out there doing stuff, that their position had not been weakened despite the fact that they literally had just abandoned the East Precinct - or a couple hours before - slash, they also wanted to do the ruse because they hoped it would draw protesters away from the precinct, and then, I don't know, maybe give them an opportunity, give the cops an opportunity to retake the precinct that they had already decided to abandon, again, as far as we know, themselves, without telling - [00:09:28] Crystal Fincher: Themselves, yeah. [00:09:30] Rich Smith: - without telling the mayor, who was supposed to be the overseer of the cops. They're Durkan's cops, acting on their own extremely bad, extremely wounded impulses. And they were clearly - it doesn't take a Psych major to determine that they were clearly wounded - and they wanted to show the protestors that the cops were still the top dog, that they still had the power, and the way that they decided to do that was to do what any bully or big brother would do, which is say there's a big, scary monster coming to attack you. And you're going to wish you had us to protect you, you know what I mean? And the protesters - they felt the need to defend themselves, felt the need to suddenly defend the property so that they didn't get accused of burning down a precinct when they didn't even do it, didn't want to hurt the movement. And so, this happened. And then the response from City officials so far has been fun too - newly elected mayor, Bruce Harrell, released a statement saying like, "That sucked. Don't do that, that's totally bad, that's wrong. Don't do this - this ruse was bad." And, what was the action he's going to do? He's going to go down there and talk to Interim Police Chief, Adrian Diaz, and tell him that that's unacceptable behavior, and stuff like that. So, that's nice - the chief is going to get a talking to. And then the Public Safety Chair of the City Council, Lisa Herbold, released a statement saying that what she's calling for is for the cops to fully implement ruse training. [00:11:20] Crystal Fincher: Ruse training? [00:11:22] Rich Smith: Yeah, ruses are acceptable - cops can lie to people in order to arrest them, or get evidence from them - so long as they don't quote the, according to state law, shock the conscience. A cop can't say there's a nuclear bomb headed this way or whatever, just to get someone to move somewhere. They can't do anything that shocking. This maraudering gang of Proud Boys coming to attack you - that would, I think, falls into the bad ruse category. Anyway, OPA - the cops were supposed to fully implement training recommendations on ruses, they had only partially done so according to Herbold. And so, she wants to get those fully implemented - you've got to tell all the cops about how to do ruses properly. And she also wants the ruses fully documented - that was another recommendation from the OPA - every time they do one of these ruses, they should write down that they have done the ruse so that we can go back later and determine whether or not it was a good ruse or a bad ruse. Or, we don't get in a situation like we were in today, where it comes out a year and a half after - like this vital piece of a narrative that the City is telling itself comes out a year and a half afterwards - thanks to, shout out to Omari Salisbury at Converge Media, who asked the cops for body cam footage of these Proud Boys that they were supposedly tracking. When his request turned up nil, OPA initiated their investigation. And also several, I should mention, journalists at the time - particularly Matt Watson, aka Spek - immediately thought that the ruse was a ruse. [00:13:24] Crystal Fincher: He called it at the time, yeah. [00:13:28] Rich Smith: He called it at the time, yeah. And communicated that very clearly, and brought receipts. And so, that prompted questioning from journalists that eventually, through the process of gaining public records and initiating investigations with the OPA, comes out with this vital piece of the story of the protests of 2020. [00:13:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting - one, just the story, and just the - obviously the story on its own is egregious, just another egregious example. But also another example of the loss of control of the department - this was not a mayor directing or controlling anything - nothing in that narrative was directed, influenced, controlled by the mayor. And also, nothing in that narrative, according to the information that's publicly available, was directed or controlled by the Police Chief at the time, Carmen Best. These were officers who had basically gone rogue, and made these consequential, harmful, dangerous decisions on their own with no recourse. We're now finding out about this months, years after the fact - and then following up with laughable accountability, honestly. I mean, if ruse training is what comes out of this, I don't know how people are really looking at that as anything that meaningfully addresses this issue here - both with this specific issue - and with SPD overall. I hope that that was just an idea in the beginning, and we're going to get to the meat of accountability coming up, because that seems wholly just insufficient. [00:15:28] Rich Smith: Yeah, I'm skeptical, yeah, of this reformist answer that the City leaders are currently taking, which is to - you have Bruce Harrell doing an appeal to authority saying, "I know what I'll do, I'll go to the chief, and then we'll have this top-down answer," which is pretty typical, I think, of Harrell's impulse just as a leader. He's constantly talking about how he's going to bring the right people together, he knows everybody in the City, everybody knows him, it's a real top-down kind of coach approach. And so it makes sense that he would be like, "I know what I'll do, I'll go to the lead of the organization, Diaz, and say, 'Hey, this is unacceptable, tell everybody to quit this, whatever.'" Okay, so that's one - that's his approach to this reform. Herbold is saying, "We need more oversight over the cops lying, we need more records of this stuff, we need more training." But, the thing that seems to actually work, and what we're finding out as a result of many of these OPA investigations, is that the cops who perpetuated this bullshit are no longer at the department. And they're no longer at the department not because reformers rooted them out, but because of the Defund movement, which created a culture around policing that is inherently skeptical, that demands real accountability, that says, "You can't be hitting us, and we're going to film you when you do," that demands more of cops, and that doesn't - yeah. And so, that seems to be the thing that worked to root out a number of these officers who've gone rogue, or whose mission as officers don't align with the City's mission - I'll just say that. [00:17:25] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, yeah, pretty much. [00:17:26] Rich Smith: Defund worked - I don't know what to tell you. It probably rooted out more bad apples than any consent decree could have. I really should put asterisks all over that, I don't have any numbers or whatever. But just anecdotally, every time they go to discipline one of these guys, they're not there anymore. And it's for a reason. [00:17:50] Crystal Fincher: I would say increasingly - I think that there's still a number up there. But, certainly increasingly, and certainly it's because there has been pressure applied and accountability demanded, and increasingly made possible by the Defund movement and its demands, and holding other lawmakers accountable for enacting that through policy and through investigation and action. So, we will see how that continues. This is not the only police story that came up this week. In my city of Kent, Washington, we - it came out - have a police chief, an assistant police chief, who displayed literal Nazi propaganda, who was disciplined for posting a Nazi insignia, and joking about the Holocaust. The more that we learn about this, the worse that it gets. He admittedly joked about the Holocaust, he admittedly - this was a long-running thing. He had shaved his facial hair once into a Hitler mustache, and repeatedly told a joke to the effect that - just a horrible joke, horrible anti-Semitic joke, obviously this is all anti-Semitic. And word was given that the discipline for this - for an assistant chief who had repeatedly joked about the Holocaust, who had acted consistent with Nazi behavior and literally posted Nazi insignias on his door in the police department - was a two week suspension. That's what initially came out. [00:19:34] Rich Smith: That'll do it. [00:19:35] Crystal Fincher: Obviously, public outcry. Obviously, a response from other City officials caused the mayor to reconsider and announced that she will be asking the union for this officer's resignation. Now obviously, firing may not be as simple in all of these situations to have it stick, but you can certainly act that way and then be like, "Okay, well, we dare you to try and get your job back, you person who are comfortable with Nazi actions and cosplay, and spreading that nasty infection to the rest of the department." I should note that this was caught because a detective under this assistant chief's command reported him after this insignia had been up for four days. One reported him - everyone else in the department, I'm sure, was not comfortable reporting an assistant chief to this. To me, this speaks a lot about the culture that is currently happening there - that this can happen and only one, thankfully one, but only one reported this. And my goodness, if the recommendation that comes back after an investigation is two weeks, then doesn't that indicate that this entire system is broken? There's a lot more broken here. [00:21:07] Rich Smith: Yeah. I mean, if you can't fire a Nazi cop for putting Third Reich insignia outside of his office door - and he wasn't just like some cop, right? [00:21:22] Crystal Fincher: Nope. [00:21:22] Rich Smith: This guy was the head of the Department of Special Investigations and Detective Unit - [00:21:28] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, Assistant Chief. [00:21:30] Rich Smith: Assistant Chief, yeah. And this guy's safe space sticker is a couple of Nazi patches. It's just - the plausible deniability stretches the bounds of the imagination. He says that he didn't know that the insignia was Nazi stuff, it was from a show. So, if