Podcasts about jaahnavi kandula

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 10, 2024 31:55

5pm: Boeing Machinists Agree on Tentative Contract Deal // Jaahnavi Kandula’s Family Sues City for $110 Million Plus $11,000, In Direct Reference to Officer’s Callous Comments // How much is Seattle likely to pay out in lawsuits this year? // Nearly 10% of Moms Want New Names for Their Babies // Jake’s friends did this // Talking sports with RY (RY predicted a 28-13 Hawks win.. FINAL: 26-20 // After a shaky first half, Seahawks open Mike Macdonald era with win vs. Broncos // Tom Brady’s broadcast debut came heavily hyped with full ads… reviews were mixed // Letters

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Hour 1: Biden DNC speech, Harris tries to defend economic record, Jason wrote another poem

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 21, 2024 46:55

What’s Trending: Joe Biden’s convention speech was pushed very late into the evening in apparent effort by the Democrats to remove him from the spotlight. Jason’s exclusive interview with former Seattle police officer Dan Auderer was picked up by every local news outlet except for anti-cop KING 5. The officer that received a $5,000 traffic ticket in the death of Jaahnavi Kandula is contesting the fine. // The Harris campaign is trying defend its economic record with nothing but spin. // Jason wrote another poem. This time about a gorilla.

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Hour 3: Exclusive interview with Dan Auderer

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 20, 2024 46:14

What’s Trending: Former Seattle officer Dan Auderer speaks for the first time since his termination for an out-of-context joke mocking city lawyers after the death of Jaahnavi Kandula. // LongForm: GUEST: Part 2 of Jason’s interview with Dan Auderer. // The Quick Hit: Part 3 of Jason’s interview with Dan Auderer.

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Hour 1: SPD chief fires officer who made 'limited value' comments after Jaahnavi Kandula's death.

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 19, 2024 34:03

3pm: SPD chief fires officer who made 'limited value' comments after Jaahnavi Kandula's death // Former SPD Chief Adrian Diaz NOT selected for Austin Chief job // 11 year old girls thwart attempted kidnapping in Kent // Jacob Goes Viral on TikTok // Costco rolls out emergency food kits that can keep you going for 11 YEARS - as World War III fears grow

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Hour 4: Costco rolls out emergency food kits that can keep you going for 11 YEARS - as World War III fears grow

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 19, 2024 34:03

6pm: SPD chief fires officer who made 'limited value' comments after Jaahnavi Kandula's death // Former SPD Chief Adrian Diaz NOT selected for Austin Chief job // 11 year old girls thwart attempted kidnapping in Kent // Jacob Goes Viral on TikTok // Costco rolls out emergency food kits that can keep you going for 11 YEARS - as World War III fears grow

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Daniel Auderer, Seattle Police Officer Joked About Woman Killed By Cop

Mr. William's LaborHood

Play Episode Listen Later May 9, 2024 15:00

Daniel Auderer, the Seattle Police Officers Guild vice president who was caught on tape joking with SPOG president Mike Solan about the death of Jaahnavi Kandula, a 23-year-old student who was killed last year when SPD officer Kevin Dave struck her in a crosswalk while driving 74 miles an hour, was reassigned to low-profile office duties while the Office of Police Accountability investigates multiple complaints against him.

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Officer who struck Jaahnavi Kandula had a 'checkered history.' SPD hired him anyway

Soundside

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 16, 2024 15:49

Soundside host Libby Denkmann talks with freelance journalist Andrew Engelson about his reporting in Publicola on SPD Officer Kevin Dave's employment record at the Tucson Police Department in Arizona.

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Week in Review: February 23, 2024 - with Matt Driscoll

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 23, 2024 44:27

On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by metro news columnist and opinion editor for The News Tribune in Tacoma, Matt Driscoll! With two weeks left in the State legislative session, Crystal and Matt dig into several bills with potential for huge impact and needing public support to get across the finish line - HB 2114 (rent stabilization), HB 1932 (even-year elections), and SB 6105 (Stripper Bill of Rights). See the resources section for links to contact your legislators about each of these bills! Next, they discuss the promise of the City of Tacoma's detailed Anti-Displacement strategy, Mayor Bruce Harrell pledging no new taxes at his annual State of the City address, and no charges against the SPD officer who killed Jaahnavi Kandula. 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, Matt Driscoll, at @mattsdriscoll. Resources Why Seattle's Proposed Surveillance Mash-Up is a Lose-Lose with Amy Sundberg and BJ Last of Solidarity Budget from Hacks & Wonks “Pass bill limiting rent hikes to help stabilize households” by The Seattle Times Editorial Board “Seattle's LGBTQ Communities Demand Rent Stabilization” by Rich Smith from The Stranger HB 2114 - Improving housing stability for tenants subject to the residential landlord-tenant act and the manufactured/mobile home landlord-tenant act by limiting rent and fee increases, requiring notice of rent and fee increases, limiting fees and deposits, establishing a landlord resource center and associated services, authorizing tenant lease termination, creating parity between lease types, and providing for attorney general enforcement. HB 2114 - Send a comment to your legislators “NPI's even year elections bill advances out of Senate State Government Committee” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate HB 1932 - Shifting general elections for local governments to even-numbered years to increase voter participation. HB 1932 - Send a comment to your legislators “Why a dancer with Tacoma ties is fighting for WA's 'Stripper Bill of Rights'” by Matt Driscoll from The News Tribune Strippers Are Workers Campaign SB 6105 - Creating safer working conditions in adult entertainment establishments. SB 6105 - Send a comment to your legislators “Some Tacomans are being pushed out of their neighborhoods. The city wants to intervene” by Shea Johnson from The News Tribune Anti-Displacement Strategy | City of Tacoma “Mayor Bruce Harrell Promises to Deliver Bare Minimum at 2024 State of City Address” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger “$230 Million Deficit Hangs Over Annual Harrell Speech” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist “King County Prosecutors Decline to Charge SPD Officer for Killing Pedestrian” by Ashley Nerbovig from The Stranger 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 shows 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, our producer Shannon Cheng was guest host and welcomed back Amy Sundberg and BJ Last from Solidarity Budget to discuss how the City of Seattle is rushing to bring three surveillance technologies to the streets of Seattle with minimal public input. Make your voice heard at the final public meeting next week on Tuesday, February 27th at 6 p.m. 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: Metro News columnist and opinion editor for The News Tribune in Tacoma, Matt Driscoll. [00:01:31] Matt Driscoll: Thank you for having me - it's always wonderful to be here. And of course, as luck would have it, hammering started in the background. Hopefully that's not too annoying, but yeah - it's great to be here. Thanks for having me. [00:01:42] Crystal Fincher: Excellent - love having you back. Well, we have a couple weeks left in this legislative session, which is scheduled to end on March 7th. Houses have already gotten done passing legislation that originated in their chambers, now the other chambers are taking up things. And there's a few bills that I wanted to talk about that are trying to make it through, that a lot of organizations have as policies, and that would be really impactful to residents throughout the state. The first one is one talking about rent stabilization - different than rent control - rent stabilization basically limits rent and fee increases during the year. So this is something that a lot of renters have been talking about. We've certainly covered the housing affordability crisis at length on this program, but it really is a challenge for renters facing seemingly endless rent hikes. And those rent hikes currently don't have any caps. We've seen instances of rent literally doubling in some places, but fees 20-30% increases annually, which is way beyond the cost of inflation, generally, and really challenging for people to be able to afford. This has been cited as contributing to income inequality, to our homelessness crisis, and to just regular affordability, to displacement. Really challenging, so one thing that has been in the works for over a year has been the effort to try and limit rent increases. This bill would limit rent increases to 7% during any 12-month period, which is still a pretty substantial increase for most people - but within the realm of reality and affordability and achievability for a lot of people. How do you see this bill? [00:03:38] Matt Driscoll: Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting and it is very similar to a citizens' ballot initiative that we covered here in Tacoma last election cycle, which did place some rent increase limits on local landlords and some caps on local fees. To me, it's kind of the other side of the coin - although this coin is probably not a coin, it has a bunch of sides. But we talk a lot about just the affordable housing crisis and the need to build more housing of all kinds, particularly affordable housing - being able to meet all sorts of different economic demographics with that. And this is another side of that, which is people faced with the crisis of housing, calling on lawmakers and policymakers to enact some protections and some regulations to keep them from just getting gouged and forced out financially. And particularly in this bill and in the initiative that ended up passing just barely in Tacoma, I mean, the rent increases and the fees that they still allow are not insignificant. And the fact that we see the pushback to it that we do, particularly from landlords' associations, and conservative lawmakers, really speaks to how out of whack the market is. If you can't get by by raising rent 7% annually, I think it raises questions. Now, there are, I think, some legitimate concerns about how far to crank that lever, because I personally believe at some point, if you do crank it too far, you are going to impact the "mom and pop" landlords who do exist, who are real providers of legitimate affordable housing to people and housing to people that they might not be able to get otherwise. So I do think you have to walk that balance. Certainly to me, this bill seems reasonable, but I'm sure for a lot of lawmakers, it comes down to that question of how much reach do you want the government to have in dictating what are supposed to be those free markets we love so much in this country. But really, this conversation is indicative to the crisis that's happening in cities across Washington and across certainly the West Coast, where the cost of housing is just greatly outpacing any income growth or job growth that we might have. People are freaked out, and rightly so. You talk about all the necessities, whether it's food or - there are safety nets for that. But I think the housing one is one that feels really close because there aren't safety nets. If you lose housing, you lose housing. If you need to go to a food bank, you can go to a food bank, but there's not a house bank. And so it'll be interesting to see what happens and then see where the momentum goes on this. [00:06:02] Crystal Fincher: It will be interesting to see where the momentum goes. And you raised a good point in talking about the Tacoma Renter Protection Initiative, which is similar to other renter protection initiatives and legislation we've seen in various cities throughout the state - whether it's Spokane, Bellingham, Tacoma, Federal Way, we've seen local communities across the state take action on this because this is plaguing communities. That housing expense is almost everyone's biggest expense and so if that is skyrocketing, that's taking families' available discretionary income, that's impacting the local economy, and obviously causing a lot of housing insecurity that is really putting a lot of people in tough positions, and communities in tough positions, and governments and how to deal with that. And it's so much more expensive to deal with once it gets to the crisis level - once someone is displaced or can't afford housing, loses their apartment. All of those are really, really expensive to deal with from a city and county perspective. So I am hopeful that this legislation passes. It's currently in the Senate and it faces an uncertain future, so this is going to be one where community feedback to all of your legislators is really going to make a difference on this - particularly your senators, because they're going to determine the fate of this. There are a number of people on the fence - some moderate to conservative Democrats who have voiced some concerns. Jamie Pedersen is working on this in the Senate - has expressed some reservations, but has certainly heard a lot of feedback from his constituents who overwhelmingly are renters in his district. We'll see how this turns out, but this is one where - for folks listening - if this is something that's a priority to you, reach out to your senators. Fortunately, we make it really simple in Washington to be able to send communications about legislation. We'll also put links in the show notes to make that easy. But they're going to need to hear from you on this - certainly would be a big step forward for the state in terms of renter protections here. Also want to talk about another bill, which we've certainly talked about before and recently in our conversation with Andrew Villeneuve in one of our Tuesday topical shows, that the Northwest Progressive Institute has been very active with. The even-year elections bill, which has advanced out of the House and then advanced out of the Senate State Government Committee. So it's looking fairly positive, but still has to go through some more hurdles. This would enable cities and towns to choose to hold their elections in even-numbered years instead of odd-numbered years. This is a big deal because turnout is much higher in even-numbered years. And as we've seen in the state of California, when we do put those other races - municipal races, local races - on the ballot with those national races, people still vote, still great turnout, even better turnout than they would see in those odd-year elections. We just got done with an election in November that had the lowest turnout since we've been keeping records here in Washington. It is a problem. We're deciding elections with sometimes close to only 20% of the residents participating in the election - that's not representative. I don't think that's doing anyone any favors. The more people who can participate, the better. I also sometimes hear - This is all a progressive conspiracy to turn things out because we see so many elections that trend progressive in the end. And one thing that I would remind people is Seattle is a very visible place. Seattle has more progressive voters than conservative ones, so certainly elections in Seattle and therefore King County do trend as ballots are counted in the final days - those late ballots certainly do trend in a progressive direction. That's not the case statewide. It really just depends on what the local population is. If we're looking at southwest Washington, for example, those often trend red in a lot of those swing districts there. It just really depends on what there is on the ground. And even in those situations, I still think it's better for more people to participate in elections, and voting, and deciding what their communities are going to look like. What do you think about this bill? [00:10:23] Matt Driscoll: First and foremost, Crystal, it's awfully generous of you to acknowledge that even where there are more conservative voters, it's better for more people to vote - that's very bipartisan of you, I appreciate that. This is one of those ones that makes me question myself - am I a super liberal hack? Because there really doesn't seem to be a good reason not to do this, in my mind. At the end of the day - participation in democracy, in our elections - the more people, the more registered voters we can get involved, the better. That's what we should all want. None of us should be afraid that our arguments should stand up and they don't - if they're in the minority, they're in the minority - that's the way it's supposed to work. I will say that there's also part of this that frustrates me because we do look at those even-year versus odd-year elections, and one of the reasons that this gets cast as perhaps a progressive-motivated thing or a progressive scheme is because in those odd-year elections, the voting demographic does skew older, whiter, landowner, property owner - that's real - and i guess the frustrating part about it is just progressives could vote. I just went through that election last November and it was brutal to go through the endorsements. I do think election burnout is real. It does feel like there's always an election. I think we got to be generous to the general public and realize that most people are just trying to get through their lives, and put food on the table, and get their kids to school, and all that. And I think we're asking a lot of them to constantly be kind of in election mode, which is certainly how it feels. But at the end of the day, if progressives are concerned about the disparity, they could just vote in odd-year elections and they just don't - historically - we talk about it every time until we're blue in the face, and then they don't. But full circle - this is about participation. Whether we like the reality or not, the reality is people don't vote in off-year elections nearly as much as they do in the even year. We have historical data backing this up. And I also think it's important to note that all this bill will do is give places the ability to do it. It doesn't dictate it. It's local control of it. If you want to make that change, you can. So to me, again, I don't see an argument against this. It seems like a no-brainer, but so little is a no-brainer when it comes to Olympia. [00:12:34] Crystal Fincher: I completely agree with what you're saying. And as this makes it through and follows the path that a lot of bills do, one of the things that happens is amendments are offered and sometimes accepted. So this passed the House. Once it did arrive in the Senate, it received some amendments that passed out of committee. I'm not in love with these amendments. One of them not only requires the city to basically opt-in legislatively and pass an ordinance to say we're going to do this, but now it requires a popular vote from the people. So the city has to both adopt an ordinance or policy by its legislative body- [00:13:10] Matt Driscoll: An odd year? Do they have to vote in an odd year? Is that part of the stipulation? [00:13:15] Crystal Fincher: You know, it probably is. And yeah, it would have to receive approval from its voters. Now, this is something where the voters vote for their city council or their town council - whatever their government legislative body is, usually a city council - who make decisions like this all the time. Putting this out to a public vote is a costly endeavor. Elections aren't free. You have to pay to administer them, it's costly, it's time-consuming. And as you say, this is probably going to be on another odd-year election ballot. This is pretty simple. I wish we would let people and the electeds that they selected make these decisions. I would love to see that amendment taken out before it does get to a final vote, but we'll see how it goes. It would be progress either way. Definitely better than nothing, but would love to see as much good as possible and not add another hurdle to this that is seemingly unnecessary and also costly at a time when a lot of cities and counties are dealing with budget deficits and are really trying to trim costs instead of add them. Another bill that you covered this week is about a proposed Strippers' Bill of Rights that's currently in Olympia. What is happening with this and what would it do? [00:14:29] Matt Driscoll: Yeah, I mean, I kind of became mildly fascinated with this over the last week because it was pretty new territory for me, to be honest with you. So basically, the background on it is adult dancers, strippers in Washington essentially lack a whole lot of protections that I was, for one, shocked to hear didn't exist - like requirements of clubs to have security. In recent years, there have been some slight upgrades, installations of panic buttons and stuff, but really it's kind of a Wild West out there in terms of staffing, and training requirements, and de-escalation requirements. And basically, whether you frequent strip clubs or not, just picture a strip club and think of all the things that you would assume would be in place to protect people and employees and the reality is that many of them don't exist currently. And so this bill would do a lot of that around training, de-escalation, that sort of thing - which all, to me, feel like no-brainers. And I think in the legislature's view - from the testimony that I've heard, at least in the House - it seems to be a shared sentiment. Where it gets tricky is this bill also opens the door for the legal sale of alcohol in strip clubs. And at least initially going into it, for me, it's a juxtaposition until you get into it. Because on one hand, you're talking about safety and regulations. And then - oh, yeah, we're going to add alcohol - and you're like, what the? that doesn't necessarily seem like that's about safety. But at the end of the day, as I learned and wrote about - and others have written about it plenty this session - essentially the deal for strippers is they pay a nightly rate, if you will, to work, to perform. They're independent contractors. They're not employees of the strip club. So you will end up owing $100, $200 just to start your shift. And then the money that you make in the process of your job, after you pay that back, that's what you make. One, that's clearly exploitative. It sets up bad situations, as you can imagine. But the reality of it is because there's no legal alcohol sales in Washington strip clubs, that's really the only financial model that exists for club owners. And so it puts pressure on them to exploit the dancers. And then that puts pressure on the dancers to maybe ignore warning signs about things that make them uncomfortable because they're all of a sudden in financial distress trying to pay what they owe just to work. So it just creates this whole set of tensions that I think - really a lot of the supporters of this bill would argue - really decrease the safety in these clubs. So this bill would do all of that - it made its way through the Senate, it's now over to the House, it's out of committee as of earlier this week. But the hang up is going to be around that alcohol point. I think most lawmakers seem to agree with the safety measures, but there's hang up around the alcohol and how that works. We could go into the weeds - some legislators think that the Liquor Cannabis Board already has the ability, they could just make a rule. Liquor Cannabis Board says - No, we need you to grant us the licensing authority, yada, yada, yada. It's all very complicated, but it's going to come down to the booze. [00:17:22] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and this is really interesting - I personally am absolutely in support of this. Strippers are workers. They deserve protections that any worker deserves. Employers have an obligation to protect their employees, or in the case of independent contractors to protect the people who they are making money from when they work in their establishment. As you said, this does require adult entertainment establishments to provide dedicated security personnel during operating hours. It does establish restrictions on the leasing fees charged to not exceed what a dancer can make so they don't go into debt while they're dancing - that serves no one. It also requires adult entertainment establishments to provide mandatory training to their employees on first aid, conflict de-escalation, and identifying and preventing human trafficking, sexual harassment, discrimination, and assault. Expands certain safety requirements, including key padlocks for locker rooms, cleaning supplies, and certain safety signage. And then, as you said, it prohibits the Liquor and Cannabis Board from adopting or enforcing a rule that restricts the exposure of certain body parts or that restricts sexually-oriented conduct. That particular element, I believe, came out of the targeted enforcement of gay establishments in the City of Seattle - seemingly with these lewd laws - saying that those can't be in the proximity of alcohol, which just seemed really out of touch, antiquated, potentially a way to harass the LGBTQ+ community, and just not something that is consistent with the values - certainly that we hold in Seattle, but in Washington state, as we've shown. So I do hope this gets through. The alcohol issue - for me, I trust the strippers working in the establishment to know what's safe for them and if they're advocating for this and saying this is part of what we need to have a safe and sustainable environment, I trust them with that. There are plenty of situations where we allow alcohol where, if you take away the purity-attached issues to it, that seem to me to be dicey in a lot of situations. I'm also someone who it's just like - Wow, we have parking lots at bars. Doesn't that seem like it's setting up a very problematic thing? So that's a much broader conversation there. But if the strippers don't have a problem with it, I don't have a problem with it, really. They know the business and their environment much better than I do, certainly. [00:19:48] Matt Driscoll: Yeah, I just think the whole thing's fascinating because I was talking to Laurie Jinkins about this last week when I was reporting on it - and she comes from a public health background. And her basic reaction to it is the expansion of alcohol is not good - she points to health data. I think you can certainly make that argument, but it's very interesting what you hear from folks working in the industry, and they a lot of times will compare it to Oregon. And admittedly, I'm going to lose any Pierce County street cred here, but it's been a long time since I've been inside a strip club - but I've never been in one in Oregon. What they say is - Look, in Oregon, whether you agree with strip clubs or not, they're actually a place that legitimate people might want to hang out because you can get a drink and maybe you can get some food, and if that's what you're into - entertainment - it works for you. And guess what you have in Washington? Strip club, honestly, is almost the last place you would want to hang out unless you were really driven to go to a strip club. Door charges are insane, you're buying $15 Cokes, there's nothing to drink, there's nothing to eat, it's empty and kind of sad. And lo and behold, what do you get? You get the folks who are choosing to go to those establishments - and I'm trying not to paint with a broad brush here, but I think we can all imagine the scene that this creates. And then when you really talk about the fact that you've essentially created an economic model where the clubs in Washington rely on taking income straight from the dancers as opposed to everywhere else, where they make their income off the booze and the food - like every other sort of nightlife establishment. You can see how that would even out the relationship or the power dynamic between the dancer and the club, where here the club has all the incentive to suck as much as possible out of the dancer, and the dancers are in tough positions where they're trying to make it work. So I think it's fascinating. And again, this is not very satisfying, but it'll be very interesting to see where this goes in the coming days. [00:21:41] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely will be. And I agree, it will be very interesting to see where it goes. Moving on from legislation and where things stand there, there was something that I wanted to talk about that I found really interesting and perhaps a model that other cities may be able to look at, depending on how this turns out. And that is a plan from the City of Tacoma to prevent displacement in the city. And this is in addition to a housing affordability action plan that was adopted by the City that they seem to have been making positive progress on. But a specific anti-displacement strategy that consisted of 21 actions, including buying property to build affordable units in areas that have a high risk of displacement, requiring owners of subsidized properties to issue notices if they intend to sell, or opt-out, or refinance. But really saying it's as much of a problem that people are being economically displaced, forced out of neighborhoods - we're losing the culture and character of our neighborhoods, we're losing cohesive communities that are being displaced - and the fallout from that is undesirable. So often we hear in other conversations about zoning - maintaining the character of the neighborhood - well, the people are essential to the character of the neighborhood. And when the people are being lost, that's a problem that the City of Tacoma has recognized and is taking action on, which I think is very commendable. What do you see in this anti-displacement strategy? [00:23:12] Matt Driscoll: Yeah, I think it goes back to that multi-sided, not-a-coin thing I was talking about earlier. Well, we've got the need for housing and you've got policy pushing to place some regulations and protections for tenants. This is another part of that where cities, certainly in Tacoma, are recognizing that the economic realities and the housing realities in the city are, in fact, displacing untold number of people. We've been seeing it here for a long time. Hilltop is often painted, at least regionally, as the epicenter of it, where we've had Link Light Rail expansion and we've seen the housing going in, and if you see a lot of families that have been here for a long time getting pushed out. This is an acknowledgement of that from City leaders, and so I think it's commendable, they get credit. Of course, the cynic can me points out that cities, including Tacoma, are great at coming up with plans - we already had an affordable housing action strategy, and now we've got our anti-displacement strategy, and we passed our anti-racism legislation with 21 bullet points of what we commit to do. And at the end of the day, the proof's in the pudding and people are still getting pushed out. And so the hard part is the work of - is the city actually going to acquire land and do the sorts of things that it lays out as its vision? I've been here long enough to have seen lots of visions - very few of them have come to full fruition - it's usually you get pieces and then a crisis pops up or some other thing happens. And so we'll see what happens at the end of the day, but certainly if nothing less, it's an acknowledgement of those very same forces we started talking out with at the beginning of this show of just the crazy increases of the cost of living, particularly of the housing. I hear from Chamber of Commerce types sometimes who point out - You keep saying rents are skyrocketing and really it's raising similarly to everything else. Yes, everything's getting more expensive. And yes, in theory, there have been some income gains - although I think it's totally fair and accurate to say they have not kept pace with the cost of living. But I just think housing is that one that people feel just so closely and it feels so razor thin and desperate that lawmakers, city council - here in Tacoma - are hearing it loud and clear from their constituents who are actively being pushed out or just looking around and realizing that one wrong move and they would no longer be able to afford to live here. I don't take any shame in admitting that's certainly my family's situation - if we had not purchased our house when we purchased our house, we could absolutely not live where we live today. We would be in Parkland, somewhere other than that - and that's just the reality. And so again, we'll see what comes long-term, but it's an acknowledgement and it's an important one, and I think it's right. [00:25:40] Crystal Fincher: I also think it's right. This affects everybody. A lot of times I hear a lot of people say the same thing you did - Well, thank goodness we were able to buy our house at the time that we did because we certainly couldn't afford it now. This is an issue that is really affecting seniors in the community and whether they can age in place - whether they can remain in the communities that they have built their lives in, that they have relationships in, that is so important to maintaining their own safety net as perhaps their abilities evolve and change as they age. Lots of people need to downsize houses, need to have more accessible homes. And right now in many communities - certainly in Seattle and Tacoma, but also many of the suburbs - it is not possible to buy in the same area and get something similar that you would there. They're looking at a much different quality of life if they were to do that, or they need to move far away, basically, from perhaps family, support systems, the doctors that they've seen forever, the people who've been helping them in their lives for so long, and really lose touch with those things that keep them healthy and supported. And often their family too - and their families aren't able to afford to move in and live in the same area - it's really a problem that a lot of families are facing in this multi-generational way that is really, really troubling. And I'm glad this is being addressed. [00:27:05] Matt Driscoll: Yeah, it's just a subset of the folks being affected by this - you probably know the data better than I do - but if you want to be terrified at some point, look at the data about the number of people moving into retirement age and that age bracket in the next decade or more. It's a significant amount of people. And if we don't come to terms with the fact that our economy as it currently stands, particularly in relation to housing, is just cruel and out of whack right now - there are going to be countless people really with no flexibility, nowhere to move, creating those situations that you just described where you get stuck. You have a house you probably can't look after anymore. You can't afford to move anywhere else. You don't have whatever it would take to get into senior - I mean, it's terrifying. And so one small part of a bigger pie of the economic cruelty that we have, but it's a big one. And so I'm hopeful, but again, cities are great at the plans and the bullet points and the statements of great aspiration. The proof is in how it pans out. And so I think it's important for people to keep an eye on it and keep folks accountable, so it's more than just talk. [00:28:11] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely agree with that. Getting more into the details of this, there were a number of actions - I was happy to see that this was a pretty comprehensive report - there are metrics to track over the time. As plans from cities go, especially ones that we're seeing these days in major cities, it at least had a lot of detail - that they'll either follow or they won't - but certainly a lot less vague than some of the plans that we see elsewhere. Some of the other things included were expanding one-time cash assistance to keeping families housed, offering incentives for developers to build affordable housing in at-risk areas, prioritizing new units to be rented or sold to at-risk or displaced residents, focusing down payment homebuyer assistance in high-risk neighborhoods, or reducing the cost to build accessory dwelling units. In addition to proactive rental inspection programs or community land trust with the intention of preserving affordable housing, increasing funds to the City's tenant protection program and housing assistance contracts, or creating a property tax relief program. The strategy also called for the City to consider establishing a reparations committee that would research the possibility of reparations for historical racist policies, particularly because BIPOC communities have been disproportionately displaced. Those communities have been decimated - they're far less than half of what they initially were, and that percentage is still declining there. It is a challenge - they're being disproportionately displaced, and certainly reparations are being looked at in a variety of areas and is justified. We'll see how this does play out, but I'm excited. The plan excites me because it was quite detailed. We'll also link that in the show notes for people to read themselves and see the data behind the policies, the justifications behind them, the metrics that they'll continue to be tracking, and what their metrics for progress are. It'll be interesting to see, but we talk about affordability under a whole umbrella of a homelessness crisis, the housing crisis - but it is going to take addressing these discrete elements, each one by themselves, and a plan to address all of them. And I think Tacoma is certainly showing leadership so far in that area. Also want to talk this week about Mayor Bruce Harrell delivering his 2024 State of the City address. This is his third State of the City address since he has been elected, these addresses are annual. He touted some reductions in crime, which I'm sure everyone is happy to see. He talked about the CARE Department that they established, which has started with a small trial of a co-responder model during limited hours during the day. Hopefully we will see that expanded - certainly, to at least cover 24 hours throughout the day, and more than a handful of responders there - that would certainly be welcome. And I think polling continually shows that residents want to see this expanded and available at all times and in all areas. He also made news with basically a no new taxes pledge, which is very different than what he said before. He said that he'd be looking to implement progressive revenue. He convened a task force to look at different progressive revenue options because there's a $250 [million] budget shortfall that the City is going to have to deal with this year. And he basically said - Hey, we're not going to raise taxes. I'm not going to support any raising of taxes. Our challenges are much more fundamental to that. We need to basically look at every inch of the budget and re-examine what we're doing. This seems aligned with Council President Sara Nelson's pledge and op-ed where she said not only was she looking to not implement new taxes, but also cut taxes for business. This is also at a time when they're saying they're going to increase funding for public safety. So this seemingly indicates, particularly if they're looking at cutting taxes - but really either way, whether they do or don't cut any taxes - some pretty significant cuts for services and programs throughout the city that don't have to do with public safety. And this has a lot of people alarmed. How did you see the State of the City address? [00:32:31] Matt Driscoll: What I always enjoy about our conversations is I view all this stuff from afar, from Tacoma. I know what Tacoma and Pierce County budgets look like, and I know what Seattle and King County budgets look like -and there's part of me that looks at that, and if you guys can't figure it out with the resources you have already? But I also acknowledge that the challenges in a place like King County and Seattle are not insurmountable, but are sizable. And when you look at budgets and you look at the need for these services and potential of cuts, it's very real and it could be not good for a lot of people. From a broader perspective, I do think the dynamic and the shift that we've seen in Seattle is interesting - particularly as it relates to homeless response as an example of that, because there was a development where some funding appears like it's going to get taken back from the King County Regional Housing Authority. And I do think from the broad constituency that is now reflected in certainly the city council - and you could argue in Mayor Harrell's election as well - there's a dissatisfaction with the amount of money that we are spending towards trying to address some of these problems and the actual outcomes that we are seeing. And I think a lot of that is very natural because the positive outcomes of homeless response are difficult to track. People always want to break it down - we spent this much and we housed this many people. The reality is it's just not that simple. There's more human nature involved in that. But at the same time, I do believe - and I think Seattle in some ways can be the poster city for this - is it's understandable when people look at the more progressive side of homeless response and say - You're basically advocating that we can't sweep encampments, what we see around us is okay. But I think for most people, when they look around and the problems that they see and the suffering they see, it feels not okay. A lot of times, from one side of it, the solutions you get are really long-term. And because of the way these debates stick us into stupid corners, it starts sounding like you've got one side advocating for - Shut up about the encampment in front of your business, just deal with it. And I think that, at some extent, bleeds into the electorate where they start having pushback to that. And I feel like that's the tension point where Seattle's at - yes, it's a progressive city. Yes, people genuinely want humane responses to the homelessness crisis. They're not looking to criminalize people. They're not looking to make matters worse. They want to address the underlying root causes and the lack of housing and the lack of everything that we need. But at the same time, the status quo is unsustainable. I think you see that in some of this talk of re-evaluation of what we're doing, is it working? And those can be tricky evaluations because like I said, they're not always straightforward. And I think there's a lot of good work being done. And I think attempts to purely quantify it in hard data can be suspect. But at the same time, I don't think it's entirely wrong when people say we're spending a lot of money, we've been talking about this a lot, and all I see is it getting worse. And so that's a very rambly way of - my view on Seattle politics from 33 miles away. [00:35:33] Crystal Fincher: Well, there's a lot there to talk about. I absolutely agree that people see the problem getting worse and are frustrated by that. And hear the amounts of money that are being spent and are wondering if that's effective or not - because the amounts do sound big. With the budget in Seattle - Seattle is unique in the state, in the types of industry that it has and the types of companies that it has. And Seattle certainly gets a lot from those companies. But I also feel we absolutely need to talk about and acknowledge that those companies get a lot from Seattle. As of a few years ago, Amazon had more office space in the city of Seattle than any corporation in any other city in the country. So great - Amazon is hiring. But Amazon is also taxing our infrastructure. They're causing a lot of stress on the roads - people talk about potholes and trucks - and well, Amazon is impacting a lot of that. Amazon is a lot of the impacts on our transit network. Amazon is impacting just the use of our resources, right? And Amazon is benefiting from the great resources that the city of Seattle does provide. And again, this goes both ways. Certainly people benefit from being employed, but we can't say - And that's it, that's the end of the story. There's also the desire to have those corporations, some of the richest ones in the world in Seattle, pay their fair share. In our state - as we've talked about, our regressive state tax code without an income tax - I do think there's a very valid conversation, especially in a city that has as many high-earners and as many mega-corporations as the city of Seattle does, whether people are paying their fair share. And when you look at how residents in the city of Seattle vote, that answer continues to be - No, we don't feel like everyone's paying their fair share yet, and we need to move further in that direction. City government currently, both the council and the mayor, seems to feel differently. So that will be a continuing tension that carries on. We'll see what happens, but certainly looks to be a bumpy ride coming up. The last thing I wanted to talk about this week was the announcement that there are going to be no charges for the officer who killed a student, Jaahnavi Kandula, as he was driving 74 miles per hour down a city street - the speed limit is 25 miles per hour - responding to a call. This is the incident that a lot of people probably became familiar with because they heard another officer, who is also the vice-president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, mock her death - saying that her life didn't have value, basically laughing about it in just a really sick and sadistic way. No charges will be faced by that officer either. For the officer who was mocking, the rationale that the county prosecutor gave was that it's up to the Office of Police Accountability in Seattle to determine what, if any, discipline should be faced by that officer. And then for the officer who actually ran over this young woman, just saying there was not enough evidence to show that basically he was acting recklessly. And a lot of people's response to this has been if driving 74 miles per hour with no indication that it is in a different category of emergency, certainly - and really responding to a call that police are not needed at and that other cities don't have police responding to those calls, but that's a side issue - but hey, if that's not reckless, then what is? And so we're again in a situation where the law feels woefully inadequate. And we have the county prosecutor saying - Okay, but according to the law, this would be tough, if not impossible, to prosecute and get a guilty verdict. And people looking at the common sense of it and saying - But that just doesn't make sense. Can we drive 74 miles per hour on a city road and have no consequences for any actions, any harm that results from that? And so we're once again in a situation where our laws seemingly have endless loopholes or exceptions for people who work in public safety that don't seem to apply to the rest of us. How did you see this? [00:39:53] Matt Driscoll: Yeah, we're certainly tackling the big ones on today's show, aren't we? I mean, to me, and I realize that this is a difficult view to articulate fairly, and I'm going to try my best because people feel very passionate about it for a lot of reasons. But I think two things are true. One, creating the type of police force that we need does demand accountability. There has to be accountability. And I think right now, a lot of folks genuinely feel like there is no accountability. Attempts are made to hold police accountable for what many feel are reckless, or dangerous, or whatever behavior. The result we get is - well, it wasn't illegal, it was fine. And so accountability has to be part of that, but I don't think you can change police culture through accountability. I feel like what this situation represents is more the reflection of a police culture, particularly in the mocking comments. I don't know enough about the intricacies of this case to re-litigate it. I've read the same things you read - I know the speed, the lack of lights, I also know the prosecutor came back - the interviews with other people, that they heard it, that the student seemed distracted. I don't feel prepared to re-litigate that exact string of events. What I will say is when you're in an emergency or your family members in an emergency, you'd probably want the first responders driving 75 miles an hour - maybe not 75, but you get my point. I do think there has to be leeway in the law that gives first responders and cops the ability to do things that otherwise would be considered reckless. I think that needs to happen, but I think the problem we run into is that responsibility that we've given to a police force - the police force, their culture, doesn't reflect those values that are behind that. In a perfect world, if we had the police force we had, they would use these powers responsibly. But a lot of times what we see - and again, particularly in the commentary, that's what feels inhumane. The cop who was involved in the accident, it sounds like they were distraught at the scene - I don't know what's going on with them. But I know when people hear cops talking about this person's life in a way that assigns it no value, it feels like a reflection of police culture that feels above the law, and feels drunk on power, and feels reckless. So if this cop had been charged with this, I don't know what it would have changed. I do think accountability is necessary, but I think the bigger problem is the police culture we have. And maybe, best case scenario, we're in the process of slowly transforming our police forces to - hiring the type of people and weeding out the bad - I don't know if I have a lot of faith in that. But it's not going to happen overnight. My overarching point is - yes, you need accountability, but I don't think accountability can be your vehicle towards the change that we need, if that makes sense. [00:42:49] Crystal Fincher: It makes perfect sense. I completely agree with that. It's just a really, truly unfortunate situation. And this young woman deserved better - from everybody, at all points in time from this. And I hope we take this seriously as a community, both locally and statewide, and really do look at issues with culture and start to get to the root of that problem. And with that, I thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, February 23rd, 2024. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was Metro News columnist and opinion editor for The News Tribune in Tacoma, Matt Driscoll. You can find Matt on Twitter or X at @mattsdriscoll, with two L's at the end. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. You can find me at @finchfrii, with two I's at the end, on all platforms. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, 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 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.

amazon spotify california house washington moving state office elections seattle lgbtq putting oregon rights improving democrats shifting senate commerce hacks west coast stranger wa houses chamber employers shut bipoc strippers wild west sb strip liquor tacoma parkland spokane expands spd hb bellingham week in review hilltop king county police accountability pierce county cokes npi federal way city address lose lose news tribune rich smith wonks metro news matt driscoll cannabis board mayor bruce harrell mayor harrell jaahnavi kandula seattle seattle

Hour 3: The Supersonics won't hide Seattle's problems

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 22, 2024 45:11

What's Trending: the deputy mayor of Kenmore ripped into Jay Inslee for calling out the cancellation of a low-barrier homeless housing project, the officer who hit pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula has been officially cleared in court, and mayor Bruce Harrell wants the Supersonics to come back to Seattle to conceal the real problems in the city. // Longform: Chris Barnard of the American Conservation Coalition gives his thoughts on the hasty rollout of electric vehicles and other climate topics. // Quick Hit: Seattle business owners speak out against recent rash of property crimes.

seattle hide trending jay inslee kenmore supersonics american conservation coalition elementtoproof jaahnavi kandula

Hour 1: No Charges for SDP Officer

The Gee and Ursula Show

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 22, 2024 35:43

URSULA'S TOP STORIES: SPD officer who struck Jaahnavi Kandula won’t face charges // Seattle to take back part of Regional Homelessness Authority’s funding // 200k pounds of trash removed from I-5 homeless encampment near the U District // Should lawmakers remove juvenile crimes from adult sentencing scores? // WE NEED TO TALK about Lillian's birthday!

seattle officer charges we need to talk jaahnavi kandula

Hour 1: Ben Shapiro is dropping bars

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 30, 2024 46:49

What's Trending: a wild crime spree ended with a flaming crash into a power pole in Snohomish, the driver of a car in Cherry Hill was hit by an apparently random bullet, Seattle won't book criminals for open-air drug use despite it being a crime, and the media wants Biden's border deal to be portrayed as the best possible option. // Ben Shapiro features in a new rap song by Tom MacDonald, and the director of the Seattle Office of Public Accountability changed findings against the SPD officer involved in the Jaahnavi Kandula crash in an effort to get him fired and no one else is reporting on it. // SNL host Colin Jost made fun of Donald Trump for using the word de-bank, even though it is a word. Maria Salazar, a representative from Florida, can't remember if she celebrated bills passing that she voted against.

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Week in Review: January 26, 2024 - with Daniel Beekman