you're fighting an improper dismissal case or whatever, it just - I guess this is where you end up in the process, with a two-week suspension. But you're right, you could try to fight it a little bit harder, and push and push and push on this guy's counter-story, and really continue to gather more of this evidence that he was just flagrantly doing Nazi stuff in the Kent Police Department. [00:22:23] Crystal Fincher: Openly in the Kent Police Department. And if you can't fire a Nazi cop, who can you fire? The investigation found - he tried to say, "You know, despite making anti-Semitic jokes, and despite giving myself a literal Hitler mustache - that Nazi insignia that I posted on my door, I had no idea it was actually a Nazi insignia." And the investigation found that that was not the case, the investigation found that he knowingly posted that, knowing that it was a Nazi insignia. Everything about this screams Nazi cop, because literally Nazi cop. And so, this is a situation - to me - and for a lot of departments when they have egregious actions like this, and then they say, "Well, given the how - with the cop contracts oftentimes are - it's hard to fire them. If they went through arbitration, they'd wind up back on the force." Well, test it, test it. Say, "We're making a stand. And if you force us, perhaps, but we're not doing this willingly." Make that stand. And so, I suppose that is now where the mayor is at, asking for the resignation. If he says no, then what? Kick him off - get him out. [00:23:46] Rich Smith: You know, I think maybe we should do anti-Nazi training. But, anti-Nazi is a little just one-sided, so we probably should do anti-extremist training. [00:23:55] Crystal Fincher: Oh my gosh. And look, I live in Kent - it is not like I haven't noticed the increase in Blue Lives Matter stickers on police vehicles, which has been an issue in other cities. And there's been pushback against in other cities - certainly this has been brought up and basically ignored by City leadership. Would love to hear some accountability on that. There's a lot to find when you look into the City of Kent. [00:24:26] Rich Smith: Yes, yeah, and there should be more - yeah, much more scrutiny on a lot of these, the goings-on in these suburban cities. But, just the whole Nazi cop thing, or alleged Nazi cop thing goes back to this - how do you change the culture in these institutions? And the reformist answer seems to be - you change it by training, you change it by putting pressure on the higher-ups to be accountable to the people they oversee - these are their answers. It just goes back to how challenging it is going to be for reformists to really change the culture of these institutions, especially when the culture right now of these institutions is self-victimization, a feeling like that they're the guardians, literally, against chaos in society. And a number of them are attracted to - everyone goes where they're flattered - and so the cops are going to conservative wings of political thought, where they're bathed and flattered. And this is all contributing to being a little bit more permissive of the old Nazi insignia on the door. I don't know how you rearrange that without drastically changing who a cop is and what a cop does. I think that that's where you have to start making change, rather than saying like, "We're going to tell your boss on you," or, "We're going to train you to not be a Nazi." I think that those reforms haven't worked, as well as- [00:26:09] Crystal Fincher: They have failed. [00:26:10] Rich Smith: Yeah, yeah. [00:26:12] Crystal Fincher: They have failed. [00:26:13] Rich Smith: And yeah, going back to what I said earlier, the Defund movement did more to root out these kinds of cops than any of these reforms seem to. I don't know that for sure, but that seems to be what we're learning anecdotally. [00:26:25] Crystal Fincher: Well, it certainly has brought - it says in no uncertain terms that the resources that we continue to dedicate to the things that have not worked, that have not worked to make us safer - bottom line - and that have not worked to curb this behavior in all of these departments. It has not worked, so why are we continuing to dump more resources in the same types of things? We're at a time now where we just had a lot of new lawmakers sworn in - lots of city councils, new mayors sworn in - and they have the opportunity to lead in a different way than we've seen before. We have a new legislative session that's about to start, and there's the opportunity there for them to take substantive action to fill in the gaps in accountability that exist. And I would just urge these people to look at these situations, and to look at how inadequate our laws, regulations, have been in addressing this - and understanding the need for more accountability. That we've tried training, we've tried all of these types of, "Don't you see how bad this is?" And the only thing that seems to be effective at getting people to see how bad it is is treating them - is acting on our behalf, as if it's actually bad - and holding people accountable. We're having this conversation at the same time that we have a new City Attorney in Seattle who is talking about prosecuting crimes. We are more comfortable as a society talking about the consequences for stealing a loaf of bread than we are for being a Nazi assistant police chief, and I am just sick of it. I cannot stand it, and I urge people to take substantive action. It is time to be bold - this is why people were elected. Please do something. [00:28:18] Rich Smith: Would you mind for a moment if we did see what the legislators are up to over - [00:28:21] Crystal Fincher: Let's look at that - you actually - there was a wonderful article that you wrote about this that covered a lot of this. And one directly ties to - a number directly tie to policing. One, an issue directly tied to the lying - ruses in SPD. What is on tap in the legislative session that's about to start on Monday? [00:28:55] Rich Smith: That's right. We've got a 60-day session coming up - short session - mostly just tweaking stuff going on, mostly just kind of working multi-year bills that people know are going to take a bunch of time to get over the finish line. And of course, we've got to pass, I think, around a $60 billion supplemental budget, so there's some consideration about how to use a lot of one-time millions and one-time federal funding. But, there is some policing stuff going on in terms of the proposed bills, thus far - related to lying - House Bill 1690, if you want to follow it, Rep Strom Peterson, of all people - a Democrat - wants to render inadmissible evidence gathered from cops who lie to suspects during interrogation. So that, if passed - if a cop is interrogating somebody and they invent a ruse or a lie - say, "Your dad told me you did it, your friends told me you did it," and that produces a false confession or some piece of evidence that is going to be submitted in court later. This law passes and says, "We're not going to take that evidence." So, the thinking being that that would deter cops from using this tactic to produce evidence, which would be no good to them in a court anyway. So, that wouldn't stop cops from using ruses of the kind that helped to start CHOP in the City. But, it would potentially lower the use of this tactic, which young people are particularly vulnerable to. For instance, the Central Park Five - they picked them up because the cop lied and said that their friends had already ratted on them. And so, they drew false confessions that way. More recently, in 2019, I think a Seattle police officer was interrogating a guy who they suspected of hitting a bunch of parked cars - didn't injure anybody, but the cop told him that he had left one person in critical condition. A little while after that, the guy, feeling so sad that he had done something that killed somebody - he thought killed somebody - committed suicide as a result of that. So, I don't know if it should be illegal for cops to do ruses. But, these kinds of - I'm sure that they don't want to unilaterally disarm when suspects themselves do ruses to try to escape accountability from laws that we decide that we want as a society or whatever. But, there should be some guard rails around how badly you could lie, to what extent evidence produced through this really tricky, potentially disastrous tactic can be used. And, that seems like a good one in particular. [00:32:15] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and there's a lot of others. I mean, you've rounded up - there's gun legislation to ban high-capacity magazines, close the ghost gun loophole. There's bills to address income inequality - work continues with Rep Noel Frame. And work on the guaranteed basic income policy, sponsored by Liz Berry. Lots of good stuff in there, lots of criminal justice reform, a number of them - bill to allow for the legal grow and therapeutic guiding of trips for psilocybin - which has been legalized in a lot of other places. Certainly, the frequently-talked about Washington Cares Act, and figuring out what to do with that. Environmental bills to reduce emissions from gas companies, to make buildings more efficient, make packaging more recyclable. One that I am tracking closely and in favor of - by Mia Gregerson - to move local elections to even-numbered years with Rep Debra Entenman. A lot of stuff there - are there any other ones that stick out to you? [00:33:26] Rich Smith: Yeah. The big one for me, this year, that I'll probably be screaming about - I won't be alone in it, I'm sure, is Senate Bill 5670, House Bill 1782. They're identical bills - it's just the House bill and the Senate version - sponsored by Mona Das in the Senate and Jessica Bateman in the House. And it would legalize multi-unit homes statewide - I don't know how you want to put it - abolish single-family zoning statewide under certain criteria. That criteria, not to bore people, but everywhere within a half a mile of rapid transit - that is like bus stops that come every 15 minutes, rail, ferry stop - you're going to legalize up to sixplexes, basically. And then cities with lower populations, under 20,000, they'll have to take less density. I think it goes down to quads. And then cities under 10,000, they have to take duplexes. There's an alternative for cities who don't want to do that - where they have a formula - and then they get to put the density wherever they want to, but they can't perpetuate racism in doing so. So, that's kind of the basic structure of the bill. Oregon has already legalized apartments and homes and multi-unit homes everywhere. California has already legalized apartments and multi-unit homes everywhere. Minneapolis has done this. The sky hasn't fallen. It's absolutely necessary because we have a 250,000 unit-strong housing deficit. This has tragicomically - sorry, this has raised the price of homes to tragicomically high levels. The only place a first-time home buyer can afford to live is in like, Ferry County. There's six counties, there's seven counties, in the eastern part of the state where you can technically afford to buy a home if it's your first one. Everywhere else is astronomical and damn-near impossible to own affordably. We're only building 44,000 units a year, so that's not going to keep up with the number of units we need to solve this housing crisis. They've been trying to pass this bill for four years, and this year there's some reason for excitement, because Governor Inslee has put his weight behind it. However, there's still plenty of opposition - you've got the Association of Washington Cities, which represent cities, which are filled by NIMBYs, because they think that adding more density is going to lower their property values, which is going to tank their retirement prospects, because we live in a society that for some reason links the price of our house to whether or not we get to comfortably retire in old age. That's a separate episode. But, there's a lot of strong opposition to this bill, so - at a press conference yesterday, the leadership didn't sound too enthused about it. So, it's going to take a big - if you want to try to save the housing crisis with a market-based solution this year, you're going to want to be tracking this bill. And every time it gets a hearing you're going to want to sign up to talk about it, say how much you can't afford a house in your own neighborhood, et cetera. And you're going to want to push your lawmakers, because right now they're hearing from NIMBYs - the default is, don't allow this density. So, yeah. [00:37:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And many of them live in those neighborhoods, and have those tendencies themselves - [00:37:16] Rich Smith: That's right. [00:37:16] Crystal Fincher: - realistically, and are hearing this from their literal next-door neighbors. So, it is critical that people make a phone call, send an email to your legislator to say, "Hey, absolutely support this. I'm excited about it. I am expecting you to support it and will be paying attention." And to sign in when the bill has a hearing as it goes through the process. People have to know and hear from people who want this legislation, because NIMBYs mobilize for this, always, big time. And, they're in the minority. We see poll after poll that says that they are not the majority here, but the majority isn't used to advocating in the same way and pushing those same levers of power for these issues. And we really need to. [00:38:02] Rich Smith: Yeah. And it's hard to tell - and you've got to do it blanket. You can't assume because you think you have a progressive representative that they're going to be automatically on board. You cannot name one Democratic Senator in the Senate right now who is like - you could name any of them, and then say, "This person is going to vote against this bill," and that would make sense to me. I don't know who opposes it, but there's a reason it hasn't passed in four years. There's a reason why Mona Das has to keep trying, who's a renter by the way. She's also a mortgage broker, but she's also a renter. And, so any one of these people could be problem children to getting this, again, market-based solution. I mean, we're talking about letting people build. I thought that this was what you all were about, you know? I thought you guys were super into this kind of thing. But yeah, so, anyway, this is all to say - don't give your representative the benefit of the doubt because you think they're progressive. They could be a NIMBY in hiding, you know? [00:39:14] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely correct. Well, I just want to take these last few minutes on the show to talk about another event that was covered this week - the Bruce Harrell inaugural press conference. After being sworn in, he made a speech - we now have Mayor Harrell, Mayor Durkan is no more - no more in office, she's certainly around - who knows where she's going to end, like go, I don't know, maybe she's going to run away from Seattle. But, Bruce Harrell is here, and he made a very bold-sounding speech. And I just wanted to talk about a few of the specifics in his speech, or what he brought, and some of them had specifics. One kind of immediate thing - he's still weighing whether to extend the eviction moratorium, which ends on January 15th. Obviously the Rona is here, the Omicron variant is just continuing to dance through our lives. We are in the middle of a pandemic, we aren't beyond it - certainly parents are struggling with how to approach school, schools are struggling to just be staffed at a level that they can have staff in classrooms. Now we're not even at just teachers in classrooms, just any adult staff member is filling in in many places, in many districts. It's a hard thing. And in the midst of this obviously we're still dealing with the same issues of people taking care of sick relatives, people they are living with, living with immunocompromised people. And so, we don't know - he said he would be looking at the data and figuring that out. So, we can expect an upcoming announcement on whether or not that's going to continue, and I'm sure your feedback on whether he should continue that would be helpful. Chief Diaz is - oh, go ahead. [00:41:05] Rich Smith: Yeah, just to add, there was an important report in The Times this morning that the County doesn't have enough money to handle all of the rent assistance applications that has come its way. So, there's 10,000 requests for rental assistance that the County is not processing - [00:41:25] Crystal Fincher: Oh my gosh. [00:41:26] Rich Smith: - as of November. The County asked for $120 million from the Feds to cover the gap. So, if Bruce doesn't - I mean, and so - that's 10,000 people who say that they're behind on rent - in King County - I don't know how many particularly in Seattle. If Harrell lifts the eviction moratorium, that's that. And then those people could face eviction for non-payment of the rent. [00:41:57] Crystal Fincher: That's the trigger, yep. [00:41:58] Rich Smith: And so, that's something to - hopefully that the Harrell administration is considering. And also he says that he wants to strike some kind of balance between keeping vulnerable people housed, and making it so that vulnerable landlords don't feel like they have to sell their rental property and potentially decrease the rental housing stock. That's another conversation, but this is what he's balancing. Okay, he hinted that he was going to maybe rewrite some version of the moratorium, maybe he'll just keep it for another month based on The Seattle Times report, the amount of need that's out there. But, it's a huge problem, it's a big thing that the Harrell administration needs to deal with right now, and it's happening next week. [00:42:49] Crystal Fincher: Yeah - very, very big thing. And that was a very important data point to be considered. Another one - Chief Adrian Diaz might stay - Bruce Harrell didn't say that he was definitely going to leave, that they had some evaluation to do, that he needed to set expectations, and they needed to talk about those. And so it's possible that Chief Diaz stays, or that he embarks upon a nationwide search. He brought up that the City will pursue climate policies towards net zero emissions so that there'd be an early focus on electric cars. But that there weren't many specifics there, so we will wait to see what happens there. You know, another big thing that I was not expecting - that was intriguing, actually - and that could turn out to be very good. He said that he wanted to provide healthcare for every Seattle resident. That would be big, that would be awesome if that actually turned out to be every Seattle resident, if that included mental healthcare - like comprehensive healthcare for every Seattle resident would be great. Announced that as an initiative, where they said that they're coming up with the parameters to evaluate who does and who doesn't have healthcare so far, and figuring that out. So, we still have to see what the specifics of this are going to be. [00:44:15] Rich Smith: Yeah, finding money in the City budget - if it takes any money to provide healthcare for people as a City, finding that money in the City budget sounds like a real challenge. But, it's a worthy one. I don't know of many municipalities that offer healthcare for all in this way. I think New York City - Bill de Blasio did one - I should have looked that up before we started talking. But yeah, it seems like it would cost a lot of money, and he's got Tim Burgess on the case, the Strategic Initiatives Lead that he hired - former mayor, former City Councilman of many years, I think 12, don't quote me on that - and Burgess is a former cop, but he has led, I think, on some health initiatives. He made a big deal out of the Nurse-Family Partnership whenever he was on the Council. So, it's not crazy to have him do this - he's created healthcare policy, or worked on healthcare policy before. There's another person who's working with Burgess on this, I can't remember her name. But, in any event - so yeah, it would be a big deal, it would be cool, it will be interesting to see what they end up doing. From the sound of it, it was like, "We've got to get a dashboard spreadsheet of who's sick first," and yeah. [00:45:44] Crystal Fincher: One of my takeaways was that this is going to be an administration that loves dashboards - there was talk about data and dashboards for everything. We'll see how that turns out, but that certainly was a big, bold proposal that would be a huge win for everybody. [00:46:02] Rich Smith: Yeah. [00:46:03] Crystal Fincher: For residents of Seattle. He also talked about making noticeable change, noticeable progress, on housing people, on reducing our unhoused population - in the first quarter, I believe he said. And so, I'm going to be excited to see how he conducts that. He said that he's excited to get people