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 26, 2024 44:09

On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Seattle Times politics and communities reporter, Daniel Beekman! Crystal and Daniel discuss the unsurprising Seattle City Council vacancy appointment and what we might see from a business-backed, Harrell-picked legislative body as they navigate a hiring freeze, a large budget deficit, and upcoming important policy decisions. Next, they turn to the Office of Police Accountability's conclusion that SPOG Vice President Auderer's comments about Jaahnavi Kandula's death were “derogatory, contemptuous, and inhumane” and speculate how Chief Diaz and Mayor Harrell will handle disciplinary action. The conversation then covers Daniel's recent story about a Snohomish County school's travails with a neighboring gravel yard and seemingly unconcerned local government. Finally, in the wake of the City of Seattle settling with 2020 protesters for $10 million, Crystal and Daniel wonder whether there will be any meaningful change in how the Seattle Police Department responds to protests. 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, Daniel Beekman, at @DBeekman. Resources The Raise the Wage Renton Campaign with Maria Abando and Renton City Councilmember Carmen Rivera from Hacks & Wonks “In "Foregone Conclusion," Council Appoints Tanya Woo to Citywide Position” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola “Total Corporate Takeover of Council Now Complete” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger “Harrell Issues Hiring Freeze as New Council Members Vow to "Audit the Budget"” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola “SPD cop's comments on Jaahnavi Kandula's death were ‘inhumane,' biased, watchdogs say” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times “Snohomish County school seeks relief from gravel yard sited next door” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times “City of Seattle settles BLM protesters' lawsuit for $10 million” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times 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 chatted with Renton City Councilmember Carmen Rivera and Raise the Wage Renton Steering Committee member Maria Abando to learn more about the citizen initiative to raise Renton's minimum wage. Ballots got mailed out this week, so keep an eye on that and make sure all your friends and family in Renton vote by February 13th. Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Seattle Times politics and communities reporter, Daniel Beekman. [00:01:28] Daniel Beekman: Thanks for having me on. [00:01:30] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, there is a good amount of news to discuss this week. Starting off, Seattle got a new councilmember. Tanya Woo was appointed by the council to fill the vacancy created by Teresa Mosqueda's election to the King County Council. What was the lead up? What happened here? How did this happen? [00:01:53] Daniel Beekman: Well, it was an interesting situation where so soon after actual elections, we had this appointment process for the City Council because Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda jumped to the King County Council in the same election that elected an almost all-new Seattle City Council, so there's some kind of whiplash there with so much change so quickly. And we saw the new-look City Council appoint someone who narrowly lost in November, which was interesting to see. They sort of had an option of, in theory, choosing someone who fit the profile politically of Teresa Mosqueda, the outgoing councilmember, to fill that citywide seat, or of choosing someone who had just run, or going a whole other direction. And there was a lot of politicking ahead of the appointment. And I think that the new City Council President Sara Nelson said we're not doing anything else until we have this appointment. So we're not going to get down to actual business, which to some extent makes some sense in that you want to sort of have everything set before you start doing the work. On the other hand, it sort of laid down a marker of - this is our first new thing that we're doing as a city council. It's going to be significant, which it is - choosing someone to represent the whole city, at least until November, late November when the election results get certified. But yeah, it was interesting. What did you make of it? Were you surprised that they picked Tanya Woo? [00:03:32] Crystal Fincher: I was not surprised at all. In fact, this seemed like it was a foregone conclusion for quite some time. Part of this was telegraphed publicly - it looks like with about a week before, there was a letter from Tim Ceis - who was a former consultant to Bruce Harrell, may currently be a consultant to Bruce Harrell, and business lobbyist - who had sent a letter to some of his allies talking about their success with the independent expenditure effort, referring to the money that they spent in support of electing candidates in this last election in Seattle, which was very successful for them. And saying that they had the right to voice their opinion and state that they wanted Tanya Woo picked. They named her by name and said - She is our person, you should pick her. Also telegraphed from a prior meeting where they narrowed down and selected the finalists where several councilmembers from the dais said - Since someone else already picked Tanya Woo, I'll go with a different person. So it looked like she was the favorite anyway. I think that the relationship that had been established between them was clear. They were all similarly ideologically aligned. They spent a lot of time together during the campaign trail. But as you said, it was a controversial pick because Tanya Woo was just unsuccessful in that election and just lost to Tammy Morales. And so having a portion of the City opt not to have Tanya Woo represent them to vote for Tammy Morales - and I personally am not someone who feels that someone who lost an election should never be appointed, but I do think that the will of the voters does make a difference here. If Tanya would have had similar ideological preferences to Tammy Morales and lost, you could say - Well, they're saying similar things. The voters seem like they would be fine, too. They didn't just reject this. This seems like it could be a pick that does represent what Seattle residents feel best represents them. This is not that case, and so we will see how this turns out. But there's been a shift in ideology on the council now. Interestingly with this, it's not like even if they didn't go with Tanya Woo, the majority of the council wouldn't still be in the same place. But this provides almost an extra insurance vote for them, as they consider the things that are facing the city, whether it's a budget deficit - Sara Nelson already signaling a desire to cut business taxes. They're going through an audit - they're saying right now - with the City and seeing where they can cut spending basically to address this $250+ million dollar deficit that's coming up that may be even bigger because they're also signaling that they want to further increase the police budget. So we'll see how this turns out, but it's going to be really interesting to see them negotiate the challenges that are facing them. What do you think this sets up for the council over the year? [00:06:23] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, it was interesting. I haven't been the reporter covering most of this in the last couple of weeks for us. And going forward, it'll be my coworker, David Kroman, who is doing a great job and will do a great job. But I did just dip in for a minute when the new councilmembers were sworn in - This was early this month. And I remember that Councilmember Tammy Morales made it a point in that swearing in, getting started meeting - and talking about this appointment that they had to make - of mentioning some of the big ticket items and running down the list of what this year might look like. And it was striking to think about what they have coming up. There's a Comprehensive Plan update due by the end of this year, which sounds kind of wonky, but is important. It's basically redefining the growth strategy for the city for the next 20 years. There's a transportation property tax levy up for renewal. There's this potential budget gap that you mentioned. And there's the issue of the contract for the police officers union due. So those are some big ticket things all in this year. And I think it may be the budget, like you were mentioning, that turns out to be the one that's the hottest politically with this new group and where you sort of see the imprint of the new politics to the extent that it is a shift. But I'm sure other things will crop up as they always do. [00:07:55] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, we will continue to pay attention to what happens with this council. Also, because this has been an appointment, this person who did get appointed has to stand for election in the very next election - they don't serve the full term after an appointment. So this seat will be on the ballot in November 2024. So that is going to be an interesting dynamic. Robert Cruidkshank talked about last week - this is going to be interesting to see. Given how there was controversy surrounding this appointment, how is that going to impact Tanya Woo, who is assumed to be running for this seat? And how many other people we see who applied for this appointment are also going to be on the ballot? Is anyone new going to be there? So certainly a lot to pay attention to politically here. [00:08:40] Daniel Beekman: I was just curious to know what you thought about that, because I listened to what Robert was saying, listened to your show last week with him - and I think he was saying that he thought the new guard on the City Council is maybe overestimating their political momentum. And that the way this appointment process happened with Tanya Woo being backed by the independent expenditure sort of business types, there could be a backlash in November, which I could kind of imagine in the sense that people don't love the idea of behind the scenes - big business picking their leaders. And it's in a presidential election year, so that could factor into things. But also Councilmember Woo now obviously has support and name recognition and all that and will benefit from being there at City Hall. And support not just from business leaders, obviously. And so I'm curious to know what you think - I understand where he was coming from when he was making that backlash prediction, but I'm not so sure about it. What do you expect? Do you think it'll hurt or help her or what? [00:09:46] Crystal Fincher: It could hurt. The potential is there. And it really depends on how things play out, I think, with the budget, primarily - with some of the real visible issues that they're going to be dealing with this year. I do think that it was notable and novel to have Tim Ceis send out that letter. Now, I don't think that penetrated immediately to the general public. I don't think 80% of people are aware that Tim Ceis sent any communication, or who Tim Ceis is realistically. Kind of same with how many people are really paying attention to the City Council right now. But as you hear these things being talked about, they do know that Tanya Woo lost. And this did make broad news - people are getting news alerts about it. And it's a name that they wouldn't expect to be there. So it's kind of like - Huh, that's different. And didn't she just lose? - which I think is an odd thing. I do think that there has been a - you could characterize it as brazen - that business has a big voice here and that there is a close alignment. And whether or not you view it as them being in the pocket or being a puppet of big business, or that they're just aligned and view it as an extremely important constituency that they're prioritizing that there does seem to be a much closer alignment there. And Seattle voters have explicitly rejected that before. They are uncomfortable when it comes to corporate control. Seattle residents are taxing themselves to institute a small property tax for the Democracy Voucher program. And I really do agree with Robert's point about Seattle voters being uncomfortable with austerity - cutting services is just not what Seattle residents are necessarily comfortable with. And Seattle, to a greater degree than just about any other city in this state, prioritizes services for its residents - those that cost - and they want library services, they want housing provided, they want these different things. Now they want action and they want to see improvement on the ground on these issues, but they don't expect an absence of these services or - Okay, we're just wholesale slashing programs and services that you've been used to and that Seattle is known for providing. So I do think that a number of these issues would be easier for them to run on, for them to implement had they mentioned that while they were running for election. But I think the other complication is while they were campaigning, they bent over backwards - these candidates that won, for the most part - to not talk about - Okay, there's a big budget deficit. What would you cut if you're not going to raise revenue? Where do you find revenue to provide more money for more police? And that's a conversation that many of them didn't want to have. I think Bob Kettle was probably the one who most explicitly talked about that. A few just didn't. A few threw out ideas like - Well, we need to find out what's happening with the City. But there wasn't anyone who said - You know what, we are going to be cutting programs. We are going to be cutting services. We are going to be providing business tax breaks. Not one said that one. So that's going to be interesting to see - in a deficit, when they're cutting services for residents and then seeing tax breaks for businesses, how that's going to fly. [00:13:02] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, I think that it's not surprising or out of bounds for the new councilmembers and the new council president to feel like they have a kind of mandate. And I think voters can feel to some extent like they were installed in office being business-friendly candidates, and the voters knew that - that's not a total surprise. And I think it's understandable that they would say - OK, well, we got put here, this is who we are, and we're going to try to do what we want to do. We'll have to see how the budget actually plays out and the deficit, because there can be updated forecasts and new money comes in - and it's hard to know what that will look like. But I do think what you mentioned about - if there start being cuts to libraries, that might not be a politically savvy thing in Seattle - hands off our library. So I think to that extent, that's where the rubber could meet the road to see how much political juice folks have, if that's the direction it goes. I can see both angles here. [00:14:05] Crystal Fincher: A lot is still up the air. Interestingly, it wasn't a unanimous vote by the council. One or two votes for this appointment - Joy Hollingsworth, Tammy Morales, and one other councilmember - [00:14:18] Daniel Beekman: Dan Strauss. [00:14:19] Crystal Fincher: Dan Strauss, that's right - did not have Tanya Woo as their choice. So there was some difference. So we'll see how these alliances play out. Even though there are ideological differences, councilmembers may still find things that they share, issues that they want to pursue - maybe on not the big headline issues, but other ones. And how those relationships build and progress - maybe that can provide some hope for how things play out with the City. Also, speaking of the budget, Mayor Bruce Harrell just announced a hiring freeze. As the new council sets out on their quest to audit the budget, Harrell instituted a hiring freeze across all City departments except police, fire and the 911 response division known as the CARE Department. PubliCola covered this - everybody covered this - but this is going to be a significant freeze. Certainly not the first freeze. Hiring freezes are not unprecedented - in fact, with big budget deficits, we have seen this before. It'll be interesting to see how this results and how much money this could potentially save. What do you see? Do you think a hiring freeze makes sense at this point in time? [00:15:30] Daniel Beekman: I wouldn't weigh in on whether it makes sense or not. It's interesting to see. And obviously, the idea is that we'll save some money leading into the budget season and maybe make some decisions easier, or get rid of some of the hard decisions that might otherwise be there. But also, it's a political signal - I would assume - to say, this is the situation we're in. This is really serious, and we're going to have to make some tough calls coming down the line. And the idea of exempting these public safety positions from that also sends a signal. Again - hiring freeze is one thing, cutting services is another thing - and if it starts to blur into cutting as the year goes on, then that's where you could imagine the average voter starting to get concerned. So it'll be interesting to see how it evolves and also how the relationship between the mayor and this new city council evolves too on something like this, as councilmembers get pressure from various advocacy groups or stakeholders with the budget - and employees - and as the mayor does too. Do they work in lockstep together - the mayor and the council, or the council majority to the extent that there is a clear one - or do they start playing off each other. I'm really curious to see how Mayor Harrell handles the new council - does he see himself as the leader, or is he going to play off what they're doing and position himself as different from whatever tack they're taking. And this hiring freeze and how it continues to play out could start to show what that relationship might be, I think. [00:17:09] Crystal Fincher: That is going to be interesting to watch. This hiring freeze was not a surprise to me. Again, it's not unprecedented. The City is facing a very serious budget deficit with some major structural issues. Over the years, there have been several short-term, or shorter-term, sources of funds that have been used to plug holes, get us through some challenging times - and that's all coming to roost now. There are several needs for permanent funding that don't currently have permanent funding sources attached. Also, it's going to be interesting to see what they end up doing with the JumpStart Tax and the revenues from that. That certainly has been dedicated to a number of issues that have provided some very important services to people who need housing assistance, small business assistance, eviction assistance - just really plugging some of the real critical gaps for folks and businesses in the city. But this is being eyed as a source of revenue for some of the other priorities or things that they're looking to shift to. And they have signaled that that may be a source of revenue that they look to divert or repurpose. And you're right - how the relationship develops between the mayor and council is going to be interesting to watch, especially since Bruce Harrell played a big role in recruiting and helping to elect these councilmembers - the majority who were elected, the new ones. He had talked about for a while, other people had talked about - Well, there needs to be more alignment between the mayor and council to get things done. Bruce talked about he wanted a council that would partner with him and that was loyal to him, really. And he has that now. And so from that perspective - okay, the barriers that you said that you had to being able to move forward on the priorities that you've set forth have seemingly been removed. So now we can expect to see, or we should expect to see, action on some of the priorities that have seemingly lagged or that there hasn't been as much progress on over the past two years since he took office. So it's going to be interesting to see what they set as an agenda, how aggressive they are with addressing priorities that residents have had when it comes to public safety - making everyone safer in the city, which they are taking steps to do. And some of the things that they've talked about with the CARE Department that is now rolling out a co-response kind of partial model for some mental health calls. Tammy Morales did make a point in some of her remarks to remind the colleagues that Bruce Harrell is not their boss. They don't work for him. They are partners with him. He's a colleague. He isn't a superior. And so it'll be interesting to see if - on the flip side, they view themselves as a check to some things that may come out of the mayor's office. We'll see how that turns out. It looks like there is broad alignment right now and a culture of positivity that they're trying to enforce - wanting to not have any negative comments, to get along and be really collegial. And we'll see if that results in some significant progress on homelessness, on public safety, on economic development, on just help for the people who need it most in the city. [00:20:25] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, I think you're right that - in terms of the mayor, he's halfway through his term now and now has this friendly city council. So yeah, you would think that now would be the time to do the things that he promised to do on the campaign trail and that people want to see City Hall accomplish. So what are those things? It'll be interesting to see what comes out of his office this year. Is it just going to be taking care of those must-dos? We talked about the Comp Plan and Transportation Levy renewal and the budget. Or is there something more proactive that's going to come from his office on housing and homelessness? The voters just passed a new Housing Levy last year. But yeah, what's going to come out of his office - if anything - that's a big ticket item this year now that, like you said, in theory, there shouldn't be any barriers to him getting done what he wants to get done. [00:21:18] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I also want to talk about news this week about the comment that we heard from an SPD police officer mocking, really, Jaahnavi Kandula's death - she was killed by a police officer who was responding to a call - killed in a crosswalk, hit by his cruiser while he was driving it. And those comments made international news for how just grotesque and callous they were. I don't think anyone, besides perhaps the police union, is arguing that they weren't absolutely detestable. But it's been quite some time, but there was just an Office of Police Accountability finding at a disciplinary hearing on Tuesday where they found that the vice president of Seattle's police union acted unprofessionally and showed bias when he made callous comments downplaying the death of Jaahnavi Kandula. What did you think of this finding and this incident? [00:22:24] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, well, I don't think it's surprising that the watchdog agency, the OPA, would come down with this finding, although I don't think they released what their recommendations for discipline were - it just goes, they sent it to the police chief, Adrian Diaz, for him to decide whether he wants to concur with those unknown recommendations for discipline or he has to justify doing something else. So yeah, I don't think it's surprising that the OPA would come down on it this way, given what their role is as a watchdog agency and given what happened and all the uproar locally, nationally, internationally. I think the big question is what the police chief is going to do and what the mayor, his boss, is going to do. It seems like a major moment for, again - what is the relationship between the mayor and the police chief and the police union? We'll be waiting to see what happens. And a little bit interested that - I could imagine a world in which the police chief and the mayor, knowing that this recommendation was coming down from the OPA, would get their ducks in a row. Let's say, if they were sure they were going to concur - this is kind of speculation - but if they were sure they were going to concur with the recommendations and kind of be ready right away to say - Yes, we agree with this and here's the action we're taking now, boom. And the fact that that didn't happen concurrently with this coming out from the OPA and that the police chief apparently is taking time to take a look at it is interesting. And then, of course, there's the ongoing investigation into the incident itself and the officer who was involved in the fatal collision. So that's a whole other thing that's still waiting out there as well, and whether he - what kind of consequences he might face. [00:24:17] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I think that's where the rubber is really going to hit the road here is - so what are you going to do about it? And like you said, the OPA investigator did not make his finding public. The police chief will have to decide whether he's going to fire this officer, whether he's going to discipline him in any way. But that's going to be really interesting to see, especially in an environment where they are really supportive of police - they do have plans to hire more officers - they are trying to signal it's a new day in our relationship with the police department. At the same time, the mayor has at least given lip service - and I think some of the other new councilmembers have - saying that, But we do want to take accountability seriously. This looks to be perhaps their first test of this under the new council. And especially with something that there doesn't seem to be much ambiguity on where the general public is on this - it is pretty detestable. And even in the findings from the OPA director, it was pretty stark what they said. They said his comments were "derogatory, contemptuous, and inhumane" - that's a quote from Betts' summary. Said - "For many, it confirmed, fairly or not, beliefs that some officers devalue and conceal perverse views about community members." This is not something where it's anywhere close to acceptable. It said the investigators concluded that his comments did in fact violate SPD policies - that the department prohibits behavior that undermines public trust, including any language that is derogatory, contentious, or disrespectful towards any person. The policy also prohibits prejudicial or derogatory language about someone's discernible personal characteristics, such as age. They directly violated those, and at a time where I think everyone acknowledges there needs to be trust rebuilt between the police department and the community - that those are really serious violations. And if we're serious about creating a culture that is different than this, then can this remain in the police department? So a decision coming up that hopefully - I certainly would hope - that they find this is not compatible with the police department or its culture. But we'll see how this turns out. [00:26:33] Daniel Beekman: Yeah, and I guess what raises the stakes - and of course the stakes are so high for the family involved and all of that. But what also raises the stakes here for the city is that this isn't just any police officer, but this person is vice president in the police officers' union, SPOG, and the guild. So right up at the top of the officer hierarchy and embedded in the culture of the force. [00:27:01] Crystal Fincher: Now, I do want to talk about a story that you wrote this week that I think is really important to cover. It's about a school in Snohomish County seeking some relief from a gravel yard sited next door. What is happening here and who's being impacted? [00:27:20] Daniel Beekman: Sure. This is an interesting one. So basically what's happening - this is an elementary school in the Mukilteo School District, but it's not in the city of Mukilteo. It's in this wedge of unincorporated Snohomish County between South Everett and Mukilteo. And next door on the same campus is a big kindergarten center that serves as the kindergarten for a larger area - so there's maybe close to a thousand kids on this campus. And there's this piece of property right next door to the school, closest to the south wing of the school - and some portables and the asphalt playground - that was a vacant lot until a couple of years ago. A company bought it that's involved in mining and gravel and sand and other construction materials with a mine up in, I think, Granite Falls, Snohomish County. And they bought this property to use as basically a gravel yard, sort of a distribution hub. So they'll bring stuff down from the mine and put it in piles there with big trucks. And then trucks will come get the material to take out to job sites. And for at least a while, they're also using it to bring in, I believe, construction debris from job sites and then to be taken elsewhere. And especially starting last spring, the school started noticing - at first, they said they didn't get any word about what this was or that this was happening in advance - they just saw construction activity happening on this property. And then last spring started realizing - Well, this is a permanent thing. They're not building something. This is just what it is. And it's going to be like this for the foreseeable future. And they say they've been dealing with dust from these materials and with lots of noise from the trucks rumbling around and the construction vehicles' buckets slamming against the sides of the trucks as they're unloading and loading. They say it's really disruptive to classes - some of the classes, especially closest to the property - and also they're concerned about health impacts in terms of the dust. It's hard for them to know exactly what to attribute or not attribute to the dust, but they've talked about more bloody noses and black snot and headaches and stomachaches among students and teachers. So that's kind of what's going on. And where government comes in is that it turns out that this gravel yard operation hasn't had any permits since the start. And there were some complaints filed last spring about this, and the county basically has taken the stance of - Yeah, they don't have any permits. There was some kind of mix up, perhaps, but we're going to work with them to bring them into compliance. What they're doing is, in theory, allowed under the zoning of this property. So yes, they need permits and they need to do various things to get those. But we're going to give them time to do that and work with them to do that to see if they can. And the school district and people at this school are saying - Why are you continuing to allow them to operate when we say it's disruptive to our classes and our kids learning, especially if they don't have the permits? So that's what I wrote about. It's a weird situation. To the bigger picture about why it matters - obviously, it matters to the kids and the teachers there. But the bigger picture - there's a question about priorities of Snohomish County government that's being raised. Even one teacher wrote in a letter to the county council something along the lines of - what's worth more, kids or dirt? So there's sort of a question of priorities there and what the handling of the situation says about those. And then also - what I found interesting was the principal and others raising a question of environmental justice or equity and saying - Look, this school, it's on unincorporated land. There isn't a city hall to look out for us in this case. The school serves - I think, about 70% of the students qualify for free lunch, about half are multilingual learners, which means they speak a language other than English at home. There are a lot of immigrant and refugee kids. And the principal just said straight up - If this was happening in different neighborhoods or with a different demographic of students, I don't think the powers that be would be putting up with it. So that's the story, and we're going to keep following it and see what happens. [00:31:55] Crystal Fincher: This was disappointing for me to read - just because that did seem to come through. It does seem to be a question of priority. When you talk about bloody noses, stomachaches, headaches, black snot - I mean, that is alarming to think of as a parent. If you see that going on with your kid, you know something's wrong. If you see that happening with your students and it wasn't previously happening, you know something's wrong. Again, like you said, it's hard to know exactly how to attribute it. But if this is a newer occurrence, you're going to ask questions and want a remedy. I think in the story you talk about - they can see the dust and there have been studies recently talking about how harmful particulate matter can be for developing lungs and hearts and brains - and for everyone, kids and teachers there. It's a big challenge. And for this to be happening suddenly - no notice, not current or appropriate permits for what they're doing - and the remedy to be, Well, we'll just let them keep doing it. Who knows what's going on at the school and we'll work with them to make sure they get up to code so they can keep doing this, instead of working to ensure that the kids are safe just seems backward. And it really does stand in contrast with so many other issues that we see people talk about when it comes to keeping kids safe, keeping schools safe. We restrict several activities around schools - really common ones are you can't have guns in school zones, you can't have any weapons, you can't have alcohol - that kind of stuff. We restrict, and some cities have sought to restrict, whether homeless people can be in vicinities of schools - which I personally think is misguided, but there have been cities that have done that. And so why is it so important to keep kids safe in those situations, but not this one? Why is it in this particular situation that the health of these kids doesn't matter? And not just the health impacts, but that this has been very disruptive to their learning - they've had to restructure their days. Extremely loud and disruptive, which studies have shown does impact, does hinder learning. So why is this allowed to continue unpermitted without any kind of approval or exploration about whether this is an appropriate and compatible use? I do hope the Snohomish County government does better. I hope they engage more actively in this. I hope that they do track down what is happening with these kids and that they are able to mitigate this. But it does seem like these stories often go unreported, so appreciate you servicing this. We're used to hearing - we think of a place like Magnolia or Laurelhurst and how much process there is around anything new that happens. And that this is allowed to just up and happen in a different area, in a poorer area, just seems really disappointing and a reflection on priorities that need to change. Also want to talk this week about the City of Seattle settling with Black Lives Matter protesters from 2020 for $10 million. What happened under this settlement? [00:35:09] Daniel Beekman: Well, the City Attorney's office in the city made a calculation and said - We're going to cut our losses here, in terms of the money that we're spending on the case and the money that we could end up paying at the end of it if we continue. And that's what they do is - they make a calculation, and they negotiate - and say $10 million is what it's going to take to make this case go away, but we might have to pay more if we continue. And it wasn't a case where the City said - And we're admitting fault. Sometimes - I think rarely - but sometimes the city, public entity will say something like that with a settlement. That wasn't the case here. They said this is a straight up calculation of risk for tax dollars and that's why we're settling this case. But that's what happened. And it's the latest in a now pretty long series of settlements of lawsuits related in one way or another to the May, June, July 2020 timeframe. And it will be interesting, actually, to try to tally them all up and see what the final number would be. But this is, I think, the biggest - but there have been a whole bunch of settlements in the six-figures and over a million dollars related to the protest summer of 2020. I think there still is some litigation hanging out there, so we may continue to see more. And I don't know how much closure this will bring to the city and to the plaintiffs involved here from this time, but definitely a big settlement. [00:36:45] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, this is already - as you said, City Attorney Ann Davison reiterated the City was not admitting any fault here. This lawsuit was filed about three years ago, has already cost the City in defense and expert witness fees. Among the plaintiffs were a woman who had a heart attack when she was struck in the chest by an SPD blast ball, and a man who was hospitalized in a coma after his arrest, a veteran who uses a cane and was gassed and tackled because he didn't retreat fast enough - because the cane was viewed as a weapon - there were lots. The police indiscriminately fired tear gas and blast balls in this neighborhood - not only impacting protesters, but also impacting the entire neighborhood. There were people who were just in their homes who were impacted. by this. It was quite a significant event. Even though the City did not admit any fault, there was a finding by a federal judge saying officers had used excessive force and had violated the free speech rights of thousands of residents who were legally gathered. It really was a stain on the police department - another thing that most people looked at and said, This is not right. This should not happen. This is a violation of trust, and really just harmful to residents in the city. Police are supposed to be there, philosophically, to protect people. And seemingly the opposite happened here. The attorney for the plaintiffs, along with some of the plaintiffs, did have a press conference yesterday and said - Hey, the City's not admitting fault, but they really should be. And there was so much that was troubling that happened here. The attorney cited other incidents, including a hoax perpetrated by the department to scare protesters into thinking armed members of the Proud Boys extremist group were in the area. The City hired an expert, University of Liverpool Professor Clifford Stott, who's among the world's foremost crowd policing experts. And I thought this was pretty jaw-dropping - Stott reportedly concluded that, particularly during the early days of Seattle's protests, he had not seen the level of violent aggression by police against unarmed protesters "in any democratic state." That's just a pretty stark, horrible conclusion - saying that this doesn't happen in democracies. We don't see this kind of reaction in free societies. And so this is a really significant payout. And once again, we're seeing a large payout because of police violations and misconduct. We're now seeing this happen while we're hearing - There's not much money to go around. We're trying to figure out what to do with the shortfall, yet we're still paying out this extra money. And it just seems like this should be a signal that - Hey, there is a reckoning that needs to happen within the department, within the city that perhaps hasn't happened yet. And maybe the insistence that - Hey, there's no fault here seems a bit out of touch. How did you see this? [00:39:56] Daniel Beekman: I'm not sure about the admitting wrongdoing aspect of it and what reasoning is behind that decision. But I think a bigger picture question is - okay, so there's this big payout for the plaintiffs. It's a headline. It's meaningful in those ways. But the bigger question is - okay, well, if something happens and there are big protests - what if a decision comes down that people don't like in that other case we were talking about, the fatal collision? And there are protests on the street and the police department is sent out to handle those protests. Are we going to see the same thing happen again? That's the real question, right - is what's been put in place in regulation and policy and law and culture to ensure that things are done the right way the next time? And I think there's an open question about would things be different again, or not? So I think that's the thing that it would be helpful to hear from policymakers and from City leaders on. The look back is important, but there's that question of - what about next time? What do you think about that? [00:41:14] Crystal Fincher: No, I think you're exactly right. I personally would love to hear from the police chief, from the mayor - who are directly responsible for the police department - what about next time? I think that's the right question to ask and what they should be asking themselves. What is going to change? How have we responded to this? Have policies changed in response to this? Has training changed? Has any guidance changed? Have they responded to this with any criticisms, with any - Hey, I would like this to change. This is under their purview. This is under their control. So how are they asserting their leadership? How are they affirmatively trying to shape this culture? Or are they just kind of taking a hands-off policy and hoping this doesn't happen again? - Hey, we'll deal with something if it directly lands in our lap, like we need to make a disciplinary decision on the one case that we talked about earlier that you just referenced. But when it comes to culture, when it comes to how things are looking moving forward - what is their vision for that? What are they setting forth? How are they leading? It's their responsibility. How are they handling that responsibility? Are they handling that responsibility? And I think residents are interested to hear that. They want to know that there are plans in place and that there is a response. Or are we setting ourselves up again for harm against residents of this city, and lawsuits that drag on that are really expensive - that take time and money? And here we go again. So I do hope they address that. And maybe, this new council can help prompt some of those questions - maybe as these conversations take place and as there are more press conferences, we can hear more about that, hopefully. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, January 26th, 2024. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was Seattle Times politics and communities reporter, Daniel Beekman. You can find Daniel on X, also known as Twitter, at @DBeekman. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. You can find me on Twitter - all platforms - at @finchfrii. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, 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.

university spotify english starting washington office seattle black lives matter police budget raise hiring hacks blm audit city council city hall spd proud boys ballots opa betts week in review harrell seattle times stott renton police accountability city attorney beekman seattle city council comprehensive plan snohomish county seattle police department sara nelson mike carter mukilteo wonks granite falls adrian diaz spog king county council laurelhurst teresa mosqueda mayor bruce harrell erica c barnett tammy morales mayor harrell chief diaz jaahnavi kandula david kroman

RE-AIR: How We Approached Interviewing Seattle City Council Candidates with Crystal Fincher and Shannon Cheng

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 19, 2023 60:35

The makeup of Seattle City Council may be changing a lot next year, but the issues they'll face won't. Over the six weeks leading up to ballots being mailed out for the 2023 general election, Hacks & Wonks presented our series of interviews with most of the Seattle City Council candidates! On this topical show re-air, join Crystal and Shannon behind-the-scenes of Hacks & Wonks for a bonus (not-so) short episode where they discuss how questions got chosen and written, the why behind those kludgy SPOG contract questions, thoughts and observations after all the interviews, and their approach to editing. And also, a bit of venting. 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 Shannon Cheng at @drbestturtle. Resources Elections 2023 One-Stop Shop | Hacks & Wonks “Rob Saka, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 1” from Hacks & Wonks “Maren Costa, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 1” from Hacks & Wonks “Seattle City Council District 1 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks “Tanya Woo, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 2” from Hacks & Wonks “Tammy Morales, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 2” from Hacks & Wonks “Seattle City Council District 2 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks “Joy Hollingsworth, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 3” from Hacks & Wonks “Alex Hudson, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 3” from Hacks & Wonks “Seattle City Council District 3 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks “Maritza Rivera, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 4” from Hacks & Wonks “Ron Davis, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 4” from Hacks & Wonks “Seattle City Council District 4 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks “ChrisTiana ObeySumner, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 5” from Hacks & Wonks “Seattle City Council District 5 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks “Pete Hanning, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 6” from Hacks & Wonks “Seattle City Council District 6 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks “Andrew Lewis, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 7” from Hacks & Wonks “Seattle City Council District 7 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks 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, this is a little bonus short - I don't know, we'll wind up seeing how long this turns out to be. I am joined here with someone who you don't hear from on the mic often, but every time we do, it's wonderful. She is the person who does so much work for the podcast - this is a team effort. I'm here with Dr. Shannon Cheng. Hey, Shannon. [00:01:14] Shannon Cheng: Hey, Crystal! [00:01:16] Crystal Fincher: So Dr. Shannon Cheng - who is incredible, who works with me, who is a subject matter expert on public safety, is the guru for knowledge about like the SPOG contract, SPMA contract, that kind of stuff. She really understands and has the ability to actually explain it and share it in really accessible ways. But I just want to back up and talk about what you do and how you became an expert. What do you do, Shannon? [00:01:44] Shannon Cheng: So I find myself involved in local policy and politics kind of by accident. I mean, you referenced that I'm a doctor - my doctorate is in Space Propulsion, I'm an aerospace engineer by training. And I guess if I try to think about the throughline of how I've operated in life is that I kind of don't want to end up doing things that aren't gonna let me go to sleep at night. So what happened with me with aerospace is - at one point - understanding that basically staying involved in that industry was contributing to weapons of destruction and war. And I just couldn't bring myself to do that. So through volunteering and activism, I guess that's how I met up with Crystal and got connected and have been doing a lot of things. I work on People Power Washington, which is focused on equitable public safety and policing across Washington state. We've worked on the Seattle, King County and State Legislature levels. We work on things ranging from budget advocacy to monitoring these difficult to understand police guild contracts and understanding how those get in the way of accountability, trying to work to pass charter amendments at the county level that would support better public safety and-- [00:02:59] Crystal Fincher: Shannon was instrumental in the passage of that 2020 County Charter Amendment to reform public safety. Instrumental. [00:03:07] Shannon Cheng: And yeah, then recently I was invited to join the Washington Coalition for Police Accountability. And so that's been really a wonderful experience to just engage with families who have been directly impacted by police violence and brutality, and trying to work to have that not happen to anybody else ever again. So that's kind of me. [00:03:32] Crystal Fincher: That is. Except you are the ultimate fun fact person. Like you have so many fun facts. A prior student of yours is currently on the Space Station right now. [00:03:42] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, I mean - he was up there for a six month stint. He may have come back down by now, but - I think the launch was in February - and when they were showing the pictures, I was like, Wait, I taught that guy Dynamics. [00:03:58] Crystal Fincher: You have a picture of you like in zero gravity working on a thing. You are an orienteering champion, which is a whole thing. [00:04:07] Shannon Cheng: Yes. It is a sport that is not super popular in this country - it's widely popular in Europe, in Australia, New Zealand, those areas. But yes, you could say I am an orienteering champion of sorts-- [00:04:20] Crystal Fincher: You are literally an orienteering champion. [00:04:24] Shannon Cheng: --thanks to participation and attendance. [00:04:27] Crystal Fincher: And you being great. It's not like there were no competitors. Yeah, there are so many fun facts about Shannon - just awesome things that pop up here and there. But Shannon is talented at everything basically, and is just one of the best human beings I know. And an instrumental part of Hacks & Wonks. So that's why we're both here talking to you right now. So we wanted to have this conversation to talk about just what we were thinking when we were putting together questions for the Seattle City Council candidate interviews. And we meet and kind of do a whole thing - have an approach anytime we do series of candidate interviews - this is no exception. But especially with all of them and this conversation, there's been a lot of tangential conversation brought up - a lot on social media, a lot in the community. And some of these questions have become even more relevant in the past couple of weeks, particularly the ones revolving around policing in the city of Seattle and the new contract with the Seattle Police Officers Guild that is in the process of being negotiated. And so I guess starting out - when we start thinking about how we're going to do candidate interviews, what do we usually talk about? How do we usually approach that? [00:05:51] Shannon Cheng: I think we're - I know you are always wanting to kind of understand how would a candidate actually vote on issues that matter to people in this city? Because ultimately people can say things and have platitudes, but it really comes down to when there's a hard vote, which way are they gonna go? So I think, especially for the lightning round, a lot of our questions were centered around trying to ask these questions - and getting a Yes, No, or seeing if there was a waffle from these candidates - just to better understand how they think about these things and when push comes to shove, which way they would lean. [00:06:23] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I think that is my approach. And it is an approach that is the result of years of working in politics, years of seeing how candidates process information throughout a campaign, how they conduct themselves just in their general lives, and how that translates to policy, and whether they govern in a way that's consistent with how they campaigned. And certainly one thing that is a throughline is - especially when it comes to tough votes - everybody will say, I believe the children are the future. Everybody will say - yes, they wanna address root causes of stuff, right? But as we see, like we've seen recently in this city, when it comes to issues of public safety or homelessness, people have all these value statements - but it comes down to a vote. It comes down to - Are you going to fund something or are you not? Are you going to really put into place the necessary elements to successfully implement what you're going to say or not? Are you going to just fund what you said - Oh, we need to do more than that. - but if you're only like voting to fund that, that's a different thing. So we tend to ask more specific questions than sometimes we hear elsewhere - we're not the only people who ask specific questions, but I definitely try to do that. And we try to figure out what votes are likely to be coming up, where are the big fault lines, especially for the upcoming year, going to be? What does it look like different interests are pushing for and where do they stand on that? Because it's gonna be an issue. There's going to be pressure put on them to vote certain ways. And if they can't stand up strongly for what they believe and be conclusive about what they're gonna say, that doesn't have a good track record of resulting in the kind of policy that people expect in that direction - if they're soft on that. So that's part of what we do. And I've interviewed people from different philosophical orientations, political orientations. And sometimes there are people who I think or suspect I'm gonna agree with, who are soft on things I don't expect. People who I don't expect to agree with, who - I hear their answers on some things - I'm like, Okay, that was thoughtful and informed. And I certainly have my opinions - you know that - we talk about my opinions on the show. But I really do hope - my goal isn't to super interrogate and like make all the points - it's really to get what they think on the record, out in the open. And really help people to make an informed decision based on what the candidates are saying, kind of without the - with the exception of the lightning round - without the time limit on - Okay, you got to get your answer out in 30 seconds or 1 minute. There's some nuance - sometimes it's more than that - or an issue is complex and we need to talk about it. [00:09:01] Shannon Cheng: And I would just also add that we have a lot of first time candidates this year, especially with open seats. And so it's also understandable that maybe a candidate isn't well-versed in every single issue area that is going to come up. And so I think having this robust set of questions also can help educate - both them and the voters - what is coming up. And maybe if they feel a little weak, or they get a question and they don't understand what it's even about, that's a signal of - Hey, this is kind of important. Maybe you need to look into that, and understand what's going on, and figure out where you stand on it. [00:09:34] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And I - we'll have candidates be like, Whoa, I hadn't thought about that before, I need to learn more about that. And I appreciate that - when someone - taking office, we can talk about all of these issues. But there will always be issues or events that happen, that pop up that you don't talk about while on the campaign. And so a candidate's always going to have to get up to speed on something new. Electeds have to get up to speed on new things all the time. And so how do they approach that not knowing - knowing that they don't know something - How do they approach that? Who are the people they turn to to help learn? What sources of information are they learning from? How do they process information? Those are all things that are useful to hear and to know. And so even if they encounter something that - okay, maybe they didn't think about, you have a perspective about how they process information. So I guess in how we approach writing questions, what is the process for that? Okay, Shannon right now is like, Okay, so Crystal is like - ties herself into knots and then tries to avoid writing the questions. And then it's - maybe we don't want to do interviews at all. And oh my gosh - they're too many, they're too few. It's a little bit of a tortured process sometimes, but you help bring some clarity and order to that whole process. [00:10:55] Shannon Cheng: I mean, you've done candidate forums - so we look at what you've done for candidate forums in the past. And then my issue area - that I work on in my spare time - is public safety and policing, and so I had the opportunity to put candidate questionnaire questions about that topic in as possible questions to ask. So - I don't know-- [both laughing] [00:11:19] Crystal Fincher: Well, with that. [00:11:20] Shannon Cheng: It's very last minute. [both laughing] [00:11:22] Crystal Fincher: It's so, yeah. [00:11:23] Shannon Cheng: But I don't know that people need to know that. [both laughing] We'll edit that part out. [00:11:28] Crystal Fincher: Well, it is - we do this in between our regular work. I'm a political consultant. Shannon works with me. We're busy doing that for most of the day on most days, and we squeeze this podcast in between them - with lots of coordination and research and preparation done by Shannon, which I sincerely appreciate. But it is a process and we're trying to figure out what makes sense to ask. We do still have time limits-ish - we stretch it sometimes. But I do - maybe we should start off talking about some of these questions about policing in the contract because some of these issues have come up lately. Shaun Scott, who is a great follow on Twitter - I don't know if he's elsewhere, but on Twitter, certainly - he was talking about, Hey, the city passed an ordinance. And he's absolutely right - City passed an ordinance giving the city council and OPA? - I think, one of the entities - the city council subpoena power over SPD and other entities, but like including SPD. And they did pass an ordinance that did that. Unfortunately, the SPOG contract of 2018 superseded that. Basically, it had clauses that contradicted and said, No, we're not gonna do that. And then another clause that says, And if City law says that we need to do that, that doesn't matter, this contract is going to replace or supersede City law in that. So subpoena power was essentially taken away. A number of accountability measures were taken away. So the questions that we asked were more specific than we usually ask. It wasn't like - oh, everybody deals with this and talks about it all the time. It was more - these are some areas in the SPOG contract that might be opaque or obscure that haven't been widely publicly discussed, but that are very important in dealing with issues like we're seeing now in the news. How did you put together those questions, and why are those specific ones important? [00:13:30] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, so I think it's important to first understand that officer discipline is considered a working condition under state labor law, and that's why these union contracts are kind of the last stop for determining how things happen. So as you said, the City has passed, I think, multiple ordinances to try to give subpoena power to our accountability bodies - the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General. But the thing is that because we're governing under state law, unless that officer discipline-related provision gets negotiated into a contract that is accepted by the police unions, then it's not gonna be in effect. And so it's confusing, right? We see this all the time that there's these announcements made - Hey, like huge step forward in accountability. We managed to pass a law that says we have subpoena power. - but then what's left out is the asterisk that is, Well, once it gets negotiated with the union. And so I think that's the thing that gets lost a lot. And so I see that a lot. And so when we came up with our questions - literally it's from observing what the process has been, and then going actually through the contract line-by-line and trying to understand - okay, where are these provisions that kind of weaken the glorious accountability system that everybody likes to point to and pretend that we have. So knowing that going through labor contracts is not everybody's favorite thing, that's why we try to boil it down into - Okay, here's a few especially egregious things that seem like baseline we should try to get in the next contract - which is why talking to electeds about it is important because they are the ones who are gonna hold the power in terms of getting what we want in the next contract. So that's the process that we came up with our questions. [00:15:23] Crystal Fincher: So, the question that we asked candidates in the lightning round was - Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't give the Office of Police Accountability, known as OPA, and the Office of the Inspector General, known as OIG, subpoena power? Why is subpoena power important and what difference could it make? [00:15:41] Shannon Cheng: Subpoena power is important if you're trying to do an investigation and the information you think is necessary to understand what's happening for your investigation isn't available, or if people involved aren't cooperating and giving you that information. So at that point, a subpoena allows you to basically demand that that information is shared with you. In the 2017 Accountability Ordinance that was passed, it was explicitly laid out that the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General would have subpoena power. However, in the 2018 SPOG contract - I'll just read directly from the contract - they list those two sections and then they have an addendum that says, "The City agrees that these sections of the Ordinance will not be implemented at this time with regard to bargaining unit employees and their family members, and third party subpoenas seeking personal records of such employees and their family members." So basically, the contract said - there's no subpoena power for these two entities. [00:16:40] Crystal Fincher: And yeah, I mean, we've heard and seen in several stories - the Seattle Police Department did not cooperate with the investigation. They can just say, currently - No, we're not gonna give that to you. No, we're not gonna share that. We decline to do that. And in issues - right now, there's an international conversation about both the killing of Jaahnavi Kandula and its aftermath with an officer mocking her killing. And the record of the police officer who was doing that, the records of officers overall. And we still don't know everything that happened with the East Precinct and it's leaving, we don't know what happened with CHOP - like those kinds of things - we still don't have answers because we can't demand them. We can't compel them. And this does. Not that that's gonna solve everything, but it is a tool of accountability. And at minimum, if you can't even get information about what happened, how are you gonna attach any kind of accountability to that? So it really is a very primary - we have to at least understand what happened, we have to be able to get that information. So that is what went behind that question. Another question we asked - Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't remove limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian? What is this sworn versus civilian issue about, and why is it important? [00:17:57] Shannon Cheng: So the Office of Police Accountability has investigators - they're actually embedded in the Seattle Police Department - and a lot of their investigators are actually sworn officers. And so some people might think, Well, doesn't that seem kind of problematic? Because you would end up in this scenario where you have cops investigating other cops. Also, the cops that come into the OPA as these sworn investigators - my understanding is they kind of rotate in and out - so a cop going in could expect to then be back out at some point. And that would lead one to think, Well, maybe they wouldn't want to be as thorough in their investigations. So what the civilian aspect was - was that I think people would trust more to have a civilian who is not a sworn officer doing these investigations. And in that original 2017 Police Accountability Ordinance, there was provision made that there could be civilian investigators on this team within the OPA. However, again, that 2018 SPOG contract specifically said - and here, I'll again read from the contract - "The parties agree as follows: Unless otherwise agreed, at any time after the date of signing, the City may replace up to two (2) sworn investigator positions with up to two (2) civilian investigators." So they've basically limited the OPA to only have at any time two civilian investigators, and then that contract goes on to say, "Any case that reasonably could lead to termination will have a sworn investigator assigned to the case." So not only have they limited the number of civilian investigators, they also say those civilian investigators can't work on any cases that would lead to any kind of discipline that is on the harsher side of things. So that's why we asked that question. [00:19:44] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and with these, it is important to understand - different jurisdictions have different things that they can do, right? They all have their own levers that they can push and pull. Some things you can only do at the county level, some things you can only do at the city level - in a variety of ways. And so we do try and focus in our questions also on what can they do in their capacity as a city councilmember. And because they do have the power to approve or reject this contract, putting - understanding what their conditions for doing so would be, getting them on the record about that is important 'cause this impacts how the police operate within the city and with residents. The next question we asked - Do you oppose a SPOG contract that impedes the ability of the City to move police funding to public safety alternatives? Why was this a question? [00:20:34] Shannon Cheng: This is a question because - as we all know, the City has been trying for a very long time to stand up a alternative crisis response that may or may not involve the police. I think a big hurdle to that being stood up is this concern that I've heard - that if the City was to stand something up that didn't involve the police or the police didn't agree with, that they could file an Unfair Labor Practice with the state and basically say - this is some violation of their contract, that kind of work that had been under the purview of the police department was now being taken away from them and given to somebody else. So it's - I don't know that there's wording explicitly in the contract that says that, but it would be the union invoking the contract to say that the City was taking work away from them, basically, that they wanted to keep. [00:21:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and it's a big major issue. And right now we're kind of at an impasse - alternative responses and funding non-police public safety responses and interventions is one of the most popular things supported by Seattle residents right now. They vote for candidates who say they're gonna support that. Polling shows that north of 70% across the board, it's been over 80% in some polls. When asked explicitly - hey, if your tax dollars are gonna be spent, what do you most want it to be spent on? Highest thing is standing up alternatives to policing to address things like behavioral health crises. We all see that this is so desperately needed and that - it used to be five years ago, kind of pre-2016, pre-George Floyd, when police used to have no problem. They said all the time - we aren't social workers, we don't have the tools to handle this other stuff, we wanna do our core jobs and not handle all these other things that we don't really have the tools for. And it seems like because of fear of losing funding, losing headcount, whatever, that stopped and they started clinging to everything that they could have. So like we ask a question - Do you think parking should be housed within SPD? Lots of cities are having conversations, especially since police are saying that they're short-staffed to say - Okay, how can we more effectively deploy police officers and take things off of their plate that shouldn't be on there in the first place, that are not core to what a sworn officer - a sworn armed officer - is needed for. But the challenge is that that is coming up against, as you described, those feelings that - Well, that's something that we, you know, that was in our sphere of responsibility, funding is attached to it, headcount is attached to it. And if we lose that, maybe that's gonna be a slippery slope to losing other things. So like in the City of Seattle, the city council has actually funded alternative police responses. They have decided they wanna move forward with that, they've allocated money for that. And once that happens, it's basically up to the executive - currently Bruce Harrell, before with Jenny Durkan - to use that funding and implement the thing. Well, it's kind of stuck there. The money isn't being used. And for a while, especially with Monisha Harrell, when she was with the city, they talked about, Okay, well, we wanna do all that, we're just gonna do it with an internal department of public safety that will also house civilian responses. And I think part of standing that up as an internal department was to address the concern of the issue of headcount. And if the headcount decreases, even if it's just parking officials who do not need a gun to enforce parking, that - hey, let's not call that like a regular response, let's not use sworn headcount to do that, we can deploy that more effectively. But that is a problem that is stalled. And so the question really is - will they ensure that in the contract that is currently being negotiated, the contract that the council will be voting on, can they eliminate that as an issue? And obviously this has to be negotiated by both sides, but is there something they can come to that enables the City to move forward with what the residents are demanding and what leaders have committed to do? We've gotta find a way to have the contract not impede the progress that the city is repeatedly begging to make and promising to make. So that's what went into that question. Another question we asked - Do you support eliminating in-uniform off-duty work by SPD officers? Why is this an issue? [00:24:53] Shannon Cheng: So the current contract that we're under explicitly gives SPD officers the right to work off-duty. And this is in-uniform, so one factor in this is that this is basically allowing them to use public resources, meaning their uniform - and they retain their police powers while they're working for not us, not the public that's paying them, but for private clients who they work for. So, a lot of these things are things like security or traffic direction, and they get paid a lot of money for these jobs - sometimes I think even more than they make as an officer. And so one of our concerns is that, especially in a time when it's short-staffed, then allowing in-uniform off-duty work - it creates confusion with the public, for one thing, when you see a police officer not working in their official capacity as a police officer, but dressed as one and maintaining all the same powers that they do - it just doesn't have clear boundaries between their professional work and then their side job. And then with the short staffing, these added hours that they're doing on top of, in theory, their full workload at SPD, plus potential overtime that they're gonna have to do - this is just gonna lead even more to officer fatigue. And we can see how that could lead to more of the poor decision-making or judgment calls, and has detrimental consequences for all of us in the public. And often - with their history of biased policing - would affect certain populations more than others. So that was why we asked this question. [00:26:29] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and with these questions overall, some people are like - Well, why are these all like accountability questions? Are there any other things? Like, do you just hate cops? And to me, hating cops is not the issue, right? This is about public safety for everyone in the city and in the region. And every candidate who's run - I collect and keep political mail, advertising, blah, blah, blah - and what is really astounding is kind of the revisionist history of members of the council who are known for being moderate or conservative. Everybody's like - Well, you know, they elected me to be moderate and conservative. Or like people covering them - They elected someone. But when you look at what they said when they were running, when you look at their mail and what they communicated to voters - to a person - they talked about the importance of police accountability and reform. And, you know, some people wanna go further than others, but they all promised that. And so, if that wasn't just BS - anyone who's serious about that, and even if you're working towards community-centered, different things - anyone who is serious about what we're currently doing, and this contract is currently being negotiated, we really do have to contend with these things. And if we aren't, then we're not really serious about doing anything about accountability, let alone re-imagining what public safety can actually be. So no matter what someone's ideological position is on the council, they should be engaging with this. This is in their sphere of responsibility. They're gonna have to vote on this contract. And so we need to know - we should know, and we should be talking about - what these parameters are. It's very important and consequential, and can determine whether we wind up in similar situations to now - where we have an officer where basically the globe has said, That's disgusting and should be unacceptable. Why is this officer still there? And we have City electeds basically going - Oh, there's nothing we can really do about it. The contract, you know, like, can't really fire them. There's no precedent. - and like, those are all legal issues because of the contract. But they approved this contract - Bruce Harrell approved the contract that we currently have. He's not the only one - I think Debora Juarez was on the council at that point in time. Lorena González used to be, and said she regretted the vote. Like, this was consequential. We talked about this at the time - not many people were listening in the wider community. But like, this is not a surprise that we're seeing problems because of the overriding of accountability measures passed by the City and supported by people in the city. So that's why we asked those public safety questions. We asked a bunch of questions in the lightning round about how people vote. Why do you think these were good questions to include? [00:29:06] Shannon Cheng: I think they're good because this is an instance where they had to sit down with their pen in hand and make a choice - bubble choice A or bubble choice B. And so in this process of trying to figure out how these candidates think and where they stand on things, asking them about times where they actually