into housing. And if he can get people into housing and there's a noticeable difference, I don't know anyone who is opposed to that. Now, if this is a sweeps-based solution, I think there's a lot of people who are not going to be happy with that. But it will be very interesting to see - again, they said that they're still collecting a lot of data, but he said that is one area where we can expect to see noticeable improvement. So, I truly hope - I don't think there's anyone who does not want people to be housed who are not housed. And I hope that there's listening to people who are telling people - there's this narrative about "refusing services." When people are offered services - that can be a very misleading statement - because a lot of times those services aren't available or applicable to their situation. But also, there are reasons why the services available may not meet the needs of the people on the ground. And so, I hope we're listening to what people say will meet their needs, and build towards what will meet their needs and solve this issue and house people. If that happens, I think we're all waiting to applaud Bruce Harrell for that. [00:47:33] Rich Smith: That's right. And he also said - on the getting houses for those people to live in, or for everyone to live in - he talked about housing for all, and making sure everyone had an affordable place to live. His first action was going to be to - he did an executive order to look at permitting processes. And it sounded like he wanted to streamline permitting - which is a thing that people say, but that's going to be interesting to see what he gets back. I mean, permitting - what's he going to get? It's a bunch of ideas that sound good on their own. So if he gets a list back and sees what kinds of permitting people need to do to build housing, what's Bruce Harrell administration going to get rid of? Are they going to get rid of design review, are they going to get rid of MHA, are they going to get rid of sprinklers for town homes, are they going to get rid of environmental review? I wonder if the Bruce Harrell administration is going to get rid of any of these processes that have built up around building housing. We know what it's going to take to get housing for all, and it's a billion dollars a year for 10 years, with the current affordable housing scheme that cities have concocted. Or, it's going to take massive investment in public or social housing, so we can put people inside. And so, maybe streamlined permitting can work a little bit, but it'll be interesting to see how we want to streamline that process. Not saying that there's not room for improvement, there definitely is. I don't give a **** about design review, I imagine the Harrell administration does. But, maybe they don't - I don't know, surprise me. Yeah, there's a lot more reporting to do on this. [00:49:30] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I mean, it will be interesting. Also, there is a - on the subject of zoning specifically - was a little bit fuzzy on that, but he said, quote, "We'll fill in the gaps where zoning is already available for housing and construction and density. And our Chief Operating Officer, Marco Lowe (a name that Hacks & Wonks listeners will be familiar with, as he's a co-host sometimes on Hacks & Wonks) who not only has deep experience in City Hall but also actual experience in the housing industry, will lead this critical effort. So, as we embark on a City-wide master plan update - and again, it's time for that master plan update. As many of you are aware, we'll look at opportunities to address every neighborhood to address the shortage of quality housing at every income level." So, not specifics there - a plan to address it, a point person named, and Marco Lowe to do it. And so, eager to see what results from that, but certainly results are needed. [00:50:26] Rich Smith: More power to - let them know, Marco. [00:50:34] Crystal Fincher: Marco's certainly competent, on the case, and I hope that they can make substantive progress. I believe Marco can - hopefully the intentions of the administration are truly to do that. And again - that happens, everybody wins. People are waiting to applaud that. [00:50:55] Rich Smith: It'll be an interesting four years. [00:50:57] Crystal Fincher: It will be, it definitely will be. Well, thank you. [00:51:00] Rich Smith: If he brings back the Sonics, that's going to be eight years. I've been telling you, this is the one thing - anyway, I don't want to start a new topic, but it'll be an interesting four or eight years depending on whether or not Bruce Harrell brings back the Sonics. [00:51:14] Crystal Fincher: Look, you know what? If he brings back the Sonics - yeah, that's going to be a whole thing, that's going to be a whole thing. And my goodness, looking at some of these other clubs around the country. And look, I don't want to take a team from the other city, but they have really messed things up in Oklahoma City. Wow, they did not earn the Sonics, they did not. They are a mess, they are trifling and shady and ridiculous and shameful. And anyway, I mean, I'm a Lakers fan, so you know. But I mean, the Sonics have a place in my heart. Kevin Durant has a place in my heart, we just - we need the Sonics back here. All right. We are more than beyond our time, but I just want to thank everybody for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM, this Friday, January 7th 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler, with assistance from Shannon Cheng. And our wonderful co-host today was Associate Editor of The Stranger, Rich Smith. You can find Rich on Twitter @richsssmith, with three S's in the middle. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, with two I's at the end. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts, just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live show and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show - all the great articles that we talked about - at OfficialHacksAndWonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in, we'll talk to you next time.

THE THESIS: The real meaning of January 6 is The Party wants more days like that and so do their supporters. THE SCRIPTURE:  Isaiah 28: 14-22 Therefore hear the word of the Lord, you scoffers    who rule this people in Jerusalem. 15 Because you have said, ‘We have made a covenant with death,    and with Sheol we have an agreement;when the overwhelming scourge passes through    it will not come to us;for we have made lies our refuge,    and in falsehood we have taken shelter'; 16 therefore thus says the Lord God,See, I am laying in Zion a foundation stone,    a tested stone,a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation:    ‘One who trusts will not panic.' 17 And I will make justice the line,    and righteousness the plummet;hail will sweep away the refuge of lies,    and waters will overwhelm the shelter. 18 Then your covenant with death will be annulled,    and your agreement with Sheol will not stand;when the overwhelming scourge passes through    you will be beaten down by it. 19 As often as it passes through, it will take you;    for morning by morning it will pass through,    by day and by night;and it will be sheer terror to understand the message. 20 For the bed is too short to stretch oneself on it,    and the covering too narrow to wrap oneself in it. 21 For the Lord will rise up as on Mount Perazim,    he will rage as in the valley of Gibeonto do his deed—strange is his deed!—    and to work his work—alien is his work! 22 Now therefore do not scoff,    or your bonds will be made stronger;for I have heard a decree of destruction    from the Lord God of hosts upon the whole land. THE NEWS: Jen Psaki: "The President will speak to the historical significance of January 6th and what it means for the country one year later." Interesting - I searched the database & haven't found anyone charged with insurrection. What “insurrection” are they referring to? 727 people have been charged in the Capitol insurrection so far. This searchable table shows them all. CBS Warns GOP Midterm Wins One of the ‘Top Global Risks' in 2022 THE MEANING? THE PARTY WANTS MORE DAYS LIKE JAN. 6 AND WORSE! Ngo: Portland takes the dishonor of having among the highest percentage increase of homicides anywhere in the U.S. for two years in a row, after embrace of BLM and Antifa Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan leaves a mixed legacy shadowed by crisis  ← Doesn't mention Antifastan!  In that time, Durkan made some strides in the community, like helping pass a $600 million education levy — including the inception of the Seattle Promise free community college program — and making historic investments in affordable housing. She also drew significant criticism for things like the mishandling of text messages during 2020's racial reckoning requested under public records laws, which led to multiple lawsuits, and her approach to criminal justice protests, which led to an unsuccessful recall effort. But Durkan's time in office was primarily ruled by COVID-19, which hit just after the midway point in her term. Pilot speaks out about his post Covid vax injury, says other pilots forced to shut up and fly with chest and head pains following the injection Up-pointing red triangle Pilots flying with chest pain is not cool with me. Thanks but I'll drive. - NEWSMAX Here's what Google recommended when I search using the text, above: “Video Spreads Bogus Claims About Plane Crashes and COVID-19 Vaccines …” from “Fact'Check.org AND, it's GLOBAL NEW - Emmanuel Macron denounced France's 5 million unvaccinated as "non-citizens" and vows: "I really want to piss them off. And so we will continue to do so, to the bitter end. That's the strategy." (Le Parisien) MUSIC REVIEW: Old Friends, Ben Rector See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this second part of a discussion with Executive Director of America Walks and former mayor of Seattle Mike McGinn, we reflect on Mayor Durkan's term and legacy, discuss the mayor having more power than the council to drive change on the ground, Mayor Harrell's predecessor and an ongoing pandemic creating a taller task than usual for an incoming mayor, and some advice from McGinn for Mayor Bruce Harrell as he begins his term.    As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.    Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Mike McGinn, at @mayormcginn. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.