did have to make a decision and knowing what decision they made, I think that's why we asked those. [00:29:30] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. And it's fair to ask. And it gives you insight into how they process information when it does come time to make a choice on one or the other, even if they think - maybe they don't think either choice is perfect, but they do need to make a choice and what they made is informative. In these, you know, also informing on different issues, where they stand there. We asked also issues about housing. We asked them if they rent or own - and that's an important question to ask, it's an important thing to know. And it's wild that we don't talk about that more because that is one of the biggest dividing lines in Seattle politics. It's one of the biggest dividing lines in voters. When you look at any results map of an election, you basically see the results of homeowners versus renters, higher income, higher net worth people versus lower income, lower net worth people. That is a fault line in Seattle politics. And looking at how votes happen, we see people voting aligned with their housing status a lot. It's something that matters, that is predictive pretty regularly. And so we wanted to ask that. We wanted to understand if they rented, if they own, and if they're a landlord. Some candidates were, some candidates were not. And then we face questions - the council actually passed an ordinance that was vetoed by Mayor Harrell, just about some more accountability for landlords and more sharing of information to try and better poise the City to address the housing affordability crisis. And so that's why we asked those. We asked the question about allowing police in schools because that has been talked about in some meetings. It looks like there are some influential interests that want to make that happen and encourage that. I don't think that's wide-ranging, but there were a couple of powerful and well-placed people who - that was coming from their camps - and so we thought it was important to get people on record about that. We asked about trans and non-binary students - making sure they could play on sports teams that fit with their gender identities and using public bathrooms and public facilities - and got a range of answers on this one. Why did you feel this was so important to ask? [00:31:37] Shannon Cheng: I think this is a community that's been under attack just nationwide, at all levels. And so it's important to know - I think Seattle touts itself as a progressive, inclusive, welcoming city - and we want to make sure the people who are leading us actually are. [00:31:55] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And respecting people's humanity without condition, without making them less than. And unfortunately, the sports issue is propaganda. It's propaganda. I understand why the propaganda campaign caught on - it's using very cynical tactics - but we do have to stand up and say, That's propaganda. We can't be like - Okay, yeah, trans people, we accept everybody - live, love, and light - all that kind of stuff. And then say, Yeah, but if your kid wants to play on a sports team - which is a very important formative part of growing up for many people, if they choose to do that, and also not just sports, just any kind of activities attached to school, which is something that so many people partake in - and say, Yeah, but not that. Like that is an issue of just fundamental humanity and inclusion - and so we should be explicit about where people stand, and we should talk about that, and we should force people to be accountable for where they stand on that. And make sure people know - before they vote - whether people plan on including every member of this community in our community. We asked about the economy, the JumpStart Tax - which there's been lots of talk from different interests about, from some Chamber interests saying, Maybe we need to divert some of that to help restart, relaunch downtown's economy. There are other people saying, Hey, this might be something that we need to increase to help with the upcoming budget deficit. And some people who just disagree with it overall, and think that we - that that's placing a burden on business, and that's gonna be bad for residents - and usually coming from the same people who say the sky is falling every time that there is a minimum wage increase, and then more people move here and are happier than they are in other places, so it seems like we would stop listening to people who continue to predict that and are wrong, but we don't do that. But wanted to get people on record for where they stand on that, because - in Seattle politics, interests are tied to taxes - that that's where a lot of corporate interests are really concerned about. And they will use other issues as wedge issues in messaging, but their primary concerns are about taxation and the maintenance of their capital. That's really what's driving a lot of this. And so the JumpStart is going to be at the heart of that interest and conversation. [00:34:09] Shannon Cheng: We hear businesses - obviously they don't wanna pay more taxes, but at the same time, we also hear businesses complaining that they're not getting the services that they expect the City to deliver to them. And so I think it's pretty telling that - you don't wanna pay for it, but you wanna get it. [00:34:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and we also asked about how candidates can better support small business. I do think there's a conflation of gigantic multi-trillion dollar mega-corp interests and - in the business community - and a small mom-pop shop, local business who is - hired a couple of people from the neighborhood and is trying to make it. Both businesses, both part of the business community - but usually very different interests and needs. And we have a lot of small businesses who are struggling. Small business - business is important to the economy across the board, right? But we need it not to be extractive. We need not to say, Oh, it's so important. So like Boeing, we're gonna give you more money than we've ever given anyone before with no accountability. We did this because Boeing is gonna create jobs and we need lots of jobs. But then we don't get a refund when Boeing lays people off and leaves town, right - that's a problem. And we have trillion dollar corporations in the city of Seattle who frankly use small business owners to say - Oh, please, we're suffering and we need help, and we shouldn't pay any taxes. When most residents, according to polling and election results, feel that businesses like - mega corporations are not paying their fair share. There is a conversation to be had - some kind of income inequality and differences in access and challenges that small businesses are facing compared to large businesses. It's kind of similar to what lower income people are facing in comparison to larger income people. Small businesses are having problems affording rent - that's a really, really, really big issue - they are suffering from predatory rent increases. Also, that's putting people out of business. But there's a lot to be discussed. And if you talk to business owners - we've done shows with different business interests - and their needs are broad and varied and they should be listened to, they are part of the community. But we do need to talk about them as part of the community and not as this super entity or something like that. So that's what those questions were looking to get at. And then just some perspective stuff - asking if they're happy with Seattle's waterfront, asking about return to work mandates - just helping to further get inside their minds, how they think, what their perspective is, where they're coming from, and who and what they may be sympathetic to as interests and as bills - when that comes up. Transportation and transit related questions - we have absolutely seen a difference in engagement and thoughtfulness, willingness to fund and include provisions that are helpful for pedestrians and people on transit, people riding bikes from leaders who actually use them. And we suffer when leaders are responsible for transit policy who don't use and ride transit - all sorts of distorted and weird policy and perspectives come out when we have people governing systems that they don't themselves engage with. And so we asked those questions to try and see - are you actually using the system? Because we hear different things from people who do take them versus things that don't. And just, that's a useful thing to know. Similarly, Pike Place car traffic is something that we talk about - just another one of those perspective things in there. We obviously asked about the upcoming revenue shortfall in the City of Seattle for $224 million. Everyone is going to have to contend with that. Every candidate on the campaign trail, every candidate that we interviewed has talked about wanting to implement new things that are going to require additional revenue, that are going to require resources. And we're moving into - Okay, we're going to have fewer resources and either we're gonna need to raise revenue or make cuts. And so it's just not a serious position to be in to say we should be doing all of these other things - these new things that require revenue - when there's going to be less of it. And everyone is kind of dodgy usually when it comes to cutting things, but they're going to need - odds are it's gonna be a combination of cuts and attempting to pursue new revenue. If someone is saying they aren't gonna pursue that, then we need to view their other plans that do require revenue differently. If someone is saying, I'm gonna go after revenue hard - that's great, but we should also know if there are any cuts that they think they may need to do. Revenue may take a while to come in. We will probably need to do some trimming in the meantime - just because the City's mandated to have a balanced budget. And so that's something real that they're gonna have to contend with. And those are really hard decisions. And you can see how hard they are by how unwilling or unable candidates are to answer how they're gonna prioritize cutting, where they think they should come from. If revenue doesn't pass or come through, what does that mean? How are you gonna approach that? And we do need to press on those tough decisions 'cause those are gonna be really consequential things. And I think sometimes candidates - we've talked about this on this show before - think that just like the hard part is running, and then you get elected, and then you can exhale. Running for office is the easy part - it only gets harder - and the spotlight on you gets hotter and brighter when you actually do have to make a decision that's consequential for the people in the city. And so we should poke and prod about that and try to get as specific as we can. We don't always do perfectly with that - I'm reflecting on the answers that we got. There were so many vague answers - and try and poke and prod - and some people just don't wanna answer specifically, or just are unable to answer specifically. But hopefully, as you said before, that is an indication that they should think about that seriously. And they're gonna need a game plan 'cause it's coming and they're going to have to deal with that. And it's going to be bad if they just start engaging with that after they take office and have to really make those decisions and move forward with it. [00:40:16] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, I mean - I feel like in response to that question in particular, we heard a lot of answers to the effect of - Well, we need to look at the existing budget and look at where there are inefficiencies and you know, blah, blah, blah. And I am curious how many of those candidates - we have an entire City Budget staff, right? - who works on that kind of stuff and auditing. It's not like there aren't people looking at that. I just wonder how much have those candidates engaged with what is already out there? Have they found things that have been already identified? Would that even be in their process of trying to figure out how to reallocate resources, if that's the way they're going to go? [00:40:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And with these - I think it's important - obviously I have my own perspective, and I think it's important to ask questions and to frame them appropriately for the moment and for what's happening. And when I ask a question, I do - with these - try to give people a fair shot to respond, to give whatever their response is, right? I'm not going to cut them off in their response. I want voters to be able to hear what they think - even if I disagree with what they think, they get to hear what they think. But one observation I do have certainly, and formed definitely from working with candidates over the years, is that - we do hear, we heard a lot, we heard more than I was comfortable with, like, Oh, we do need to take a look at that. We need to start to understand where this stuff is. We need to ask tough questions. Like, you decided to run for office. This information has been out there, it's publicly available. There's a ton of information and resources just on the City website itself to walk you through the budget - each budget process - and hearings and a ton of Information. That's not usually where the issue is. The issue is when it's time to make a decision about what to cut, people are hesitant to do that. They're afraid of making people mad. And so we have these situations where candidates either don't feel like they need to come with a game plan, but we are in multiple crises. We need people who are saying - Okay, I have talked to community, I have done homework on what's happening, and this is my plan for what I think will fix it. We need people coming with solutions. We need people coming for proposals. That's the job. The job isn't to ponder and examine and to have endless meetings, right? That's part of the problem in Seattle and many places is that they want to task force something to death and workgroup it and blah, blah, blah. And then we end up in the same place that we were. I do hope that they get some more concrete solutions and process because that is going to enable them to hit the ground running. And it really does make a difference. If you don't understand the budget - the basics of the budget - just the, you know, like not every line item, that's a really hard thing to do. But have you even bothered to go on the City website and look at the budget documents they do have? Have you bothered to read and recall where some of the major issues of funding and major decisions were before? If you haven't, maybe you should. Maybe that would help inform you as to what's possible. You know, even if you think there's waste, fraud, and abuse - as they talk about with all that stuff - well, where specifically? 'Cause that general nebulous thing of we've been - it's not like this is the first rodeo with the City with a budget shortcut, it's not like all of that. And I'm not saying that there's nothing that can be reallocated - that should be looked at - but that information is out there and available. You can find that out. And I'm continually surprised - not necessarily surprised - I'm continuously dismayed by the number of candidates who say - Oh, I don't know that. You know, how can we know that? Or I'm not sure, I haven't looked into it yet. Well, look into it. You decided to run for office - get it together, figure out what you wanna do, and share that. But it's a risky proposition to have someone go - You know, I need to figure out what's going on, we need to look into that, I'm not sure what it's gonna be. And meanwhile, trust me to make this decision. Based on what? That's my personal opinion - that was a little venty, but I do feel strongly about that. And as a political consultant who works with candidates and gotten people up to speed on this kind of stuff - people can do better. People can do better. People need to be better. The city needs the people to be better, to deal with stuff like this. Anywho. We also asked about climate change and specifically 2030 climate goals. This is happening amidst a backdrop where it seems like every major body - 5, 10 years ago, people were like, Yay, we're totally gonna make these 2030 goals. We take climate change super seriously, and we've set forth these ambitious targets that we're gonna achieve. Everybody loved announcing those goals and that those goals reflected their commitment and blah, blah, blah - which is part of my problem sometimes, celebrating the press release instead of delivering the result. But when it came time to make the tough decisions in order to get there, they punted, punted, punted, punted until we've gotten a rash of announcements over the past couple of years that - Yeah, so those 2030 goals, we're not gonna hit them, but we're totally gonna hit our 2050 goals, right? And so if we can't hit this milestone, this benchmark, we're not gonna be on track for that. And the issue really is people just don't wanna make the decisions that are necessary to get there, right? Like, incrementalism isn't gonna get us there. And we are experiencing the impacts of climate change and it's not pretty, and it's not gonna get any better, right? Like this is the best it's going to be for a long, long time - and it's worrisome. So this is important. And specifically, it is 2023 - 2030 is right around the corner. There's a lot that can be done. And there's a lot of money being raised by the carbon credit auctions from the Climate Commitment Act. There's a lot of investment available throughout the state. Do they have plans to pursue and get some of the - what are the plans here? But we need to get on track and be serious about 2030, get back on track for 2030. 'Cause if we can't hit that, we can't hit anything. And we're in for a world of hurt. It's a serious thing. [00:46:22] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, I mean, I think it's trying to understand - does this candidate have or feel a sense of urgency around this? Are we actually gonna put a honest effort into trying to meet these goals? And what are their ideas about how to do that? Because as you said, we needed to be doing this stuff yesterday, but the next best time to do it is starting now. And so what is the plan? [00:46:47] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and there were some candidates - a couple that I'm thinking of - that had some good concrete ideas for this. There were others who very much did not. But also with this - candidates also learn from each other during the campaign trail. And one thing that I do think that we need to do is to encourage that more. The more candidates can learn - like actually engage with solutions - is a good thing. Sometimes - obviously if someone's biting a speech word-for-word, which happens sometimes in politics with candidates - that is irritating, especially for the people in campaigns sometimes. But if there's a good idea and someone else is - You know what, that makes sense. - that's a good thing. We should encourage that. And so I do hope - with a number of these responses, and definitely this one too - that people pay attention to what other candidates, even if they aren't in their same district, say because there are some good workable, achievable plans and ideas on the table that could definitely help. And if a candidate hasn't really engaged with that or thought about it before, there are other candidates who are great resources for them. [00:47:51] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, I think so. I think my experience, having gone through all these candidate interviews, is just every candidate is unique and is coming from a different place to run for office. And they do come with different expertise and experience. And so I think it is kind of a helpful resource to look at for other candidates, whoever ends up getting elected, people who are just concerned about our community as a whole. What are these candidates talking about as being the issue? Why are they stepping up to do something that - to me, sounds like an awful thing to have to do - put yourself out there, and get scrutinized, and knock on doors every free moment of your life. I don't know - I mean - but they wanna do it. [00:48:35] Crystal Fincher: Shannon is a notorious introvert, yes. [00:48:38] Shannon Cheng: They wanna do it. And there's a reason why. And maybe listening and trying to understand - what is that reason and what can we do about it? What are they saying would be helpful to them to address the thing that got them to do this incredibly hard thing? [00:48:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. Another question we asked was just - was about childcare, which is a really, really big deal. We talk about - housing is on everyone's mind, it's on everyone's agenda because it's such a major expense and it keeps rising wildly. It is unsustainable, right, in this situation. The number two expense for most families, which sometimes creeps into number one with multiple children, is childcare. We talk about groceries, we talk about gas and people definitely feel those, but people are feeling childcare in a way that is wild. It's more expensive than college and college is wildly unaffordable, right? This is so expensive and it directly impacts whether people can work - period - whether people can participate in this economy. It is cost prohibitive to get childcare for a lot of people. It's cheaper just not to work, right? And that impacts people's upward mobility, likelihood to be in poverty, to be able to get out of poverty if you are in, whether they're going to need government assistance, right? This impacts so many different things. And the way kids develop depends on the quality of care that they receive from early childhood on. And so this is directly impacting many families, indirectly impacting everyone in the community - from businesses, the regional economy, other parents, community members. And so we don't talk about it enough still. There are a lot of people who are and that's awesome and great, but I think it needs to be elevated even more. And for anyone who's talking about issues of affordability, who's talking about inflation, who's talking about just families having a hard time dealing with expenses - you cannot have that conversation in any credible way without talking about the cost and accessibility of childcare. So that's why we talked about that. And then, just general - Why are you running? What are the differences between you and your opponent? I will tell you - just from my perspective as a political - this is a question that I would ask candidates before deciding to work with them. And I'm looking, in that question, to hear specific and tangible things that they wanna do for their community. It is a big red flag when that answer doesn't include how they want to help people. If the answer is just about them - Well, you know, this was the time for me and lots of people came to me and like, blah, blah, blah. People know - different jurisdictions are different. They suit different leadership types, personality types - depending on what you wanna do. So is this someone who's running for every open position available under the sun? Or do they have something specific that they wanna do in the role that they're seeking? Do you have something tangible you wanna accomplish? People should have tangible things they want to accomplish, and not just running for vanity or because power is attractive, or it's something to put on the resume or whatever - run to accomplish something to help people. I am drawn to people who are rooted in that and have answers with that. I will say just in my experience overall - that determines how someone, absolutely determines how someone governs, how consistent they are to governing - and the way that they ran absolutely has an impact on that. And even beyond, even for candidates who lose, right? Usually candidates who are like - You know, I'm running because I see this as a problem impacting lots of people, and I think that I can be part of the solution in fixing it. - is that if, even if they lose, right, they still stay engaged in the community and working on that. You can see the motivation is not power for me - to them. It is actually doing something to help the community. And so, I look at a variety of different people who've run over the years, and it's interesting to see the people who are still active in community versus those who just disappear. And it was like a phase - them wanting to be involved. Now that's - obviously there's nuance to this conversation - people don't owe their lives to serving and all that kind of stuff. But if you are saying this is an important part of who you are, it seems like that would continue beyond a campaign and that you would see consistency there. So that for me, as a person who is either deciding who I'm gonna vote for, or who I'm gonna work with or in support of - that answer matters a lot to me. That motivation matters a lot to me. How do you see it? [00:53:17] Shannon Cheng: I agree with a lot of what you just said. What I really liked about the interviews we did was that opportunity you gave them to just talk without time limits that forums often impose. And it was refreshing to kind of hear people kind of being more their authentic self. And I think that's just - I don't know that I can describe it, right? But I think just you have to listen and hear how they talk about things. And that was - there were many candidates who came on who, just based on reading, doing all the research ahead of time for their interview and reading about them - and then when they came on, they were not what I expected. I mean, some were. But there were some surprises as well. And I mean, that was, it was really great to - ultimately, these candidates are all people. And I think on the campaign trail and it can get heated - sometimes it can get kind of boiled down to a caricature almost, or just what their campaign website makes them out to look like. And I don't know that that really is the most informative in terms of understanding who these people actually are. And for me, that just feels like - I wanna know that the people who are making these hard decisions for myself, and people I care about, and neighbors who I care about - even if I don't know them directly - I just want them to be good people. [00:54:45] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I want them to care. I want them to see the people and the humanity. I want them to not see statistics. I want them to understand that it's people. I want them to not celebrate the fact that they - it's fine and good - Hey, we passed something. But that then has to be implemented in a way that is felt by the people who it's intended to help. And if that doesn't happen, it all doesn't matter. And I feel like we don't pay enough attention to that part of it a lot. And so I personally, as a voter, am looking for people who understand that and who at least value writing legislation that has a reasonable shot at being implemented well and can deliver on the result. And who track that and who are willing to course correct there and not just paper over things that may not be great and act as if they are - 'cause the goal is to help people. I do wanna talk about - so we took a little bit of a different approach to editing. Candidate interviews - I know how things can get in campaigns and being a candidate is not easy, it's nerve-wracking and being in these interviews - and editing can make people sound better, sound worse. Sometimes people take a pause to consider, or - and that is a, Shoot, I don't know, or like, will say different things, right? And so the approach that we took to candidate interviews - particularly when we had both candidates in the race - we wanted to present them as straightforwardly as we could, to basically not edit their answers. Because there was a lot - we would lose things on a variety of sides, right? And my goal is to not interject our presentation of the candidate. It's to give you the candidate. And I think people can hear throughout these interviews that you can hear someone thinking, you can hear someone processing, you can hear someone being - dodging, or like really contending with someone - like that whole thing mattered. And it seemed like we didn't - editing that, that was just gonna be a no-win situation for - Are we making someone look better? Are we making someone look worse? Are we interjecting what we think into there? So we actually decided just to - sometimes I would flub up a question, right? And like that's edited out, but we let candidates just answer and let their answers be their answers. And you can hear them. And they are people, right? And this isn't easy. And people can be super nervous in an interview, right? Like this is - I get nervous sometimes before I do things - that's totally fair. So I - if someone - I'm not looking for someone to sound perfect or perfectly polished, right? There are some times you can sound too polished. But just to give people an accurate impression of who they are, and how they're engaging with the answer, and can make their own call on whatever that is. But basically it was like - we don't record live, but you got the answer as though it was. So that's the approach that we took there. 'Cause we did get a couple of questions on - Are these edited? Or like, How, like, are you going to do that? Or like, Did you, you know, take - No, that's, that's exactly how it happened. [00:57:50] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, we cut out things like coughing fits or the ever-present train siren behind Crystal. [00:57:57] Crystal Fincher: Yes, yes. [00:57:58] Shannon Cheng: Otherwise - tried to keep it real. I mean, you know, our goal with this project is to educate people about who they are going to make choices between and hopefully inform them in that decision that's coming up. November 7th! [00:58:13] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. You can register to vote online. Even if you have been convicted of a felony and have been incarcerated, the moment you are released, you are eligible to re-register and vote again. Just be involved in making this decision. Voting locally is really important. It's more consequential than all the federal stuff that's going on. Although we hear wall-to-wall coverage and every news program every night is talking about Congress and the president - and not that that's not important. But like, look at how different states are. Look at how different Washington and Alabama are. Look at how different Forks and Seattle and Cle Elum and Spokane and Ellensburg - that is how much control cities have over who they are and how they operate. It can be as different as all of these different cities. They can be night and day difference. And that is all the impact of these local officials that we're electing in the elections that we're having this November. So that's why I do this show. It's really, really important to talk about this stuff and not enough people do regularly. And I'm not saying that it's easy - we make it hard for people to understand and participate in these issues. So just trying to make that more accessible to more people and to help understand where it may be helpful to focus and consider and engage. But this matters, and it matters to try and elect people who will actually deliver on the policy that you think they should be delivering and implementing. So that's why we did this and appreciate you listening to our little explainer about our approach. [00:59:47] Shannon Cheng: Thank you everyone! [00:59:48] Crystal Fincher: Thank you! 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.