For the last show of the year, we have the first part of a discussion with Executive Director of America Walks and former mayor of Seattle Mike McGinn about how the City's response to the recent snowstorm and Harrell's recent appointees highlight opportunities for the incoming administration to both learn from and leave behind the past as they stand up a government to lead us into 2022 and beyond.  As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Mike McGinn, at @mayormcginn. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.   Resources: “Why Sweden Clears Snow-Covered Walkways Before Roads” by Angie Schmitt from Streetsblog USA: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/01/24/why-sweden-clears-walkways-before-roads/   Disability Rights Washington - Disability Mobility Initiative: https://www.disabilityrightswa.org/programs/disabilitymobility/   “Does Adding an Extra Driving Lane Make Traffic Worse?” by David Stockin from Drivetribe: https://drivetribe.com/p/does-adding-an-extra-driving-lane-E6FPiVJnQSCPun1-pS-Q-A?iid=Ic6o2PzdQcaGewi7L9kSbw   “The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion: Evidence from US Cities” by Gilles Duranton and Matthew A. Turner from American Economic Review 101: https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/aer.101.6.2616   “'Zombie highways,' mass transit failures: PBS 'News Hour' takes look at Birmingham” by Bob Sims from Advance Local: https://www.al.com/spotnews/2009/08/zombie_highways_mass_transit_f.html   “Inslee's Proposed 2022 Budget Plugs Holes in Highway Megaprojects” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/12/27/inslees-proposed-2022-budget-plugs-holes-in-highway-megaprojects/   “Seattle Mayor-elect Harrell names niece deputy mayor, lists other appointments” by Sarah Grace Taylor from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/bruce-harrell-announces-key-cabinet-members-appoints-niece-as-deputy-mayor/   “Seattle Mayor-elect Harrell appoints final deputy mayor, other leaders before taking office” by Sarah Grace Taylor from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-mayor-elect-harrell-appoints-final-deputy-mayor-other-leaders-before-taking-office/   Transcript: [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. 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 almost-live 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: activist, community leader, former mayor of Seattle, and Executive Director of America Walks - the excellent Mike McGinn. [00:00:57] Mike McGinn: I'm glad to be here, Crystal. [00:00:59] Crystal Fincher: Glad to have you here, as we close out 2021 and tiptoe gingerly into 2022 - and just wanted to talk, not just about what's happening this week, but contextualize it and what's happening through the year. And there was no one better to do that with than Mike McGinn, with so much context just in organizing and urbanism land use policy - and few things you picked up as mayor of Seattle. So this week, we are in the midst of seemingly unending snow that we're dealing with - it snowed on Christmas, it is snowing right now as we're recording on Friday morning, temperatures have not been above freezing all week, they're just supposed to get above freezing today - briefly - before we get some more snow perhaps this weekend. And so we've been blanketed with the snow, mobility has been a challenge, sidewalks have been treacherous - and please shovel your sidewalks, folks - but there's been no cohesive strategy and a ton of people haven't. Our streets have been a mess. Also, it's been freezing and dangerous for people who are unsheltered and we have an imperfect emergency response. And we've talked many times about our responsibility to keep our neighbors safe from extreme climate - heat in the summer and now freezing cold, which can be lethal if you're out there. And so as you're looking at what we're dealing with, what does it tell you about where we're at in Seattle? [00:02:50] Mike McGinn: Well, first of all, I just want to say that it goes from an old mayor to a new mayor at midnight on the 31st, or the first minute of January 1 - and I actually went outside to check the weather the second I became mayor, right? Because I was actually thinking about at the time - what would it be like to enter office if there was something happening? And that's happening right now to Bruce Harrell. So clearly the response that you see to a snowstorm is based on muscle memory and work that's done years and months in advance. So for example, I believe they're still substantially using the road clearing plan that we adopted - and I took office a year after a snowstorm that really showed some weaknesses in the snow response of the City of Seattle. And so there were a lot of big changes made after that. And we still follow that strategy. But there are things - [00:03:52] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, we lost the mayor over that snow response. [00:03:55] Mike McGinn: Yeah, that was big deal. And at the time, this City didn't really use salt, it pushed snow to the middle of the road - not to the edges. And we got a long, cold stretch so it froze in the middle so people couldn't make turns - all the streets were icy. It really had really dramatic effects on the City and the City's residents. And that was a big deal. So we changed a lot of that - the focus now is on plowing the transit routes first, we even shared online the GPS of where they were going. And we use salt because it turns out actually - all that sand has an effect too on the City's systems and storm drains. And the salt was not that big a deal, not as big a deal environmentally. So we made all those changes but it still took us a couple of snowstorms to really get it right. The very first one - there was freezing on the West Seattle Bridge and it shut down stuff. And the brine that was used on the roadways in advance of the storm wasn't powerful enough. So Bruce Harrell will be coming in and it's not like he can change all of that stuff in the past. But it's - one thing I learned though, was it's - a mayor does make a difference in the moment to moment, because there are decisions that have to be made. And we are seeing some of that right now, right? Like as we discover the City can't open up the winter shelters that it wants to open up because people are having trouble getting in to man those shelters because of the conditions. So we have an Emergency Operations Center that opens. I discovered that you want to be there before the snow starts falling, or the ice, or the wind, or whatever the issue is. And you stay there through it for a couple of reasons. One is that you might be able to help facilitate some decisions - you might be able to make a phone call to another arm of government. But I think it's also just a show of support for the City employees that are doing the work. They know it's important when the mayor is there and it matters to them. So for this to be happening during a transition, hopefully everybody is in a position to keep pushing. But this is really something that I hope Durkan and Harrell are working on because there are people, and particularly the least powerful among us, who are counting on the City to innovate and come up with different ideas and different solutions to take care of people in circumstances like this. And I remember being down at EOC, in the Emergency Operations Center, and overhearing the conversations of people on the phone who are working to try to get people to treatments they needed. And just dealing with the situations that come up - that maybe there's a City resource that can be used in that moment to help people. And you need that attention to detail and attention to the developing circumstances to be able to do that. You don't want to read about it the next day - that a bad thing happened and nobody was there to help from the City who should have been. [00:07:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, completely agree. And as I look at this, just looking more forward, we're in a continuing, worsening climate crisis. And we are seeing more extreme temperatures than we've seen in decades - right now on the cold side. We saw that on the hot side earlier this year. And so it seems that we should be preparing for more extreme and more prolonged weather events of all different types. And so to your point, you put in place and largely constructed a snow response strategy after the catastrophic failure that helped to lead to you - [00:07:55] Mike McGinn: 2009. Yeah. [00:07:56] Crystal Fincher: - to being in office. Yeah. And it has been updated since then, but now we're at this time and it is foreseeable that these staffing issues as we move forward are going to be - there're issues with staffing for these kinds of services when we're not facing this kind of an extreme challenge - it only gets worse when we are. How do we plan to be more resilient as we move forward? How do we plan to make sure that we have more than just a bare bones, nighttime, get out at 7:00 AM, shelter - and it's still freezing outside and we're putting people out there. How do we focus on perhaps not forcing people into congregate shelter? Are there better options that we can provide even in an emergency situation? So really there's a big opportunity for the Harrell administration, as we move forward, to update this plan and this policy and this capacity. And a lot of people would be surprised to understand that government provides a lot of services - not directly - I mean, they certainly do their share of direct services, but they contract with a lot of companies and service providers. And even what we're asking them to do is the same as it has been. And we need to talk about updating that and making sure that they have the type of capacity to respond to this and that they're prepared for a response for today and not the response of 10 or 20 or 30 years ago. Everything is demanding more updated, more relevant, responsive, resilient solutions. And I see this as a big op opportunity for the Harrell administration to take on. And one that's going to have more consequences if they don't. [00:09:42] Mike McGinn: Well, that use of the word resilient too - and it's worth looking at that because the pandemic certainly exposed every weakness in our society, and exposed the way in which inequality works at multiple levels - and who was exposed to harm because of the pandemic, whether it was the disease itself or the loss of a job or exposure to the disease, all of these things - and who didn't. It's a stress test on the system and a snowstorm is a stress test on the system too. And one of the things - you look at car commercials and they just love to show these big, robust vehicles muscling through the snow like there's some fantasy of freedom associated with that. But what we know from snowstorms, as an example, or flooding - is that it's a very fragile system - that a transportation system that relies on every individual, that they need a big vehicle to navigate the system - that system doesn't work. It doesn't take much stress to tackle that. Whereas if you have neighborhoods that are built around walkability - the ability to get down to the grocery store and pick up what you need, or get to a pharmacy, or get from your home to staff the emergency shelter. So that resiliency isn't just the walkability, but actually affordable housing throughout the City. So that the people who take care of the City can afford to live in the City and close to a bus route that might be operating - because we have enough snow plows to handle the arterials, but we don't have enough snow plows to handle every residential street. So there's all of these even more fundamental things we can do to create a resilient place. And I remember that once in a snowstorm long before I was mayor and I walked home. I walked home from downtown to Wallingford where I was living. And I felt pretty good about it - like if something went wrong, there was probably a public house along the way where I could stop in and get warm. I was going to make it and people could still have a semblance of their daily lives. Whereas the person driving out to Issaquah might have been leaving their car out by the side of the road in a snow drift, wondering what to do next and how to get home. So these are just a resiliency that filters through everything. And we should be looking at our cities when the sun is shining and the weather is great, we should be looking at our cities with, Well, how do we make it so that people can afford to live here so they can meet their daily needs? And it goes to snow clearing strategy as well. And we were talking a little bit about this before the show started. In Sweden, they went and studied and made a conclusion that they should clear the sidewalks before the roads, because the people who were using the sidewalks tended to be more women than men and tended to be on very important trips - for childcare, for