Crime & Updates 2

Murder In The Rain

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 14, 2023 55:25

Monthly Update!It's time to recap October and there's so much to talk about! Like how much fun we had at CrimeCon! We'll also shout out some new friends, Patreon supporters, and some concerning issues in the true crime community. Alisha and Emily will give updates on the Meshay Melendez and Layla Stewart case from our live show, the trial for the parties responsible for the death of Manny Ellis (from episode: Unknown Trouble), the trials surrounding Elijah McClain's death, the case review for the officers involved in the death of Jaahnavi Kandula in Seattle, Cameron Hooker's (ep: 2,640 Days) upcoming status review and the big news about Natalee Holloway's case. Then Emily will make us all jealous as she shares the details of her upcoming, month-long vacation to Australia! For photos and sources for today's episode, check out the Murder in the Rain Episode Blog. If you'd like more episodes of Murder in the Rain, Patreon members at the $5/mo+ level, gain access to exclusive episodes, ad-free episodes, bonus content, and more.Follow us on:Instagram https://www.instagram.com/murderintherain/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/mintherain/ Twitter https://twitter.com/murderintherain TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@em_murderintherain Website https://www.murderintherain.com/ Email murderintherain@gmail.comOur Sponsors:* Check out Factor 75 and use my code rain50 for a great deal: https://www.factor75.com/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/murder-in-the-rain/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

australia seattle murder crime rain factor elijah mcclain natalee holloway crimecon monthly update manny ellis jaahnavi kandula

Week in Review: November 10, 2023 - with Melissa Santos

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 10, 2023 59:47

On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Seattle Axios reporter, Melissa Santos! Melissa and Crystal discuss how Election Night results in Washington state aren't conclusive and can change due to our mail-in ballot system, how four County election offices were evacuated and whether this might explain low turnout trends. Then they dive into where Seattle City Council election results currently stand and the impact that enormous spending by outside interests had on voter communication. Looking outside Seattle, more encouraging progressive results appear to be taking shape across the state in Tacoma, Bellingham, Spokane, Snohomish County, Bellevue, Bothell, and more! The show wraps up with reflection on why celebrated Seattle Police Department Detective Denise “Cookie” Bouldin suing the City for decades of racism and gender bias from SPD management and colleagues is yet another indication of internal police culture not matching their publicly declared values. 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, Melissa Santos at @MelissaSantos1. Melissa Santos Melissa Santos is one of two Seattle-based reporters for Axios. She has spent the past decade covering Washington politics and the Legislature, including five years covering the state Capitol for The News Tribune in Tacoma and three years for Crosscut, a nonprofit news website. She was a member of The Seattle Times editorial board from 2017 to 2019, where she wrote columns and opinion pieces focused on state government. Resources Digging into Seattle's Budget Process with Amy Sundberg and BJ Last of Solidarity Budget from Hacks & Wonks “4 election offices evacuated in Washington state; fentanyl found at 2” by Melissa Santos from Axios “Business-backed Seattle council candidates take early leads” by Melissa Santos from Axios “Seattle council incumbents still trail in latest election results” by Melissa Santos from Axios “Business-backed groups spend big on Seattle council races” by Melissa Santos from Axios “Tacoma to consider new tenant rights measure on Nov. 7 ballot” by Joseph O'Sullivan from Crosscut “Tacomans deciding on progressive renter protections” by Lauren Gallup from Northwest Public Broadcasting “The 4 biggest takeaways from election night results in Tacoma and Pierce County | Opinion” by Matt Driscoll from The News Tribune “Bellingham voters consider minimum-wage hike, tenant protections” by Joseph O'Sullivan from Crosscut “Lisa Brown leads incumbent Nadine Woodward in Spokane mayoral race” by Mai Hoang from Crosscut “Controversial Sheriff with Right-Wing Ties Faces Voters in Washington State” by Jessica Pishko from Bolts “Johnson defeats Fortney in sheriff's race, new ballot drop shows” by Jordan Hansen from Everett Herald “Pioneering Black detective sues SPD, alleging racism, gender discrimination” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times 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 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, it was a special one. Our producer and special guest host, Shannon Cheng, chatted with Amy Sundberg and BJ Last from Solidarity Budget about currently ongoing City of Seattle budget process. The conversation ranged from the fight over the JumpStart Tax to why ShotSpotter is more egregious than you thought. This is the first show that I actually have not hosted on Hacks & Wonks and Shannon did a fantastic job. It's a really informative and interesting show, and I highly suggest you listen. 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 Axios reporter, Melissa Santos. [00:01:41] Melissa Santos: Hi, Crystal. [00:01:43] Crystal Fincher: Well, good to have you back on this Friday following general election results in Washington state. We have a lot to talk about, a lot that's interesting. I think the first thing I wanna talk about is just the nature of elections and results. As a reminder to people - for so long, so many of us were used to going to a polling place, voting, getting election results on Election Night. We still get that from a lot of other places in the country. It does not work like that here in Washington - and particularly for the City of Seattle, some other, especially major metropolitan areas - where there's, you see differences in where different demographics typically vote in the timeline when ballots are out. What races look like on the first night can look very different than what the ultimate results show. How do you approach this? [00:02:39] Melissa Santos: Well, so I basically - especially in Seattle races - I try to put a caveat at the top of any story I write on Election Night or the next day, sometimes even Friday of election week saying, Races are known to swing by 10 or 12 points in Seattle - this could change. It will change. It could change dramatically, essentially. So that's, I think, what we're seeing here. I mean, as of right now, when we're actually recording - we don't have Thursday's results yet. So we only have a very limited batch of ballots, especially because of something else we're probably gonna talk about later - there was limited counting in some counties, including King County, yesterday and fewer ballots released because of a scare they had at the elections office. So we just don't have a lot of information. Election night - like half the ballots maybe are being reported, so that's just a ton of room for results to change. And we have seen that repeatedly in Seattle, especially when it comes to progressive candidates looking like they're down, and then - oh look, they won by four points, three points, two points. So this happens a lot. And that's just a good caveat to keep in mind as we're talking about election results the week of the election in Seattle. [00:03:49] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and as you said, we are actually recording this on Thursday morning. Viewers will start to hear this on Friday, but we don't have many results - we might as well talk about it now. The reason why we have even fewer results than we thought, or fewer ballots counted, is that there were some wild things that happened at some elections offices yesterday. What happened? [00:04:10] Melissa Santos: So four county elections offices in Washington state, including in King County, received an unknown powder substance in envelopes that were delivered to the election office. And so the King County Elections office in Renton, that does all this counting, was evacuated for three hours the day after the election - in which counting was not happening because they had HazMat there, they had the Fire Department there, they had the police there checking to make sure this wasn't something super dangerous, that there wasn't a chemical attack, essentially, against the election offices. And in Spokane County, they got a similar thing and they actually didn't - I don't think they released results yesterday at all, actually, in Spokane. Or at least it was very delayed and limited. So in King County, they released many fewer ballots, and counted many fewer ballots, and reported fewer than they had expected to on Wednesday, the day after the election. And then also Skagit and Pierce County offices got mysterious packages. And two of them - in King County and Spokane, it was, there were traces of fentanyl. We're still waiting for more information, so there was some sort of fentanyl in there. Not clear about the other two - might've been baking powder in Tacoma, according to one report I saw, so. But in any case, this is a threat that people are sending stuff that is very threatening. I mean, everyone remembers it was around - Anthrax scares and this and that. So when you get in the envelope as a public servant like that - you're worried it could kill you, it could kill your colleagues, and then you're gonna not keep counting ballots probably. Or your coworkers across the building are gonna stop counting ballots - and that's what happened. [00:05:45] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And people are on heightened alert for a number of different reasons. These bring to mind some of the increased attacks that we've seen that seem to have anti-Semitic, anti-Arab, anti-Muslim bias. There have been envelopes of powder mailed to synagogues in our state. So this has a lot of people wondering - are these ties to election denialists? Is this someone with some other grievance? But people are on heightened alert about that. King County counted about half as many ballots yesterday as they originally intended to, so we have really abbreviated results. The other factor that is a challenge that is not standard - not what we normally see - is turnout is low, is trending really low. And weirdly, it was trending above where we were a couple of years ago until Election Day - 'cause we can track how many ballots are received each day, how that compares - so it was actually up by a few percentage points. But on Election Day, really, turnout seems to have cratered. We don't know why. Again, the results being released - it's so early, so we just may not have the full picture. Maybe people just voted in a really late flux and we don't know that yet. There's just a lot that we don't know. But right now, turnout seems to be trending pretty low in a different way than we've seen before, at least so far. So we're not sure what that means, who might not have turned out, is this gonna wind up low? We just have a lot that we still need to see, both in results and in just the ballots received, and what that means for turnout. So with that said, let's start off talking about the City of Seattle. We had several council races. And I guess thinking, going through the results - overall, the more moderate candidate was leading pretty significantly in a lot of cases on Election Night. Again, as we talked about earlier, several of these races are still within the bounds where it's possible these races could change. And the person who ultimately winds up winning could be different than the person currently leading in several of these races - if ballots trend how they traditionally trend in the city - there's been a few different folks who've done some public analysis of this. But right now in District 1, Rob Saka - this looks to be one of the races that looks pretty conclusive, that Rob Saka currently holds a pretty commanding lead over Maren Costa. In District 2, Tanya Woo is currently leading Tammy Morales. This is a closer race and one that is within the margin where we see late ballots overtake what the early results were. In District 3, Joy Hollingsworth - this seems like a pretty settled race - seems to have prevailed over Alex Hudson. District 4, we have Maritza Rivera leading Ron Davis. This is one that is at the margin of where races come back - if ballots trend in the same way as they had before, Ron could end up eking out a win. If they don't, maybe he comes up a little short, but definitely a race we anticipate tightening up. In District 5, Cathy Moore holds a pretty commanding lead - this looks like one where it's beyond the range of kind of the bounce-back of ballots over ChrisTiana ObeySumner. And in District 6 - [00:09:34] Melissa Santos: District 6 is Dan Strauss, and that is really, really close, with Dan Strauss and Pete Hanning. And we actually saw Strauss, who's an incumbent, and is the more leftward candidate in that race - I mean, of the candidates in that race. [00:09:47] Crystal Fincher: Of the candidates in that race. [00:09:49] Melissa Santos: Not really the most leftward councilmember that is on the ballot necessarily, but in this race he is the more progressive of the two. He was down two points on Election Night, but now it's less than one percentage point. And that's just with the limited ballots we saw on Wednesday. So that's an example of how much you can switch there - we saw about a percentage point gain in a very close race. So I suspect Dan Strauss will actually win his race and be reelected, but we will see. [00:10:18] Crystal Fincher: It would be shocking if he didn't wind up winning this. And in District 7, we have Andrew Lewis and Bob Kettle, with Bob Kettle currently in the lead over Andrew Lewis. This is another one where it is still within the range that this is too close to call. We need to see further results. And if again, ballots trend in the same way as they've trended - particularly in 2021, but also in 2019 - then Andrew Lewis could wind up winning. This week is gonna be interesting with results because we typically get a daily update at between 4p and 5p, depending on the county. And King County - it's typically 4 p.m. But Friday is a holiday, so we won't get updates on Friday. Today, Thursday, will be the last day of updates. And then the next day that we get an update on the vote totals will be Monday. So Monday will probably be a very conclusive day, a day that shows whether people are on track to make it, where a lot of the late ballots are going to be in the tally - because the counting continues over the weekend, even though they don't release the results until Monday. So we'll see what that is. But a lot of races that are currently too close to call, even though if you've seen some other media outlets, particularly some columnists - I think Danny Westneat had a column, that was like - Oh, the progressive era in Seattle is over or something like that - which I think certainly the early results are different than even earlier results that we've seen in prior races, different than even in the primary, I think we would say. So there is something afoot here, and there's certainly going to be a different council with one, so many new candidates. But there's gonna be a new composition on the council, certainly. But saying what that composition is going to be with so many of these races still in the air, I think it's premature to say at this time, and we'll still see. We just don't know about the turnout and don't wanna mislead people, have to rewrite headlines. I think you're one of the more responsible journalists when it comes to setting appropriate expectations and making sure you don't overstate what the results are saying. [00:12:45] Melissa Santos: I mean, I think the one thing you can say, that I got from Danny's column, that I can guarantee will be correct is you will not have Kshama Sawant on the council anymore. And she has been one of the sort of firebrands on the council, very - has strong views that she doesn't shy away from and doesn't - whatever dynamic that is on the council, some people don't like it, some people do like it - that she just says what she wants to do and doesn't kind of do as much backroom compromise sometimes on certain issues. That's gone. So you don't have a Socialist on the council anymore - that is happening - 'cause she didn't run for re-election. There wasn't a chance for her to lose. So either way, that was gonna be different. But a couple of the moderate candidates we were talking about, I'm not really sure which way they'll vote on some of the issues that typically define Seattle moderates. And for me, Cathy Moore comes to mind. She won by - I mean, you can say Cathy won at this point - it was about 40 points. So that is not going to be, that's not going to happen for ChrisTiana ObeySumner. But Cathy, during election interviews, was a lot more forthright actually about taxes, saying - I disagree with the business community actually, that we probably need more tax revenue. And so she was much more open on the campaign trail about the notion of taxing businesses to close the City's budget deficit. And this is one of those issues that typically defines sort of the Seattle centrist moderates, business-friendly candidates - is having a lot more reticence about taxing businesses. Usually the candidates won't say - Absolutely not under any circumstances. But they'll say - We need to do an audit. I'm not, I mean, some of them actually will say, I don't think we have a budget deficit - in the case of Bob Kettle, I think that was something he said regularly, despite what the revenue projections do say. But Cathy Moore was a lot more nuanced on that topic. And also on zoning, potentially, and being willing to have more dense zoning in certain areas. I'm not sure that she'll vote the way - it remains to be seen. People can say things on the campaign trail and do totally different things, so we'll see. But she was fairly consistent about being sort of more on the liberal side of certain issues in that respect. Joy Hollingsworth, who has, I think, pretty definitively come out ahead in District 3 - this is Sawant's district. You know, she's a really - she's just a really compelling personality too. I mean, and I'm not saying this in a negative way - you talk to Joy, you feel like she's listening. She's a good candidate on the campaign trail. I saw her canvassing a lot - like in person, a fair amount - 'cause I live in that district. And her campaign sent out a lot of communications. She had the benefit of independent money, which we will talk about soon, I think, as far as more outside spending benefiting her campaign. So there were more mailers sent out - not even necessarily by her campaign, but on her behalf. And I just don't know if she's a traditional candidate. And she would say this and has said this - When am I the centrist candidate? I'm a queer, cannabis-owning business owner, you know, who's Black, and I just don't, when am I like the right-wing candidate here? So I mean, maybe doesn't fit the profile of what people think of when you're talking about sort of centrist candidates. And again, has done a lot of work on cannabis equity and equity issues, I think, that also helped her relate to a lot of voters in her district. Well, Rob Saka, I think, is more - who I think is pretty clearly winning in District 1 - is probably the most traditional, sort of more business-backed candidate who's skeptical of taxes, skeptical of how the City's spending its money, and then also had a lot of big business backing on independent spending. And is sort of more - we need to hire more cops, more in the traditional line of what you're thinking of as a centrist candidate. And he is going to be replacing a more progressive councilmember in Lisa Herbold. But, you know, they basically have Saka in that mold, clearly. And then the other two races that are decided already, it's not totally clear that it's some - it's gonna be a, exactly what kind of shift it's gonna be. And in fact, Cathy Moore is replacing a more moderate on the council anyway. So a lot is still dependent on what - the results we still don't have. And also, one of the more progressive members on the council is Teresa Mosqueda, who is running for King County Council and is likely to ultimately win that race, and that's gonna be an appointment process, where - to replace her on the council. So who that is - you could end up with a fairly progressive council, potentially, in some respects. If all of these races switch to progressive suddenly in the late results, which certainly may not happen. But it's just a little premature on Election Night to necessarily say the council's going to be way less progressive than it was, I think, potentially. That's all. [00:17:40] Crystal Fincher: No, I completely agree with that. We've talked about on the show - if you know me personally, we have definitely talked about this in person - but painting, you know, the media narrative out there, that - Oh, it's the super progressive council, you know, who's always battling with the mayor, and we want a change of direction. I'm always asking, define what that direction is, because we did not have a progressive council. There were different people in different positions on the council - certainly had progressives on it, but a number of moderates on it. And in this change, as you said - in District 1, I think it's very fair to say that that moved in a more moderate direction. District 5, I think that's moving in a more progressive direction, everything on balance. [00:18:30] Melissa Santos: And if Ron Davis wins in District 4 - which that district has been super swingy in the past because it has - I think university students is a factor, sort of, I do think there's a late turnout surge there in a lot of years, in some years, maybe that's greater than some districts. If he wins, you're going to be replacing Alex Pedersen, who is one of the more - certainly centrist, some would say conservative - but center candidates, and so you'd have a much more liberal person in that respect on, I think, both taxes, on criminal justice, I think on also zoning, definitely zoning, Ron Davis is like the urbanist candidate - is kind of what he's known as, and having worked with FutureWise and these organizations and in advocacy, sort of behind-the-scenes roles. So yeah, that would be, kind of, undermine the narrative to me. If you replace Alex Pedersen with Ron Davis, I'm not sure the progressivism-is-gone narrative exactly will hold up, so that's - but again, we would need some big swings for these things to happen. I'm not trying to act like you're going to get all these progressives. It definitely was a good night for business-backed, sort of, more centrist candidates on Election Night. [00:19:42] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely, I agree with that. And I think if Maritza Rivera ends up doing that, that's basically a wash on what their representation does - that looks like they have continued with what they generally had. And didn't move in a more progressive direction, but certainly did not get more moderate or conservative than what was already there, I think. I think there are two buckets of candidates that we're looking at, as you alluded to before. I think that Rob Saka, if Bob Kettle were to wind up prevailing, if Maritza Rivera were to wind up prevailing - those, I think, are most firmly in the traditional moderate conservative, very skeptical of taxation, very supportive of carceral solutions, more punitive solutions, lots of talk about hiring and supporting police, different answers to different issues, often involving public safety elements. I think that's fair to say. I don't think most people would put Cathy Moore, Joy Hollingsworth in that same category. I think Tanya Woo is a bit of a toss-up. This is another race where, I think, next to Dan Strauss, the next most likely candidate of what looks the way ballots traditionally go, even with some wiggle room - Tammy Morales, the way ballots trend in Seattle, certainly has a path to finishing in the lead. There is definitely a difference between those two candidates, but I think Tanya Woo has certainly expressed some reservations for taxation, has certainly expressed her support for public safety solutions - Maybe she falls somewhere in the middle there. It seems like she's not as aggressive as some of the other candidates and their zeal for those solutions, but she has signaled that she's open to them. So I think that's a question mark if it goes the Tanya Woo route. But this is a race that is definitely too close to call at this point in time for the way Seattle ballots trend. So that's Seattle. Let's talk a little bit more about the money, which you have written about - basically, everybody wrote about. We have not seen spending of this magnitude in Seattle City Council races since the Amazon money bomb that we saw in 2019. What happened with outside money in this race and what impact do you think it had? [00:22:34] Melissa Santos: So originally in 2019, there was a big - originally, that's not that long ago, I understand, but in recent history of Seattle elections - the Chamber of Commerce had a PAC that was spending a lot on behalf of the business-preferred candidates. And Amazon gave a million dollars plus to that - a million of it right at October, I think, in 2019. And that kind of - especially, Sawant in her race, again, Socialist councilmember, was saying Amazon's trying to buy the election. And then there was a sense that left voters turned out citywide even to kind of object to that. There was one, something that I think a lot of observers thought happened that year. And that one might have helped fuel this surge of left-leaning voters after the initial vote count as well. And also, Trump was in office. There was a lot of sort of motivation, I think, of progressives to kind of vote and make themselves heard wherever they could during that era. Okay, so this year - your original question - this year, we didn't have a chamber PAC doing all of the money. It wasn't all relayed through this chamber PAC. It was different. There were all these little political action committees called Neighbors of this Neighborhood. It was Downtown Neighbors Committee, Elliott Bay Neighbors Committee, and then University District Neighbors Committee. So it sounds, you know, those innocuous, sweet-sounding PAC names, right? But they were all supporting the candidates that were preferred by the, I mean, the Chamber and the Downtown Seattle Association. And they spent a fair amount of money. I mean, in the - I don't think that I had all the receipts when I did the calculations on Sunday, so there's a few more that have come in since then. But I mean, it was $300,000 almost for Maritza Rivera. And when I say for, I mean, a lot of it was spent opposing Ron Davis, but all benefiting Maritza - either in direct support from these external groups that were saying, Vote for this person, or, you know, saying, Don't vote for this person, her opponent, the more left-leaning candidate in that race. So that's quite a bit of money for one race, one district race, you know, you're talking about. And then we saw that for support for Rob Soka as well. And they were some of the similar groups where - there's overlap in who is supporting these PACs, right? Landlords organizations, there were builders and construction and realty interests. And there were - the Realtors PAC actually gave separately to a few candidates like Tanya Woo and Bob - okay, I shouldn't say gave. Let me back up. The Realtors PAC, the National Realtors PAC, actually spent its own money separately from these Neighborhood groups to support Tanya Woo and Bob Kettle. And so you just saw that outside PAC money was coming in. And that was, you know, a lot more than the leftward union side spent this year by a significant margin to kind of help support these candidates. So, I mean, at the end you had $1.5 million almost spent and more than $1.1 million of that, maybe $1.2 million, was from the business sort of backed interest sort of pouring money from outside into these races, supporting their preferred candidates. [00:25:53] Crystal Fincher: So I think - one, something that gets missed or I've seen a lot of questions about - so people are like, Okay, there's a lot of money. Corporations have a lot of money. How does that impact races? What does that mean when it comes to these campaigns and when it comes to what voters see? [00:26:11] Melissa Santos: So what you're paying for is communication. What they are paying for is communication. They're paying for mailers that go to voters, they're paying for TV or radio ads in some cases - maybe not radio this year, but it's, you know, this is some of the things that independent expenditures pay for. Online ads - so reaching voters to tell them about the candidate. And this is what campaigns do. That's the whole point of a campaign. Except when you have someone from outside doing it also, it just really widens your impact as a candidate - even though they don't coordinate, they're not involved together - it still will help get your message out to more people if you have supporters doing this on your behalf and buying mailers. I mean, I live in District 3 and most of the mailers I got were from Joy Hollingsworth's campaign, but I did get another mailer from an independent expenditure committee. And this was one that also was like - You like weed, vote for Joy Hollingsworth. Literally, that's what it said. I wish I was not kidding. So, I mean, again, that's - again, muddying the who's progressive and who's not a little. I mean, the mailers contribute to that, but anyway. And I got one mailer from Alex Hudson's campaign. So it just was like 5-1 on the communications I got from Joy Hollingsworth just to my own house. And so that's just an example of - even though only one of them was independent spending, you know, you can have a lot more mailers come and reach someone on behalf of a candidate if you have this outside money paying for it. [00:27:37] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and communication is really everything. I think, you know, most people know I do this kind of work during the day, this podcast is an extra thing, this is not the main thing that I do. But it really all comes down to communication. Like you talked about before, there are things that the campaign can do to directly communicate with voters - phone calls, canvassing is the most effective thing they can do. And if a candidate and their campaign is on the campaign trail doing that, that is certainly generally a really positive thing for their campaign and one of the most effective things that you can do to win votes. But Kshama Sawant is notorious and the DSA - people passionate about Kshama are notorious for mounting really formidable, substantial ground games where they are covering most of the district. Most candidates are not knocking on most of the doors in their district. They're knocking on, you know, a pretty small percentage of them. And even though to them and their supporters - they see the candidate talking all the time, attending events every night - you're only reaching 15, 20% of the people in the district probably. And so the other 80% of voters have not heard anything directly, have been busy living life. The thing that many candidates don't realize is that the hardest thing isn't getting them to understand that you're better than your opponent, especially for candidates who have not run for office before. The hardest thing to do is to let voters know that you exist overall. Most voters don't know that candidates exist. Most voters don't know that there's an election coming until they see the ballot arrive in their mailbox. People, like a lot of the people who listen to Hacks & Wonks - we're not the normal ones. We've talked about this before on this show. Most people do not pay attention to the news, to candidates, to elections as much as we do. That's really important to remember when it comes to this, because that spending - the type of communication, whether it's mail, the digital video ads that you see, cable TV ads, banner ads, text messages. One, that all costs money. And so having money enables you to do more of that. And getting that in front of voters is generally the most meaningful exposure that they have to candidates - that's how they're learning about a lot of them. So if they are bombarded with information from one candidate, they hear predominantly about one candidate - usually their communications talk about how wonderful the candidate is, all the wonderful things that they're saying or planning to do, or the version of that that they're spinning in that communication - that makes a big difference. And that's how people get to know who the candidates are. If someone isn't doing much of that, they can't win. That's kind of just a structural Campaign 101 thing. So again, talked about this on the show before - if you know me, we've definitely talked about this. Sometimes when people are making sweeping pronouncements about - This narrative clearly won the day and this is what voters are saying - that may be the case in a race where there's robust communication coming from all sides, where the amount of money spent is a lot closer with each other on both sides. But in these races where one candidate is outspent by hundreds of thousands of dollars and the communication that that equates to, you rarely see those candidates win in any circumstance, regardless whether the one outspending is moderate, conservative, progressive, what kind of message they have - if it's good or bad, it can be really mediocre, it can be pretty bad. If you spend and communicate that much and so much more than your opponent, that in and of itself usually is enough to win, which is why people talk about the influence of money and the communication that that buys being corrosive or toxic or such an issue, because that in and of itself is oftentimes enough to move enough voters to win the campaign. [00:31:57] Melissa Santos: And we should mention - Seattle has a Democracy Voucher system and I think all of the candidates, I think all of the candidates use Democracy Vouchers. Crystal can correct me if I'm wrong. But certainly some of the business backed ones receiving outside money also were limited - this limits their spending as a campaign, right? So the outside money takes on an even bigger role when each of the candidates can spend - I mean, gosh, the limit is, it starts at like $90,000, then it goes up if you all raise a lot of money. But you're limited, you're not spending more than $150,000, or $125,000, or something as a campaign. I forget the exact limits, but somewhere like around there or even lower. And then you have - so think about that - the campaign spending, we say $115,000 and really can't spend more. And then someone else is spending almost $300,000, right? So - separately - so you're having these, sometimes it's gonna be the majority of money in a race because the third party committees are not limited in how much they can raise and how much they can spend. So that's how you can get millions and millions of dollars. This year, it wasn't millions, but it was more than a million backing a certain slate of candidates. And that gets a big impact when you have fairly low-cost campaigns and everyone's limited to that to a certain degree. [00:33:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. So I think that is the picture of Seattle races at this point in time. I think it is fair to say that even if a number of the candidates come back, I think it's an over-pronouncement to say that there was a broad shift in direction one way or another. But I think it's absolutely fair to say that no matter what the results end up being, they're not going to be celebrated by progressive candidates, that moderates are going to wind up happier than progressives are gonna wind up with these results - in the city of Seattle. But I wanna talk about elsewhere in the state because I think the broad picture in the state - even though Seattle's likely to dominate the media conversation - that the picture in the rest of the state was more positive for progressive people than it has been in quite some time, that we see trends moving further in a Democratic and progressive direction, particularly in purple and red cities in some of the many metro cities. So Seattle, the biggest city in the state there, moved and had their results. But looking at Tacoma, looking at Spokane - these are two cities that seem to have moved definitively to the left in the composition of their councils, in Spokane's case - including the mayoral race - and also with some ballot initiatives. So starting with Tacoma - what's happening in Tacoma? [00:34:47] Melissa Santos: Well, they do have a measure on the ballot that's about sort of renter protections, which actually looks like it might prevail. It was down a little bit on Election Night, but again, we don't have a lot of results from Pierce County yet, and it's super close right now. And given the way the ballots so far have sort of trended, even with this limited amount of ballots released, I suspect that this sort of measure to enact a lot more protections for renters against eviction - and I'm blanking a little on some of the details of it - but that's sort of a priority for more liberal voters and certainly policy makers. That looks like it may pass still, still uncertain. But you also - what I thought was interesting, you know - you had, I'm just making sure I did not, two days ago with my Tacoma results, but it looked like Jamika Scott was doing really well and likely to win her race in Tacoma. And Jamika has run for mayor before and she's sort of a known, you know, pretty serious policy person, I think, in Tacoma on advocating for ways of getting rid of systemic racism. I mean, getting rid of it would be difficult, obviously, but sort of ways to mitigate and kind of make lives better for people who traditionally have not benefited from our systems. And she was really active with, or I mean, leader of the Tacoma Action Collective, which has been a group that's been sort of protesting different institutions in Tacoma, as far as their treatment of Black people and treatment of people of color more broadly, I think, as well. But especially with police brutality. This is someone who has been kind of consistently saying, We need some change in our system. And she's being elected, and people like her message in Tacoma - enough of them - to really catapult her into office, it looks like. And so that's something that was interesting. We saw Olgy Diaz, who is an appointed councilmember - oh gosh, no, she won an election by now - has she-- [00:36:51] Crystal Fincher: No, she was appointed, and she's running for her first actual election now, following the appointment. And she just took the lead. She was narrowly down on Election Night. Again, the same caveats apply - that that Election Night is a partial tally. It is not a result. So on the initial tally, she was down just by a smidge. Now she is actually leading. And just with the way ballots trend, it looks like that lead will continue to grow. So you had the more progressive candidates, certainly, in both of those races prevail. I think interestingly, particularly in Jamika's race - Jamika was not endorsed by The News Tribune, which has been very consequential in endorsing folks. And despite that - and I think, as a credit to the work that Jamika has been doing in community for a while and the coalition that Jamika built - speaking directly to issues that are impacting so many people. And a lot of times speaking meaningfully to communities, as you said, that have not traditionally been served very well by government. And really inspiring a coalition to rally around her, to vote in support of her, to turn out for that. I think that was helpful. In the same way, the Tacoma for All tenant protection measure, which had a storied path to the ballot - the City of Tacoma was basically looking to put a competing, less impactful measure that did less than this initiative did - looked like that was motivated by some of the opposing forces who didn't wanna see this measure prevail. They ended up going to court over it and the process wound up being flawed. So this wound up being the only measure - the citizens' initiative - on the ballot. And that attracted a ton of outside spending - the realtors, a number of landlord organizations, developer organizations spent a lot - hundreds of thousands of dollars in opposition of this initiative. And for - one, to be as close as it is, given all that spending, is pretty miraculous and I think goes to show the depth of the problem and how extremely it is felt to have this much support. But it looks, based on the way that ballots traditionally trend, like it's on track to eventually take the lead and win. So this is not the only initiative - there are others across the state, including other tenant protection initiatives that are speaking to what's - the large percentage of renters in the state are facing the seeming imbalance between how landlords can technically treat tenants and how important it is to put more safeguards around. And I think generally it's not controversial to say that treating being a landlord like any other business is not good for society when we're talking about a basic need for people. And putting more protections around whether the timelines of being able to raise rent, how you can evict people, the kind of notice that's required, and assistance that may be required. If you are forcing someone to move out, the issue of economic evictions, or just putting someone out - not because they did anything, but just because they want to earn more money from that property - are things that people are willing to revisit across the state. And I think a lot of people can learn that lesson. The other thing, just - I, as someone who does this for a living, get really excited about - that we're seeing in Tacoma and play out elsewhere in the state, is that sometimes these initiatives come and I'm speaking as a consultant, so obviously this happens - it has a lot of good results sometimes - but this wasn't the result of consultants getting around, establishment party entities saying, We want to put an initiative on the ballot, what should it be? And deciding what that's going to be in rallying support. This was something that truly did come from the community. This was a response from people in the community to problems that people in the community were having. They got together, they made this happen, they knocked on doors and advocated for it. This was not funded by an outside source - anything like that. And I think those are wildly successful. I think we've also seen this with the Tukwila Raise the Wage initiative that was successful that the Transit Riders Union did - that kind of model, which oftentimes is a reaction to inaction sometimes by people in power, which is frustrating to a lot of people, not seeing the issues that they feel are most important being addressed. We're having another very viable path with municipal initiatives being initiated, not just by the same old players with money, but people in community learning how to advocate and move policy themselves. I think that's a really powerful thing. We're seeing that across the state and I think we're gonna see more of it. I think that's a positive thing. [00:42:24] Melissa Santos: Yeah, Bellingham looks poised to raise its minimum wage as a city. And they passed a measure that actually - they've been doing tenant protections as a city council, but I think that what they look on track to pass - I should say the minimum wage is leading, I should say. I guess I'd have to look just close at the results. But they're on track to pass something that requires landlords to help tenants relocate if they raise their rent by 8% or more. I mean, that's like a pretty - Bellingham is a fairly liberal city, a lot of college students from Western and all this. But that's a level, that's like sort of testing out new policies at a city level that I don't think we've - I don't think Seattle requires the landlords to do rent - well, anyway, it is kind of, I'm rambling now, but it is kind of some creative, interesting stuff happening in some of these cities that is very on the progressive edge. And Spokane's mayor looks like they're going to be replaced with a Democrat - Lisa Brown, who used to be the state Senate majority leader and has been working in Governor Inslee's administration as Commerce Director. And so that's a big change there too. And that is certain - I think that is a very clear contrast in candidates where you have some voters rebuking the sort of far-right ties potentially of the mayor. Crystal has probably been following this more than me, but there was a big controversy recently with the mayor of Spokane sort of engaging with Matt Shea, who is like - oh my God, I forget all of this. [00:43:56] Crystal Fincher: Domestic terrorist, an advocacy, an advocate of domestic terrorism, someone who was planning to partake himself. [00:44:02] Melissa Santos: Yeah - who, an investigation that was commissioned by the State Legislature when Matt Shea was a legislator found that he engaged in acts of domestic terrorism. The current mayor were kind of hobnobbing with that, became an issue in that race. And voters are saying, Let's try something different - it looks like in Spokane with a more Democratic mayor. So that is a different than maybe what progressives might be seeing in Seattle. You're seeing other cities have sort of different results. [00:44:33] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. This was one where there's - in Seattle, it's on the centrist to progressive spectrum. This was a clear Democrat versus far-right Republican who did hobnob with Matt Shea, who attended - Matt Shea, who now is well-known as someone who was found to engage in domestic terrorism, to support a variety of far-right, extremist, insurrectionist type beliefs. Nadine Woodward appeared at one of his events, hugged him, seemed to be hobnobbing with his people. And even after that was palling around with Moms for Liberty - which are notoriously anti-LGBTQ, particularly anti-trans - candidates pushing for policy, pushing for book bans in school districts across the nation, basically. So there was a clear contrast here. These issues were front and center, and voters made a clear choice here and made the decision to change direction. And there're also - three of the four Democratic councilmembers are leading in Spokane. And so this is definitely moving in a more Democratic direction in Spokane, which is a really big deal. We saw similar in Tacoma. We were looking at a lot of suburbs - I mean, looking at the Eastside, just in King County - so many of those races. Now, Bellevue may have a more progressive council than Seattle. We've seen in a number of these cities, whether it be Bothell or others, where they have moved on affordable housing policy, transit and transportation, mobility policy in ways that Seattle has not. They seem to be outdoing Seattle when it comes to some of the implementation of progressive policy that lots of people have been asking for in the city of Seattle. Other cities have been moving beyond them and it seems like, in those cities, voters have responded well. There has been vigorous opposition to these, we hear reporting about pushback to expanding zoning and the types of housing that's able to be built in all areas basically. But those debates were had and it looks like in most of these situations where there were competitive candidates fielded, they prevailed. So I think that Seattle certainly looks one way. A lot of the state has really, really positive signals and directions. And as someone who works in elections, the map for what's possible in Washington state, I think, has expanded even more with this cycle. And there are some absolute blueprints to look at moving beyond to other cities, whether it's kind of party supported, establishment supported, well-funded efforts or more grassroots initiatives - that there are multiple routes now to passing policy that helps more people and especially the people who need the help most. So we will see what that is. Also in some pretty high profile races, like the Snohomish County Sheriff, where we had someone who billed themselves as a constitutional sheriff, who had said that they didn't plan on enforcing all of the laws, especially when it comes to gun legislation that we've passed, some gun control legislation - just some real extreme views. And voters picked the more moderate sheriff candidate there - certainly not revolutionizing what the traditional practice of public safety is among sheriffs, but I think voters definitely want to put more boundaries in place, and are worried about accountability, and really focusing on what makes people safer from all perspectives, and wanting to make sure people's rights are respected. And not necessarily feeling like violating people's rights is just a necessary price we have to pay to be safer as a community - that allowing that perhaps is part of what is making us more dangerous, what is contributing to some of the challenges in recruiting police officers. And addressing some of those systemic issues or at least promises of doing that from people are more convincing to voters in areas that have been comfortable voting for Republicans even - that they aren't just willing to just say, Do whatever you say you need to do regardless of whether it violates rights, or doesn't jive with the law, or whatever that is. So interesting results across the state certainly. Now with that, I want to talk about a couple of other things that we saw, including news. We saw news, we saw coverage before - I think particularly from PubliCola, from Notes from the Emerald City - about one of the most well-known officers in the Seattle Police Department suing the department. Detective Cookie Bouldin - suing the department saying that she has witnessed and experienced racism, gender discrimination over several years with the department. What do you see with this? [00:50:19] Melissa Santos: I mean, I don't think it's necessarily a surprise that over time, especially over decades, a woman of color, Black women in particular, may not have felt at home in the Seattle Police Department. This is something I believe she's raised before, now it's just there's a formal lawsuit. It's something that - it's not a huge surprise, but I think that it is a blow to the department to have someone so recognized as a leader and over time, to make these claims. It's kind of like when - not to change the subject to another thing, but when Ben Danielson, who worked at Seattle Children's, is a very respected Black pediatrician - is also suing Seattle Children's for discrimination and racism - maybe not discrimination, but discriminatory policies. And this has a huge impact when you have someone that you've held up as sort of an example of your best, in some ways, as a department or as an agency or as a hospital. And who is sort of someone you've said - This is someone who shows how we are including communities, who has been working on these issues. And then they say - Actually, there's been a lot of problems and there's been discrimination and racism that I've encountered in unacceptable ways. It's a huge blow to the police department, Seattle Children's. These are things that really are not good for the - not just the image of the police department, but because - they point to real problems. I'm not saying this is just an optics issue or something, but it signals that maybe what you've been saying publicly isn't what's happening internally, and it isn't what's happening privately, or how people are experiencing your actual policies and your actual operation. So that's not great. And I know for the police department - and I know that Chief Adrian Diaz has been really vocal about stamping out racism in the department. I mean, it's something he talks about a lot. But this indicates that there's been problems for a long time, at least in the minds of one of their really esteemed long-time officers in the Seattle Police Department. And I don't know that one chief talking about stamping out racism and trying to talk about culture change can - I don't know that the boat shifts that fast, right? So if you're pointing to deeper issues that have been - for decades, someone who's been there for decades, or was there for decades - gosh, I mean, it kind of, it raises questions about how much is still persisting of this and then how quickly it can change if it still is persisting. [00:53:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I mean, I think lots of people aren't surprised to hear that it is persisting, given a number of the things that we've seen coming out - whether it's the video of the SPOG Vice-President mocking the value of the life of a pedestrian that was killed, Jaahnavi Kandula, that was killed by a police officer speeding without lights and sirens on on the way to a call, whether it's the tombstone that they saw, whether it's just a number of the incidents that have resulted in complaints against several officers, consistently against a consistent group of officers, it seems, in several situations. And it's particularly notable just because Detective Cookie, as she's known by so many, has really been such a PR boon for the department, really is a face of the department. When people talk about community policing, when they talk about building relationships with community, when they talk about - Hey, there should be officers that really care, really get to know people, look out for people - a lot of them are directly thinking about Cookie Bouldin. They're directly thinking about things that they've seen her do in community. There's a park named after her. She's known for almost mentoring people, working, getting kids involved with chess - really someone who, I think, regardless of where you stand on the institution of policing where people would say, even with people that disagree, but if you're like Detective Cookie - She's okay, I've seen her help, I've seen her care. Certainly what I think a lot of people would want police to aspire to be, would want the role to aspire to be in a best case scenario. And for her to say - Yeah, well, this institution certainly, in Seattle, is one that is racist, is discriminatory, and has harmed people like me, people who it's held up as paragons and examples of what the job really is and how it can be done in the community - is troubling. We've seen this happen several times before in other departments - not with, I think, officers as publicly visible and known as Detective Cookie. But certainly a lot of discrimination suits - particularly from Black officers, other officers of color - saying that there have been systemic issues that they have been the victim of. Or even off-duty incidents where people have not recognized that they were officers and just saw a person of color and treated them in a different way than they were supposed to. So we'll see how this turns out, but certainly a stain, another stain on the department. I don't think anyone can say this is coming - this is just grievance, or sour grapes, or someone who just hates the institution of policing and is using anything to just tear down police, or who isn't supportive of policing overall. This is someone who has kind of built their life and they're living on that, is known for doing that and seemingly cared about that, yet went through all this. And maybe because they cared, endured through all of it - don't know the details there, but it is challenging. And I think one of the things that came out of the debates and the campaigns, the conversations that people had is really a reckoning with - maybe this is a big problem for recruiting. Maybe it's not the money that has been thrown at them that we've tried to use, that now even police officers are saying this is not a problem about money. People are talking about - it's not an attractive job. Maybe is it actually what's happening within departments the part that's not attractive and not external reaction to it. I hope that whoever winds up being elected on the council contends with this in a serious way. I think no matter what the view is on police, and I think there's a range of them within the candidates who are currently in the lead and even those who are not. But I do think this needs to be taken seriously. And I think even if you look at polling of Seattle residents - their views on public safety and policing are more nuanced than some of the like flat, simple - either you back the blue, you support cops, or you don't. Think people are, I think it's fair to say that at least most voters are generally supportive of having police respond when they call 911, but they want that to be an effective response. They want it to be a constitutional response that does keep everybody safe, and respect everybody, and build trust in the community. And we're just seeing too many things that are not that. And with that, I think that we have come to a close today. Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, November 10th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks, and this past week's guest co-host, is the incredible Dr. Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was Seattle Axios reporter, Melissa Santos, who does a wonderful job reporting on all things political and beyond. You can find Melissa on Twitter @MelissaSantos1. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can find me on all platforms, basically, as @finchfrii - that's two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, 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, 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.