getting to work and the like. And we're now developing a set of protected bike lanes around the City. And we got a little snow plowing machine for that - I don't know what they named it yet, but I forget, there was a whole naming thing going on for that - but the idea that if you had a connected network of those places, you could plow those. And that meant somebody in a wheelchair, if they could get from their front door to that lane, they could have a clear path to the neighborhood store. They wouldn't be isolated in their homes by the ice - that is what happens now to somebody who is disabled. So looking at the strategies and rules we have around snow clearing of sidewalks, how - maintenance of sidewalks. Right now, it's the job of private property owners. And we started sending out crews - we were just starting to get at this - we started sending out crews to clear the corners downtown, because the snow plows of course piled up snow at the corners. But we were sending out crews with shovels. Well, why not hire a bunch of people with shovels to go out and make sure that there's clear paths on all the curb ramps where people need them, which is a lot of the City. But these are the types of policy choices we can make about what we prioritize. And of course it's going to take money and it's going to take a different viewpoint. First, it's going to take a change of view - that maybe the person in the single-occupancy vehicle isn't the most important user of the transportation system that needs to be prioritized. It's the everyday trips that people who don't have vehicles need - center our transportation system around them, and we'll have a transportation system in which we all benefit from really great accessible neighborhoods. [00:14:46] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I completely agree. And to your point - for me, there was a term that was used a lot in the prior federal administration - prior administrations were picking winners and losers. And really that's what we do when we talk about transit and prioritization of cars. We are really eliminating the choice for people to walk, or bike, or roll, or to do anything but drive. We've made that so inaccesible and hard for people that - if people want to drive, great, but there are so many people who dislike so many elements of driving - dealing with traffic, dealing with parking, dealing with trying to be out on these roads and can you make it up a hill or not? And just the inflexibility of the system to support cars that we continue dumping money into. And if we actually did prioritize transit choice - that hey, you know what? If you end up driving, okay. But what we're not going to do is make it impossible for you to walk, for you to ride your bike. I mean, I saw a picture online this morning of right now in the middle of the snow and someone attempting to walk on Aurora. And they're basically walking on the side of the street because the sidewalks are just snow and ice - in the middle of this extremely dangerous road when conditions are ideal. And now they're driving on an icy snowy street. And you just look at that and have a sense of impending doom and dread because you know how dangerous that is on a clear, sunny, dry day. And we are forcing people to walk in the median, we're forcing wheelchair users to roll in the street because it is just impossible to do that on a sidewalk where a sidewalk exists. [00:16:40] Mike McGinn: Yeah. If they can even make it down past the ice that's on the sidewalk outside their front door to reach that place. So yeah, we were talking about prioritization and money. I highly recommend by the way - what the State Legislature will be making decisions in the coming year about - where money should go. There's a lot of federal money heading to the states right now as part of the infrastructure bill. And I really commend to people in the state of Washington, across the state, but certainly the listeners here for Rainier Valley Radio and whoever else we've attracted to this podcast. Thank you, Crystal for your work for building and promoting this thing. The Disability Mobility Initiative is a partnership spearheaded by Disability Rights Washington, but they partnered with Front and Centered - they partnered with other advocates. And what they want to do is put the needs of non-drivers at the center of transportation policy. So that was the philosophy I was talking about earlier. Because I think a lot of our transportation, and you'll see this in advocacy organizations - there's some advocacy organizations that are like, look, the powers that be are going to build their highways. They got all the power. And our job is just to try to fit in around the cars somehow in the policy making too. Maybe we should get a little bit more. Now transportation is now the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the state, in the country. It's behind this extreme weather. It's one of the things behind this extreme weather we're having. So it's a good reason to change it by itself. But how about a philosophy that instead of trying to fit in around this dangerous polluting activity, instead we said, well, how about we make it so that cars fit in around people, that we start to get the ability of people to walk to their daily needs, to walk to transit - and transit, by the way, as a middle leg of a walking trip says the Executive Director of America Walks - me. [00:18:47] Crystal Fincher: It's true. [00:18:49] Mike McGinn: It's true - mostly, mostly. I guess there's some Park and Rides out there, but it's mostly the middle leg of a walking trip. It extends how far you can walk by quite a bit, I've discovered. So why not build a whole system around that and then figure out how to fit in the vehicles around that that you still need. And that is how places were built until we abandoned the good sense of building walkable town centers and walkable business districts in order to prioritize jamming cars through them. So this is a big philosophy change and what's beautiful about the Disability Mobility Initiative is it's centering the needs of non-drivers. And again, that's great for everybody. And that's an approach that Washington state transportation advocacy is needed. And enough of, let the highway builders have their highways. Maybe we'll get a few dollars for the things we care about. Let's get the dollars in the right place to start with. [00:19:52] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And huge point in the coming months - there's going to be a lot of decisions made on this transportation package. We do know and have a ton of data that expanding highways does not improve traffic, which is often how it's sold. And so let's actually improve people's commutes no matter how they choose to take them, which is going to take a massive rebalancing of the share of our transportation budget that we spend on cars versus the share that we spend on everything else that - that's such a large portion of our community uses. So appreciate that. [00:20:27] Mike McGinn: Nationally and locally, there's an issue. There's a phrase out there. There's something they call zombie highways. These are the highways that were drawn up in the heyday of the highway building era. And the reason they're called zombie highways is because they're still out there soaking up money for planning, and people are still trying to figure out how to raise the money to build them. 509 extension, which will - everybody goes, "Oh, great. It'll connect I-5 to that dead-end 509 by the airport." Yeah. It'll also send tens of thousands more cars a day through South Park, which wants to get rid of another highway that was built in the past that isn't so good anymore. We've got to stop funding the ideas from the 70s - 1970s - and start funding the ideas for the 2020s. And it seems like now would be a good time to think about that. [00:21:17] Crystal Fincher: Now would be an excellent time. There was a great article in The Urbanist about this, this past week, and talking about the - Inslee's proposed budget and a significant amount going to highway expansion. And even conversations within Seattle of - do we have one bridge over Montlake versus two, and relying on old projections that are no longer needed and an increasing realization that hey, we don't need what we thought was needed 30 years ago, 20 years ago. Why are we still relying on the same projections? And I recall there was a mayor around a decade ago that had several conversations about this in terms of a tunnel, and few other things, which actually turned out to be correct. So yeah. [00:22:07] Mike McGinn: Oh my God. And yeah - no - for the listeners that don't know, I thought - if you were around then, you knew. If you're new, maybe this is history. I thought we should not replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct with the tunnel highway. I thought we should invest in transit along that corridor. And there was not a single elected official in the state of Washington who would side with me on that, except for Councilmember Mike O'Brien at the time. The entire City Council, one of whom is now our mayor, thought that building a highway on the waterfront for $4 billion - and by the way, they promised at the time that then there wouldn't be a highway on the surface - and it turns out, they still need lots of lanes on the surface too is what they're saying. So we haven't let go of this magical thinking that more lanes will lead to a better transportation system, when what we know is that more lanes just leads to more vehicles and lots of other places too besides that highway. And that's a big source of the pollution we have and challenges we face. And it doesn't scale, doesn't stand up to bad weather. It doesn't scale and it's not a question of ideology. I like to say it's a question of geometry. If everybody is surrounded by a car, they don't fit in a city. You just can't fit them all. You just can't fit it all. It's just math. So be nice if we could figure that out. Yeah. [00:23:29] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I mean, I learned a lot of lessons from you in that too. I did not start off agreeing with where you're at - I'm like, "What do you mean? Just roads and transit - that's not going to be enough." And I was wrong. Lots of people were wrong. And lots of lessons to be learned throughout that. And one of the points that you made then was just like, "Hey, these projections are all out of whack. There's no way that this works and it creates so many problems when you count on capacity, then tolling on that capacity." And then that doesn't happen. Then what? Then what happens? And then the promise of no cost overrun. But anyway, we don't need to go back there. We can do year in review, but we won't do a decade in review here. [00:24:18] Mike McGinn: There is a transition here. There is a pivot here - because one of the topics that we've talked about out is - topic of the week is there's going to be a new mayor. There's going to be a new mayor, but we're learning a lot more about his administration. And he did replace his transportation chief, and he's announced some new people he's going to come in. So the history of the past is still with us in the present. But let's talk about the present then. [00:24:45] Crystal Fincher: Well, let's talk about the present. And to your point, Harrell announced the final round of his major appointees, deputy mayors - among those that were recently announced, big deputy mayor heading intergovernmental relations, intergovernmental office relations - I forget what the exact title is - but Gael Tarleton, former port commissioner, former legislator. Gael Tarleton - background in security and issues related to Russia. And Gael was a big supporter of Sara Nelson, a supporter of Bruce Harrell - certainly an indication of the direction that is being signaled in terms of policy, I would think. [00:25:36] Mike McGinn: Well, I think there's a mixed bag of appointees. And I don't know everybody that's listed, but there are a number of people I do know. And for the one thing is - there are a lot of names, I'm not quite sure how to describe this - it's like there's some type of special LinkedIn that you have to be on in order to be hired by Murray, Durkan, or Harrell. Right? [00:26:09] Crystal Fincher: Well, let me list some of them instead of - qualifying that. In the first round, a lot of them - Monisha Harrell, who is the senior deputy mayor and shares a last name with mayor, soon-to-be mayor Bruce Harrell, because she is his niece, but has a lengthy resume of her own. And I certainly will say, have seen - certainly there are a lot of people not excited about Bruce Harrell being mayor and that has led to some justifiable critiques of who he has slated for his administration. But what I don't want to feed into is just tossing people out, or their accomplishments out - especially women of color - their accomplishments out just because they're working in this administration. I try and keep my critiques policy focused. And I don't want to suggest that Monisha Harrell is not worthy of holding the position of senior deputy mayor at all. She's a board chair of Equal Rights Washington, member of the National LGBTQ Task Force Action Fund - extremely competent. And we'll see how that manifests within this Harrell administration. Tiffany Washington is going to be the deputy mayor of housing and homelessness, the deputy mayor of external relations - is that what Gael did? Is that intergovernmental - [00:27:36] Mike McGinn: That's Gael Tarleton. That's Gael Tarleton. [00:27:38] Crystal Fincher: Okay. That was - I'm looking at one of two articles - this one's by Sarah Grace Taylor. And part two, so yes, Gael Tarleton. And then some appointees from folks who worked in Harrell's office before. So two former employees of a City Council office, Jennifer Samuels, and - let me see - Jeremy Racca. [00:28:09] Mike McGinn: Yeah. [00:28:10] Crystal Fincher: Jeremy Racca, who worked as a former LA. So it's going to be an interesting time. Kendee Yamaguchi will serve as mayor of external relations, Gael Tarleton is the interim director of the Office of Intergovernmental Relations. As we talked about last week, and you just mentioned, there's going to be a new SDOT head. So Derrick Wheeler-Smith is going to be the interim director of the Seattle Office for Civil Rights. And it's really interesting to see a number of these appointees hold the title of interim. So I don't know what that means, and if they are planning on transitioning into that role, seeking others, but there are a number who still hold the title of interim. So these could change over time, but that's who we're looking at now. And Tim Burgess - former Councilmember, former mayor Tim Burgess - is going to be influential within this administration. So certainly a lot of names that we have heard, were used to hearing from 10, 15 years ago, are now back - as recently as 5 years ago for some of them. But here we are. So certainly a shift in tone and direction from - [00:29:34] Mike McGinn: It's really interesting, because you are right to point out - there are names that are new to city government and then there are names that we have not seen before. And that's why I said, it's something of a mixed bag. And it starts one to wondering - what direction does he go? And I think that's where a lot of people are in right now - is the reading of the tea leaves, right? Like what will be Bruce Harrell's priorities as mayor? And how will he govern? And people look to appointments as part of that question. I have to say - Burgess and Tarleton both give me pause - because both of them, specifically on these issues we were just talking about, represented an older view. And the firing of Sam Zimbabwe, who's a pretty competent administrator and a professional, and was mostly under the radar during his term. He wasn't out there either upstaging the mayor or making the mayor look bad - just being a dedicated civil servant. That gave me pause about - what does it mean for policy that Sam Zimbabwe was let go when there're so many other positions to fill. Like trying to get a new transportation head while you're trying to also get a new police chief and all sorts of other positions - why take that on? And it gives me fear that what we're going to see is that somebody was complaining that maybe Sam was building too many bike lanes or something. And that was the impression I got from reading The Seattle Times article on that - that somebody in Bruce's camp - and I remember Bruce saying something to the effect of, "I'll tell you what? I'm not going to lead with bike lanes," he said, during the forum, which was kind of a peering into Bruce's soul on transportation there, for a second. And so that's bad. I think it's bad. I think it's a real challenge coming in, as mayor Harrell will be, coming in with the incumbent not going to be there. So all of the department heads and the people in city government, they didn't know who the mayor was going to be for a long time. And so - or whether they would have jobs. So in that situation, you see people leave. And I had the same experience because my predecessor lost in the primary. So everybody knew from August onwards that there would be a new mayor. And even after I took office, there were people who had applied for and received great jobs, and they'd come to me and say I'm leaving for the Obama administration or I'm leaving for a new national position. And there were about four of those. And each one of those searches is important and time-consuming and requires the mayor's personal attention because you really want good people in there. And I think that there's been a fair bit of turnover and interims. And so I think that's going to be one of the challenges for mayor Harrell - is standing up government, so to speak - not just forming his own office and how that functions, but also seeing how - getting the department heads in place to realize his vision. Circling back to Burgess and Tarleton, both of those just give me a lot of concern because I just don't think either of them - to the degree that Burgess in charge of special projects is going to have some strategic leadership in this - that just gives me concern because I saw what he prioritized and what he didn't prioritize as a City Council president. And I just hope that Bruce will be listening to some more progressive voices in his administration than Tim Burgess. [00:33:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, certainly - and Burgess's support and involvement in the Compassion Seattle campaign that was there to codify sweeps in the City Charter certainly gave a number of people pause. And the criticisms of progress attempting to be made in terms of the SPD and public safety in a meaningful way for everyone in the City - certainly a divergence in a lot of what has turned out to be popular opinion in the City and where Tim Burgess was at. And I think that, to me, probably more than anything symbolizes just the conversation - recalling the many conversations during your term that you had with the Council, and where the Council was at, is a very different place than where the Council is at - and by implication, where the residents of Seattle who are electing that Council, is at. The residents have made a turn in who they are electing and supporting in recalls for their Councilmembers. And so that is very different than some of the rhetoric that we've heard back when folks were in office. And certainly during this election cycle in 2021 throughout these campaigns. [00:34:49] Mike McGinn: One of the things that I admire about Bruce Harrell, and mayor Harrell in a day or two, mayor-elect now but mayor Harrell - is when Tim Burgess wanted to pass an anti-panhandling statute, it was Bruce Harrell deciding to listen to the Human Rights Commission and vote against it, that meant that that didn't become law. And another thing that - [00:35:14] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. He was the deciding vote. It really rested on where he was going to be at. [00:35:17] Mike McGinn: He kind of cracked it open too, honestly. When he said he would vote against it, that opened the path for Mike O'Brien to come in as well. And so I could veto that and not have the veto overridden on that. And he also spearheaded the effort to get - that felons didn't have to check a box saying whether or not they had been a felon previously when trying to get rental housing. And that said something about who Bruce wanted to support. I recall, late in my term, I was meeting with the Black pastors. I met regularly with them, and they were asking me a series of questions. They would ask me why had Council president Burgess not funded the Seattle Youth Violence Prevention Initiative the way I'd asked for additional funds. And I tried to explain to them about how Tim didn't think there was good enough data to support that. And they asked me about why Tim Burgess had not expanded a program for returning felons called Career Bridge. And I explained to them again that Tim didn't think there was good enough data. And then they asked why he had cut a program in Rainier Valley, just eliminated it from the budget, as the chair. And I'm sorry, I can't remember quite the name of the program, but again it was a program that worked in Rainier Beach. And I explained again - and they're all looking at me and I realized, they're actually asking me a different question. They said, "Why is that, though? Why is that?" And I answered them - because the point they were making is that, why was it the programs for poor people and Black people that were subject to this exacting scrutiny for effectiveness in the City budget, whereas other things seemed to fly through. I had a great conversation with Girmay Zahilay about the King County Council - they just walked on some type of relief for the Convention Center. He said, "Yeah, if it was a program for poor people, we have this long exacting process to decide whether or not we can afford it or whether or not it's good. But if it's for other people, if it's for the big donors, it just flies through." And this is my concern. So when I look at this new administration, I'm looking for the Bruce Harrell that stood up against the anti-panhandling statute and stood up for the rights of people returning to the community from prison, and to not fall for that. And I'm really hopeful that the idea that we can't spend public money on programs to assist people until we know they're perfect is not the voice listened to in this process as well. And I think this is going to be a really big test of the new administration because Bruce came in with a coalition that doesn't like taxes, the business community doesn't want taxes. And will he stand up to them like he stood up to them on the anti-panhandling statute. And that's the Bruce that I want to - that's the mayor I want to see in Bruce Harrell and I hope he does it. [00:38:20] Crystal Fincher: I feel the same. And to your point, in the mix of appointees, some of them certainly give me pause, others give me hope. I mean, there are certainly people who have done a lot of good work. I mean, I look at work Monisha Harrell has done, I look at work that Marco Lowe has done - I mean, the guy who wrote the book on transitions - and just very competent, and talking about the importance of these searches and getting the right people in place. As the Chief Operating Officer, just really focusing on execution within the City, which is major. You can have a great idea - Durkan had some good ideas that she was just not able to execute. And another lesson I learned during your tenure and administration was just how important the actual ability to manage - to manage people, to execute on programs and policy, and to not just set a goal, but to be able to work through the implementation of it and make sure that it actually delivers on the promise that it initially had. I think that was one of the major challenges of the Durkan administration and one that I think Harrell has the opportunity to do much better on. [00:39:37] Mike McGinn: Yeah. And I think oftentimes what's covered in the media are the disagreements in policy between the City Council and the mayor. And so we see - what's the policy on sweeps, what's the policy on police officers, or the like. But there's so many things that - it really exists in the executive branch and there's nothing the City Council can do to make the City work better - that's a management function and an executive branch function. And I think that this is a place where the City really needs to rebuild its muscle memory, to rebuild its strength on execution on a lot of things. And again, there are people in departments who I'm sure are executing great right now, but what I just saw - so much of that is dependent ultimately on getting that alignment through the department director and to the top. [00:40:42] Crystal Fincher: I always appreciate you and your insight. I always appreciate your ability to reflect and to look at what you did. And you're like, "Hey, this went really well, could have done this better." And I have certainly learned a lot from that over the years. So I thank all of you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Thursday, December 30th, 2021. It's December 30th, oh my gosh. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance by Shannon Cheng. And our insightful co-host today was activist, community leader, and former mayor of Seattle, and Executive Director of America Walks, Mike McGinn. You can find Mike on Twitter @mayormcginn. That's M-C-G-I-N-N. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. 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 episode notes. Get boosted, stay away from the Omicron Rona - it's getting everybody out there - please be safe and be kind to your neighbors. And we'll see you in 2022.

Crystal is joined by Doug Trumm, Executive Director of The Urbanist, for today's jam-packed show that covers successful tactics used in the Sawant recall election, Durkan veto of the Council vote to end the hazard pay they enacted, the Starbucks unionization movement coming to Seattle, a City Hall Park land swap without park preservation guarantees, new leadership ahead for SDOT in the Harrell administration, the Legislature suing Inslee over vetoes, and the potential for a white Christmas posing risks to those left out in the cold. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Doug Trumm, at @dmtrumm. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com. Resources “What Sawant's Close 310-Vote Recall Victory Means for Seattle Politics” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/12/18/what-sawants-close-310-vote-recall-victory-means-for-seattle-politics/ “Sawant's Recall Maps Show Familiar Path to Victory Through Capitol Hill and Central District” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/12/22/sawants-recall-maps-show-familiar-path-to-victory-through-capitol-hill-and-central-district/ “City Council Votes to End Hazard Pay. Grocery Workers Say They Feel ‘Abandoned'” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger:  https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2021/12/15/63863317/city-council-votes-to-end-hazard-pay-grocery-workers-say-they-feel-abandoned “Mayor Jenny Durkan will use veto to keep hazard pay in place for Seattle grocery workers” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/mayor-jenny-durkan-will-use-veto-to-keep-hazard-pay-in-place-for-seattle-grocery-workers/ City of Seattle - Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda Statement in Support of Continuing Grocery Store Worker Hazard Pay: https://council.seattle.gov/2021/12/22/councilmember-teresa-mosqueda-statement-in-support-of-continuing-grocery-store-worker-hazard-pay/ “Starbucks Workers United says Broadway shop wants to unionize” from Capitol Hill Seattle Blog: https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2021/12/starbucks-workers-united-says-broadway-shop-wants-to-unionize/ “Controversial City Hall Park Land Swap Moves Ahead” by Natalie Bicknell Argerious from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/12/21/controversial-city-hall-park-land-swap-moves-ahead/ “SDOT Director Zimbabwe is Out, What Does This Mean for Seattle Transportation?” by Natalie Bicknell Argerious from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/12/17/sdot-director-zimbabwe-is-out-what-does-this-mean-for-seattle-transportation/ “Washington Legislature sues Inslee over vetoes, setting up another clash over powers” by Joseph O'Sullivan from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/washington-legislature-sues-inslee-over-vetoes-setting-up-another-clash-over-powers/ “Seattle area to see some snow Christmas weekend” by Christine Clarridge from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/weather/seattle-area-in-for-a-cold-snowy-weekend/ King County Regional Homelessness Authority - Cold Weather Shelter Dec. 25-29: https://kcrha.org/2021/12/22/cold-weather-shelter-dec-25-29/ City of Seattle - Severe Weather Flyer: https://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/HumanServices/Severe-Weather-Flyer_2021-12-22.pdf “Warming shelters to open during cold weather” from KIRO7: https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/warming-shelters-open-during-cold-weather/AJGQT4FRZRANTAGCWY5GS2K3BI/   Transcript:  Transcript will be uploaded as soon as possible.

12PM - The Big Lead // GUEST:  Bruce Drager, advocate for the camps at Green Lake and Woodland Park talking about why people did not accept offers of shelter // Biden says they didn't expect Omicron and the testing demand // Durkan vetoes hazard pay See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The City of Seattle Office of Economic Development (OED) and Mayor Jenny A. Durkan announced the launch of Seattle Restored—a new program focused on activating vacant commercial storefronts in Downtown Seattle neighborhoods such as Westlake, Belltown, Pioneer Square, and Chinatown-International District (CID). OED is partnering with Seattle Good Business Network,  Shunpike , and real estate broker Susanna Tran to match vacant downtown Seattle storefronts with small business owners and artists to facilitate pop-up shops and art instillations—prioritizing Black, Indigenous, and other entrepreneurs and artists of color. Activating storefront vacancies will economically, socially and culturally benefit neighborhoods, small businesses, artists and property owners by creating vibrant and engaging streetscapes that encourage the public to visit downtown, support local businesses and support local artists. This program is funded by the Coronavirus Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (CLFR) established under the American Rescue Plan. “Downtown is Seattle's economic engine, and it's up to us to help it build back better than ever for all those who live, work, or visit. As part of our effort to revitalize downtown, we're making it easier than ever to pursue new, innovative uses for storefronts, like art installations or museums,” said Durkan. “Earlier this year, we passed legislation to increase flexible uses for downtown vacant storefronts, and now, Seattle Restored will make direct investments in activating dozens of vacant storefronts. I appreciate OED, and their partners for working to help downtown small businesses, workers, and arts and cultural organizations recover.”https://seattlemedium.com/city-of-seattle-launches-seattle-restored-to-activate-vacant-storefronts-downtown/Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/seattlerealestatepodcast)

In this episode hear form Nancy Volpe Beringer, a fashion designer of a couture, hand-made brand specializing in one-of-a-kind wearable art. Nancy’s award-winning designs use innovative textile manipulations, fabrications and patterns. At the age of 58, Nancy made a career change to fashion design and has since been making her place in the fashion world. Her designs have been seen at the Grammy Awards, in the New York Times, at Philly Fashion Week, at New York Fashion Week and was named “Best in Philly Fashion Designer for Artsy Dresses” by “Best in Philly” awards. She ended the year by making history at age 64 as the “oldest” designer ever to be a contestant on Bravo’s Season 18 Project Runway. Nancy has a goal to promote sustainability and to meet the needs of the disabled community with an adaptive line. This Spring, she is launching an innovative and much-needed up-cycled and adaptive on-line resale platform. Read more at: https://www.nancyvolpeberinger.com/ On the Executive Spotlight is Rachel Durkan, founder and President of Paradigm Marketing & Design, a New Jersey firm offering a range of marketing and design services to business-to-business, business-to-consumer and non-profit organizations — from start-ups to large, multi-faceted companies with revenues in excess of $50 million. Over the last several years, Paradigm has earned several awards and distinctions, most notably the 2017 Small Business of the Year award, given by the Morris County Chamber of Commerce. Rachel has been recognized personally as a 2017 Tribute to Women honoree by the Boy Scouts of America; a Top 25 Leading Women Entrepreneur for 2017; and a Top 40 Under 40 Marketing/Communications Professional by the NJ Ad Club. Read more at: https://www.paradigmmarketinganddesign.com/ Visit the Entrepreneur Presenters for May 9, 2021 at their Websites: Vidhya Subramanian is the founder and CEO of the Zymmo App, a community for both chefs and foodies. Food lovers can experience and order the meaningful meals they crave, while giving freelance chefs the gigs they need. Now available in the Austin and Washington DC areas, at https://www.zymmo.com/ Amber Dawn Shopay is the founder of Global Angel, a platform designed to offer high-quality goods that give back to the world, in just the way you choose. Customers choose from a list of non-profit organizations to receive a donation as part of their purchase of Global Angel products which includes sweatshirts, tshirts, bags, masks, cell phone cases and more. at: https://www.globalangel.com/ Visit https://passagetoprofitshow.com/​​​​​​​​ for the latest updates and episodes.

From Durkan Hospitality, David Duncan, senior vice president, and Arnavaz Barshan, director of design, talk trends and the new Synergy collection.

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan announced that she will not be seeking a 2nd term in office. This means we will be flooded with the worst possible replacements from the farthest reaches of the socialist left of Seattle. While none of the names being floated as candidates are worth voting for, one of them is at the center of allegations of funny money business involving the city council and political payoffs to groups that held the city hostage. Listen to tonight's episode for all the details If you prefer the video version you can find it on my Youtube Channel Instagram and Facebook pages Tonight's episode is sponsored by RemoteOffice for all your digital backdrop needs. Go to shopremoteoffice.com and enter the code arihoffman to save 10% --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/ari-hoffman/support

Tonight we chat with Ellen Durkin (@Ironmaidenforge) who showed up wearing lingerie, and we got pretty saucy. Honestly, I didn't really listen to this episode- so i have no idea what to say about this one. I look forward to hearing it!

Chris Sullivan's Chokepoint -- an update on the never-ending construction project on I-5 through Tacoma // Maia Szalavitz, neuroscience journalist, on the new war on drugs // Colleen O'Brien's dose of kindness -- helping out a dad who was stuck at an airport with a newborn // Sports Insider Danny O'Neil on David Phelps' Tommy John surgery/ the rest of the M's bullpen // Richard Aboulafia, aerospace industry expert, on what retaliatory China tariffs could mean for Boeing // Mike Lewis on the local tech company competition over H1-B visas in the Trump era // Hanna Scott on the friction between Durkan's gun proposals and the legal reality