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How We Approached Interviewing Seattle City Council Candidates with Crystal Fincher and Shannon Cheng

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 20, 2023 60:35

Over the last six weeks, Hacks & Wonks presented our series of interviews with most of the Seattle City Council candidates! (We did have one cancel, one decline, and one not respond to our invitation…) Now, join Crystal and Shannon behind-the-scenes of Hacks & Wonks for a bonus (not-so) short episode where they discuss how questions got chosen and written, the why behind those kludgy SPOG contract questions, thoughts and observations after all the interviews, and their approach to editing. And also, a bit of venting. 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 Shannon Cheng at @drbestturtle. 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 “Seattle City Council District 1 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks “Tanya Woo, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 2” from Hacks & Wonks “Tammy Morales, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 2” from Hacks & Wonks “Seattle City Council District 2 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks “Joy Hollingsworth, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 3” from Hacks & Wonks “Alex Hudson, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 3” from Hacks & Wonks “Seattle City Council District 3 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks “Maritza Rivera, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 4” from Hacks & Wonks “Ron Davis, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 4” from Hacks & Wonks “Seattle City Council District 4 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks “ChrisTiana ObeySumner, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 5” from Hacks & Wonks “Seattle City Council District 5 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks “Pete Hanning, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 6” from Hacks & Wonks “Seattle City Council District 6 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks “Andrew Lewis, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 7” from Hacks & Wonks “Seattle City Council District 7 Lightning Round” from Hacks & Wonks 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, this is a little bonus short - I don't know, we'll wind up seeing how long this turns out to be. I am joined here with someone who you don't hear from on the mic often, but every time we do, it's wonderful. She is the person who does so much work for the podcast - this is a team effort. I'm here with Dr. Shannon Cheng. Hey, Shannon. [00:01:14] Shannon Cheng: Hey, Crystal! [00:01:16] Crystal Fincher: So Dr. Shannon Cheng - who is incredible, who works with me, who is a subject matter expert on public safety, is the guru for knowledge about like the SPOG contract, SPMA contract, that kind of stuff. She really understands and has the ability to actually explain it and share it in really accessible ways. But I just want to back up and talk about what you do and how you became an expert. What do you do, Shannon? [00:01:44] Shannon Cheng: So I find myself involved in local policy and politics kind of by accident. I mean, you referenced that I'm a doctor - my doctorate is in Space Propulsion, I'm an aerospace engineer by training. And I guess if I try to think about the throughline of how I've operated in life is that I kind of don't want to end up doing things that aren't gonna let me go to sleep at night. So what happened with me with aerospace is - at one point - understanding that basically staying involved in that industry was contributing to weapons of destruction and war. And I just couldn't bring myself to do that. So through volunteering and activism, I guess that's how I met up with Crystal and got connected and have been doing a lot of things. I work on People Power Washington, which is focused on equitable public safety and policing across Washington state. We've worked on the Seattle, King County and State Legislature levels. We work on things ranging from budget advocacy to monitoring these difficult to understand police guild contracts and understanding how those get in the way of accountability, trying to work to pass charter amendments at the county level that would support better public safety and-- [00:02:59] Crystal Fincher: Shannon was instrumental in the passage of that 2020 County Charter Amendment to reform public safety. Instrumental. [00:03:07] Shannon Cheng: And yeah, then recently I was invited to join the Washington Coalition for Police Accountability. And so that's been really a wonderful experience to just engage with families who have been directly impacted by police violence and brutality, and trying to work to have that not happen to anybody else ever again. So that's kind of me. [00:03:32] Crystal Fincher: That is. Except you are the ultimate fun fact person. Like you have so many fun facts. A prior student of yours is currently on the Space Station right now. [00:03:42] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, I mean - he was up there for a six month stint. He may have come back down by now, but - I think the launch was in February - and when they were showing the pictures, I was like, Wait, I taught that guy Dynamics. [00:03:58] Crystal Fincher: You have a picture of you like in zero gravity working on a thing. You are an orienteering champion, which is a whole thing. [00:04:07] Shannon Cheng: Yes. It is a sport that is not super popular in this country - it's widely popular in Europe, in Australia, New Zealand, those areas. But yes, you could say I am an orienteering champion of sorts-- [00:04:20] Crystal Fincher: You are literally an orienteering champion. [00:04:24] Shannon Cheng: --thanks to participation and attendance. [00:04:27] Crystal Fincher: And you being great. It's not like there were no competitors. Yeah, there are so many fun facts about Shannon - just awesome things that pop up here and there. But Shannon is talented at everything basically, and is just one of the best human beings I know. And an instrumental part of Hacks & Wonks. So that's why we're both here talking to you right now. So we wanted to have this conversation to talk about just what we were thinking when we were putting together questions for the Seattle City Council candidate interviews. And we meet and kind of do a whole thing - have an approach anytime we do series of candidate interviews - this is no exception. But especially with all of them and this conversation, there's been a lot of tangential conversation brought up - a lot on social media, a lot in the community. And some of these questions have become even more relevant in the past couple of weeks, particularly the ones revolving around policing in the city of Seattle and the new contract with the Seattle Police Officers Guild that is in the process of being negotiated. And so I guess starting out - when we start thinking about how we're going to do candidate interviews, what do we usually talk about? How do we usually approach that? [00:05:51] Shannon Cheng: I think we're - I know you are always wanting to kind of understand how would a candidate actually vote on issues that matter to people in this city? Because ultimately people can say things and have platitudes, but it really comes down to when there's a hard vote, which way are they gonna go? So I think, especially for the lightning round, a lot of our questions were centered around trying to ask these questions - and getting a Yes, No, or seeing if there was a waffle from these candidates - just to better understand how they think about these things and when push comes to shove, which way they would lean. [00:06:23] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I think that is my approach. And it is an approach that is the result of years of working in politics, years of seeing how candidates process information throughout a campaign, how they conduct themselves just in their general lives, and how that translates to policy, and whether they govern in a way that's consistent with how they campaigned. And certainly one thing that is a throughline is - especially when it comes to tough votes - everybody will say, I believe the children are the future. Everybody will say - yes, they wanna address root causes of stuff, right? But as we see, like we've seen recently in this city, when it comes to issues of public safety or homelessness, people have all these value statements - but it comes down to a vote. It comes down to - Are you going to fund something or are you not? Are you going to really put into place the necessary elements to successfully implement what you're going to say or not? Are you going to just fund what you said - Oh, we need to do more than that. - but if you're only like voting to fund that, that's a different thing. So we tend to ask more specific questions than sometimes we hear elsewhere - we're not the only people who ask specific questions, but I definitely try to do that. And we try to figure out what votes are likely to be coming up, where are the big fault lines, especially for the upcoming year, going to be? What does it look like different interests are pushing for and where do they stand on that? Because it's gonna be an issue. There's going to be pressure put on them to vote certain ways. And if they can't stand up strongly for what they believe and be conclusive about what they're gonna say, that doesn't have a good track record of resulting in the kind of policy that people expect in that direction - if they're soft on that. So that's part of what we do. And I've interviewed people from different philosophical orientations, political orientations. And sometimes there are people who I think or suspect I'm gonna agree with, who are soft on things I don't expect. People who I don't expect to agree with, who - I hear their answers on some things - I'm like, Okay, that was thoughtful and informed. And I certainly have my opinions - you know that - we talk about my opinions on the show. But I really do hope - my goal isn't to super interrogate and like make all the points - it's really to get what they think on the record, out in the open. And really help people to make an informed decision based on what the candidates are saying, kind of without the - with the exception of the lightning round - without the time limit on - Okay, you got to get your answer out in 30 seconds or 1 minute. There's some nuance - sometimes it's more than that - or an issue is complex and we need to talk about it. [00:09:01] Shannon Cheng: And I would just also add that we have a lot of first time candidates this year, especially with open seats. And so it's also understandable that maybe a candidate isn't well-versed in every single issue area that is going to come up. And so I think having this robust set of questions also can help educate - both them and the voters - what is coming up. And maybe if they feel a little weak, or they get a question and they don't understand what it's even about, that's a signal of - Hey, this is kind of important. Maybe you need to look into that, and understand what's going on, and figure out where you stand on it. [00:09:34] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And I - we'll have candidates be like, Whoa, I hadn't thought about that before, I need to learn more about that. And I appreciate that - when someone - taking office, we can talk about all of these issues. But there will always be issues or events that happen, that pop up that you don't talk about while on the campaign. And so a candidate's always going to have to get up to speed on something new. Electeds have to get up to speed on new things all the time. And so how do they approach that not knowing - knowing that they don't know something - How do they approach that? Who are the people they turn to to help learn? What sources of information are they learning from? How do they process information? Those are all things that are useful to hear and to know. And so even if they encounter something that - okay, maybe they didn't think about, you have a perspective about how they process information. So I guess in how we approach writing questions, what is the process for that? Okay, Shannon right now is like, Okay, so Crystal is like - ties herself into knots and then tries to avoid writing the questions. And then it's - maybe we don't want to do interviews at all. And oh my gosh - they're too many, they're too few. It's a little bit of a tortured process sometimes, but you help bring some clarity and order to that whole process. [00:10:55] Shannon Cheng: I mean, you've done candidate forums - so we look at what you've done for candidate forums in the past. And then my issue area - that I work on in my spare time - is public safety and policing, and so I had the opportunity to put candidate questionnaire questions about that topic in as possible questions to ask. So - I don't know-- [both laughing] [00:11:19] Crystal Fincher: Well, with that. [00:11:20] Shannon Cheng: It's very last minute. [both laughing] [00:11:22] Crystal Fincher: It's so, yeah. [00:11:23] Shannon Cheng: But I don't know that people need to know that. [both laughing] We'll edit that part out. [00:11:28] Crystal Fincher: Well, it is - we do this in between our regular work. I'm a political consultant. Shannon works with me. We're busy doing that for most of the day on most days, and we squeeze this podcast in between them - with lots of coordination and research and preparation done by Shannon, which I sincerely appreciate. But it is a process and we're trying to figure out what makes sense to ask. We do still have time limits-ish - we stretch it sometimes. But I do - maybe we should start off talking about some of these questions about policing in the contract because some of these issues have come up lately. Shaun Scott, who is a great follow on Twitter - I don't know if he's elsewhere, but on Twitter, certainly - he was talking about, Hey, the city passed an ordinance. And he's absolutely right - City passed an ordinance giving the city council and OPA? - I think, one of the entities - the city council subpoena power over SPD and other entities, but like including SPD. And they did pass an ordinance that did that. Unfortunately, the SPOG contract of 2018 superseded that. Basically, it had clauses that contradicted and said, No, we're not gonna do that. And then another clause that says, And if City law says that we need to do that, that doesn't matter, this contract is going to replace or supersede City law in that. So subpoena power was essentially taken away. A number of accountability measures were taken away. So the questions that we asked were more specific than we usually ask. It wasn't like - oh, everybody deals with this and talks about it all the time. It was more - these are some areas in the SPOG contract that might be opaque or obscure that haven't been widely publicly discussed, but that are very important in dealing with issues like we're seeing now in the news. How did you put together those questions, and why are those specific ones important? [00:13:30] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, so I think it's important to first understand that officer discipline is considered a working condition under state labor law, and that's why these union contracts are kind of the last stop for determining how things happen. So as you said, the City has passed, I think, multiple ordinances to try to give subpoena power to our accountability bodies - the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General. But the thing is that because we're governing under state law, unless that officer discipline-related provision gets negotiated into a contract that is accepted by the police unions, then it's not gonna be in effect. And so it's confusing, right? We see this all the time that there's these announcements made - Hey, like huge step forward in accountability. We managed to pass a law that says we have subpoena power. - but then what's left out is the asterisk that is, Well, once it gets negotiated with the union. And so I think that's the thing that gets lost a lot. And so I see that a lot. And so when we came up with our questions - literally it's from observing what the process has been, and then going actually through the contract line-by-line and trying to understand - okay, where are these provisions that kind of weaken the glorious accountability system that everybody likes to point to and pretend that we have. So knowing that going through labor contracts is not everybody's favorite thing, that's why we try to boil it down into - Okay, here's a few especially egregious things that seem like baseline we should try to get in the next contract - which is why talking to electeds about it is important because they are the ones who are gonna hold the power in terms of getting what we want in the next contract. So that's the process that we came up with our questions. [00:15:23] Crystal Fincher: So, the question that we asked candidates in the lightning round was - Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't give the Office of Police Accountability, known as OPA, and the Office of the Inspector General, known as OIG, subpoena power? Why is subpoena power important and what difference could it make? [00:15:41] Shannon Cheng: Subpoena power is important if you're trying to do an investigation and the information you think is necessary to understand what's happening for your investigation isn't available, or if people involved aren't cooperating and giving you that information. So at that point, a subpoena allows you to basically demand that that information is shared with you. In the 2017 Accountability Ordinance that was passed, it was explicitly laid out that the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General would have subpoena power. However, in the 2018 SPOG contract - I'll just read directly from the contract - they list those two sections and then they have an addendum that says, "The City agrees that these sections of the Ordinance will not be implemented at this time with regard to bargaining unit employees and their family members, and third party subpoenas seeking personal records of such employees and their family members." So basically, the contract said - there's no subpoena power for these two entities. [00:16:40] Crystal Fincher: And yeah, I mean, we've heard and seen in several stories - the Seattle Police Department did not cooperate with the investigation. They can just say, currently - No, we're not gonna give that to you. No, we're not gonna share that. We decline to do that. And in issues - right now, there's an international conversation about both the killing of Jaahnavi Kandula and its aftermath with an officer mocking her killing. And the record of the police officer who was doing that, the records of officers overall. And we still don't know everything that happened with the East Precinct and it's leaving, we don't know what happened with CHOP - like those kinds of things - we still don't have answers because we can't demand them. We can't compel them. And this does. Not that that's gonna solve everything, but it is a tool of accountability. And at minimum, if you can't even get information about what happened, how are you gonna attach any kind of accountability to that? So it really is a very primary - we have to at least understand what happened, we have to be able to get that information. So that is what went behind that question. Another question we asked - Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't remove limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian? What is this sworn versus civilian issue about, and why is it important? [00:17:57] Shannon Cheng: So the Office of Police Accountability has investigators - they're actually embedded in the Seattle Police Department - and a lot of their investigators are actually sworn officers. And so some people might think, Well, doesn't that seem kind of problematic? Because you would end up in this scenario where you have cops investigating other cops. Also, the cops that come into the OPA as these sworn investigators - my understanding is they kind of rotate in and out - so a cop going in could expect to then be back out at some point. And that would lead one to think, Well, maybe they wouldn't want to be as thorough in their investigations. So what the civilian aspect was - was that I think people would trust more to have a civilian who is not a sworn officer doing these investigations. And in that original 2017 Police Accountability Ordinance, there was provision made that there could be civilian investigators on this team within the OPA. However, again, that 2018 SPOG contract specifically said - and here, I'll again read from the contract - "The parties agree as follows: Unless otherwise agreed, at any time after the date of signing, the City may replace up to two (2) sworn investigator positions with up to two (2) civilian investigators." So they've basically limited the OPA to only have at any time two civilian investigators, and then that contract goes on to say, "Any case that reasonably could lead to termination will have a sworn investigator assigned to the case." So not only have they limited the number of civilian investigators, they also say those civilian investigators can't work on any cases that would lead to any kind of discipline that is on the harsher side of things. So that's why we asked that question. [00:19:44] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and with these, it is important to understand - different jurisdictions have different things that they can do, right? They all have their own levers that they can push and pull. Some things you can only do at the county level, some things you can only do at the city level - in a variety of ways. And so we do try and focus in our questions also on what can they do in their capacity as a city councilmember. And because they do have the power to approve or reject this contract, putting - understanding what their conditions for doing so would be, getting them on the record about that is important 'cause this impacts how the police operate within the city and with residents. The next question we asked - Do you oppose a SPOG contract that impedes the ability of the City to move police funding to public safety alternatives? Why was this a question? [00:20:34] Shannon Cheng: This is a question because - as we all know, the City has been trying for a very long time to stand up a alternative crisis response that may or may not involve the police. I think a big hurdle to that being stood up is this concern that I've heard - that if the City was to stand something up that didn't involve the police or the police didn't agree with, that they could file an Unfair Labor Practice with the state and basically say - this is some violation of their contract, that kind of work that had been under the purview of the police department was now being taken away from them and given to somebody else. So it's - I don't know that there's wording explicitly in the contract that says that, but it would be the union invoking the contract to say that the City was taking work away from them, basically, that they wanted to keep. [00:21:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and it's a big major issue. And right now we're kind of at an impasse - alternative responses and funding non-police public safety responses and interventions is one of the most popular things supported by Seattle residents right now. They vote for candidates who say they're gonna support that. Polling shows that north of 70% across the board, it's been over 80% in some polls. When asked explicitly - hey, if your tax dollars are gonna be spent, what do you most want it to be spent on? Highest thing is standing up alternatives to policing to address things like behavioral health crises. We all see that this is so desperately needed and that - it used to be five years ago, kind of pre-2016, pre-George Floyd, when police used to have no problem. They said all the time - we aren't social workers, we don't have the tools to handle this other stuff, we wanna do our core jobs and not handle all these other things that we don't really have the tools for. And it seems like because of fear of losing funding, losing headcount, whatever, that stopped and they started clinging to everything that they could have. So like we ask a question - Do you think parking should be housed within SPD? Lots of cities are having conversations, especially since police are saying that they're short-staffed to say - Okay, how can we more effectively deploy police officers and take things off of their plate that shouldn't be on there in the first place, that are not core to what a sworn officer - a sworn armed officer - is needed for. But the challenge is that that is coming up against, as you described, those feelings that - Well, that's something that we, you know, that was in our sphere of responsibility, funding is attached to it, headcount is attached to it. And if we lose that, maybe that's gonna be a slippery slope to losing other things. So like in the City of Seattle, the city council has actually funded alternative police responses. They have decided they wanna move forward with that, they've allocated money for that. And once that happens, it's basically up to the executive - currently Bruce Harrell, before with Jenny Durkan - to use that funding and implement the thing. Well, it's kind of stuck there. The money isn't being used. And for a while, especially with Monisha Harrell, when she was with the city, they talked about, Okay, well, we wanna do all that, we're just gonna do it with an internal department of public safety that will also house civilian responses. And I think part of standing that up as an internal department was to address the concern of the issue of headcount. And if the headcount decreases, even if it's just parking officials who do not need a gun to enforce parking, that - hey, let's not call that like a regular response, let's not use sworn headcount to do that, we can deploy that more effectively. But that is a problem that is stalled. And so the question really is - will they ensure that in the contract that is currently being negotiated, the contract that the council will be voting on, can they eliminate that as an issue? And obviously this has to be negotiated by both sides, but is there something they can come to that enables the City to move forward with what the residents are demanding and what leaders have committed to do? We've gotta find a way to have the contract not impede the progress that the city is repeatedly begging to make and promising to make. So that's what went into that question. Another question we asked - Do you support eliminating in-uniform off-duty work by SPD officers? Why is this an issue? [00:24:53] Shannon Cheng: So the current contract that we're under explicitly gives SPD officers the right to work off-duty. And this is in-uniform, so one factor in this is that this is basically allowing them to use public resources, meaning their uniform - and they retain their police powers while they're working for not us, not the public that's paying them, but for private clients who they work for. So, a lot of these things are things like security or traffic direction, and they get paid a lot of money for these jobs - sometimes I think even more than they make as an officer. And so one of our concerns is that, especially in a time when it's short-staffed, then allowing in-uniform off-duty work - it creates confusion with the public, for one thing, when you see a police officer not working in their official capacity as a police officer, but dressed as one and maintaining all the same powers that they do - it just doesn't have clear boundaries between their professional work and then their side job. And then with the short staffing, these added hours that they're doing on top of, in theory, their full workload at SPD, plus potential overtime that they're gonna have to do - this is just gonna lead even more to officer fatigue. And we can see how that could lead to more of the poor decision-making or judgment calls, and has detrimental consequences for all of us in the public. And often - with their history of biased policing - would affect certain populations more than others. So that was why we asked this question. [00:26:29] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and with these questions overall, some people are like - Well, why are these all like accountability questions? Are there any other things? Like, do you just hate cops? And to me, hating cops is not the issue, right? This is about public safety for everyone in the city and in the region. And every candidate who's run - I collect and keep political mail, advertising, blah, blah, blah - and what is really astounding is kind of the revisionist history of members of the council who are known for being moderate or conservative. Everybody's like - Well, you know, they elected me to be moderate and conservative. Or like people covering them - They elected someone. But when you look at what they said when they were running, when you look at their mail and what they communicated to voters - to a person - they talked about the importance of police accountability and reform. And, you know, some people wanna go further than others, but they all promised that. And so, if that wasn't just BS - anyone who's serious about that, and even if you're working towards community-centered, different things - anyone who is serious about what we're currently doing, and this contract is currently being negotiated, we really do have to contend with these things. And if we aren't, then we're not really serious about doing anything about accountability, let alone re-imagining what public safety can actually be. So no matter what someone's ideological position is on the council, they should be engaging with this. This is in their sphere of responsibility. They're gonna have to vote on this contract. And so we need to know - we should know, and we should be talking about - what these parameters are. It's very important and consequential, and can determine whether we wind up in similar situations to now - where we have an officer where basically the globe has said, That's disgusting and should be unacceptable. Why is this officer still there? And we have City electeds basically going - Oh, there's nothing we can really do about it. The contract, you know, like, can't really fire them. There's no precedent. - and like, those are all legal issues because of the contract. But they approved this contract - Bruce Harrell approved the contract that we currently have. He's not the only one - I think Debora Juarez was on the council at that point in time. Lorena González used to be, and said she regretted the vote. Like, this was consequential. We talked about this at the time - not many people were listening in the wider community. But like, this is not a surprise that we're seeing problems because of the overriding of accountability measures passed by the City and supported by people in the city. So that's why we asked those public safety questions. We asked a bunch of questions in the lightning round about how people vote. Why do you think these were good questions to include? [00:29:06] Shannon Cheng: I think they're good because this is an instance where they had to sit down with their pen in hand and make a choice - bubble choice A or bubble choice B. And so in this process of trying to figure out how these candidates think and where they stand on things, asking them about times where they actually did have to make a decision and knowing what decision they made, I think that's why we asked those. [00:29:30] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. And it's fair to ask. And it gives you insight into how they process information when it does come time to make a choice on one or the other, even if they think - maybe they don't think either choice is perfect, but they do need to make a choice and what they made is informative. In these, you know, also informing on different issues, where they stand there. We asked also issues about housing. We asked them if they rent or own - and that's an important question to ask, it's an important thing to know. And it's wild that we don't talk about that more because that is one of the biggest dividing lines in Seattle politics. It's one of the biggest dividing lines in voters. When you look at any results map of an election, you basically see the results of homeowners versus renters, higher income, higher net worth people versus lower income, lower net worth people. That is a fault line in Seattle politics. And looking at how votes happen, we see people voting aligned with their housing status a lot. It's something that matters, that is predictive pretty regularly. And so we wanted to ask that. We wanted to understand if they rented, if they own, and if they're a landlord. Some candidates were, some candidates were not. And then we face questions - the council actually passed an ordinance that was vetoed by Mayor Harrell, just about some more accountability for landlords and more sharing of information to try and better poise the City to address the housing affordability crisis. And so that's why we asked those. We asked the question about allowing police in schools because that has been talked about in some meetings. It looks like there are some influential interests that want to make that happen and encourage that. I don't think that's wide-ranging, but there were a couple of powerful and well-placed people who - that was coming from their camps - and so we thought it was important to get people on record about that. We asked about trans and non-binary students - making sure they could play on sports teams that fit with their gender identities and using public bathrooms and public facilities - and got a range of answers on this one. Why did you feel this was so important to ask? [00:31:37] Shannon Cheng: I think this is a community that's been under attack just nationwide, at all levels. And so it's important to know - I think Seattle touts itself as a progressive, inclusive, welcoming city - and we want to make sure the people who are leading us actually are. [00:31:55] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And respecting people's humanity without condition, without making them less than. And unfortunately, the sports issue is propaganda. It's propaganda. I understand why the propaganda campaign caught on - it's using very cynical tactics - but we do have to stand up and say, That's propaganda. We can't be like - Okay, yeah, trans people, we accept everybody - live, love, and light - all that kind of stuff. And then say, Yeah, but if your kid wants to play on a sports team - which is a very important formative part of growing up for many people, if they choose to do that, and also not just sports, just any kind of activities attached to school, which is something that so many people partake in - and say, Yeah, but not that. Like that is an issue of just fundamental humanity and inclusion - and so we should be explicit about where people stand, and we should talk about that, and we should force people to be accountable for where they stand on that. And make sure people know - before they vote - whether people plan on including every member of this community in our community. We asked about the economy, the JumpStart Tax - which there's been lots of talk from different interests about, from some Chamber interests saying, Maybe we need to divert some of that to help restart, relaunch downtown's economy. There are other people saying, Hey, this might be something that we need to increase to help with the upcoming budget deficit. And some people who just disagree with it overall, and think that we - that that's placing a burden on business, and that's gonna be bad for residents - and usually coming from the same people who say the sky is falling every time that there is a minimum wage increase, and then more people move here and are happier than they are in other places, so it seems like we would stop listening to people who continue to predict that and are wrong, but we don't do that. But wanted to get people on record for where they stand on that, because - in Seattle politics, interests are tied to taxes - that that's where a lot of corporate interests are really concerned about. And they will use other issues as wedge issues in messaging, but their primary concerns are about taxation and the maintenance of their capital. That's really what's driving a lot of this. And so the JumpStart is going to be at the heart of that interest and conversation. [00:34:09] Shannon Cheng: We hear businesses - obviously they don't wanna pay more taxes, but at the same time, we also hear businesses complaining that they're not getting the services that they expect the City to deliver to them. And so I think it's pretty telling that - you don't wanna pay for it, but you wanna get it. [00:34:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and we also asked about how candidates can better support small business. I do think there's a conflation of gigantic multi-trillion dollar mega-corp interests and - in the business community - and a small mom-pop shop, local business who is - hired a couple of people from the neighborhood and is trying to make it. Both businesses, both part of the business community - but usually very different interests and needs. And we have a lot of small businesses who are struggling. Small business - business is important to the economy across the board, right? But we need it not to be extractive. We need not to say, Oh, it's so important. So like Boeing, we're gonna give you more money than we've ever given anyone before with no accountability. We did this because Boeing is gonna create jobs and we need lots of jobs. But then we don't get a refund when Boeing lays people off and leaves town, right - that's a problem. And we have trillion dollar corporations in the city of Seattle who frankly use small business owners to say - Oh, please, we're suffering and we need help, and we shouldn't pay any taxes. When most residents, according to polling and election results, feel that businesses like - mega corporations are not paying their fair share. There is a conversation to be had - some kind of income inequality and differences in access and challenges that small businesses are facing compared to large businesses. It's kind of similar to what lower income people are facing in comparison to larger income people. Small businesses are having problems affording rent - that's a really, really, really big issue - they are suffering from predatory rent increases. Also, that's putting people out of business. But there's a lot to be discussed. And if you talk to business owners - we've done shows with different business interests - and their needs are broad and varied and they should be listened to, they are part of the community. But we do need to talk about them as part of the community and not as this super entity or something like that. So that's what those questions were looking to get at. And then just some perspective stuff - asking if they're happy with Seattle's waterfront, asking about return to work mandates - just helping to further get inside their minds, how they think, what their perspective is, where they're coming from, and who and what they may be sympathetic to as interests and as bills - when that comes up. Transportation and transit related questions - we have absolutely seen a difference in engagement and thoughtfulness, willingness to fund and include provisions that are helpful for pedestrians and people on transit, people riding bikes from leaders who actually use them. And we suffer when leaders are responsible for transit policy who don't use and ride transit - all sorts of distorted and weird policy and perspectives come out when we have people governing systems that they don't themselves engage with. And so we asked those questions to try and see - are you actually using the system? Because we hear different things from people who do take them versus things that don't. And just, that's a useful thing to know. Similarly, Pike Place car traffic is something that we talk about - just another one of those perspective things in there. We obviously asked about the upcoming revenue shortfall in the City of Seattle for $224 million. Everyone is going to have to contend with that. Every candidate on the campaign trail, every candidate that we interviewed has talked about wanting to implement new things that are going to require additional revenue, that are going to require resources. And we're moving into - Okay, we're going to have fewer resources and either we're gonna need to raise revenue or make cuts. And so it's just not a serious position to be in to say we should be doing all of these other things - these new things that require revenue - when there's going to be less of it. And everyone is kind of dodgy usually when it comes to cutting things, but they're going to need - odds are it's gonna be a combination of cuts and attempting to pursue new revenue. If someone is saying they aren't gonna pursue that, then we need to view their other plans that do require revenue differently. If someone is saying, I'm gonna go after revenue hard - that's great, but we should also know if there are any cuts that they think they may need to do. Revenue may take a while to come in. We will probably need to do some trimming in the meantime - just because the City's mandated to have a balanced budget. And so that's something real that they're gonna have to contend with. And those are really hard decisions. And you can see how hard they are by how unwilling or unable candidates are to answer how they're gonna prioritize cutting, where they think they should come from. If revenue doesn't pass or come through, what does that mean? How are you gonna approach that? And we do need to press on those tough decisions 'cause those are gonna be really consequential things. And I think sometimes candidates - we've talked about this on this show before - think that just like the hard part is running, and then you get elected, and then you can exhale. Running for office is the easy part - it only gets harder - and the spotlight on you gets hotter and brighter when you actually do have to make a decision that's consequential for the people in the city. And so we should poke and prod about that and try to get as specific as we can. We don't always do perfectly with that - I'm reflecting on the answers that we got. There were so many vague answers - and try and poke and prod - and some people just don't wanna answer specifically, or just are unable to answer specifically. But hopefully, as you said before, that is an indication that they should think about that seriously. And they're gonna need a game plan 'cause it's coming and they're going to have to deal with that. And it's going to be bad if they just start engaging with that after they take office and have to really make those decisions and move forward with it. [00:40:16] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, I mean - I feel like in response to that question in particular, we heard a lot of answers to the effect of - Well, we need to look at the existing budget and look at where there are inefficiencies and you know, blah, blah, blah. And I am curious how many of those candidates - we have an entire City Budget staff, right? - who works on that kind of stuff and auditing. It's not like there aren't people looking at that. I just wonder how much have those candidates engaged with what is already out there? Have they found things that have been already identified? Would that even be in their process of trying to figure out how to reallocate resources, if that's the way they're going to go? [00:40:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And with these - I think it's important - obviously I have my own perspective, and I think it's important to ask questions and to frame them appropriately for the moment and for what's happening. And when I ask a question, I do - with these - try to give people a fair shot to respond, to give whatever their response is, right? I'm not going to cut them off in their response. I want voters to be able to hear what they think - even if I disagree with what they think, they get to hear what they think. But one observation I do have certainly, and formed definitely from working with candidates over the years, is that - we do hear, we heard a lot, we heard more than I was comfortable with, like, Oh, we do need to take a look at that. We need to start to understand where this stuff is. We need to ask tough questions. Like, you decided to run for office. This information has been out there, it's publicly available. There's a ton of information and resources just on the City website itself to walk you through the budget - each budget process - and hearings and a ton of Information. That's not usually where the issue is. The issue is when it's time to make a decision about what to cut, people are hesitant to do that. They're afraid of making people mad. And so we have these situations where candidates either don't feel like they need to come with a game plan, but we are in multiple crises. We need people who are saying - Okay, I have talked to community, I have done homework on what's happening, and this is my plan for what I think will fix it. We need people coming with solutions. We need people coming for proposals. That's the job. The job isn't to ponder and examine and to have endless meetings, right? That's part of the problem in Seattle and many places is that they want to task force something to death and workgroup it and blah, blah, blah. And then we end up in the same place that we were. I do hope that they get some more concrete solutions and process because that is going to enable them to hit the ground running. And it really does make a difference. If you don't understand the budget - the basics of the budget - just the, you know, like not every line item, that's a really hard thing to do. But have you even bothered to go on the City website and look at the budget documents they do have? Have you bothered to read and recall where some of the major issues of funding and major decisions were before? If you haven't, maybe you should. Maybe that would help inform you as to what's possible. You know, even if you think there's waste, fraud, and abuse - as they talk about with all that stuff - well, where specifically? 'Cause that general nebulous thing of we've been - it's not like this is the first rodeo with the City with a budget shortcut, it's not like all of that. And I'm not saying that there's nothing that can be reallocated - that should be looked at - but that information is out there and available. You can find that out. And I'm continually surprised - not necessarily surprised - I'm continuously dismayed by the number of candidates who say - Oh, I don't know that. You know, how can we know that? Or I'm not sure, I haven't looked into it yet. Well, look into it. You decided to run for office - get it together, figure out what you wanna do, and share that. But it's a risky proposition to have someone go - You know, I need to figure out what's going on, we need to look into that, I'm not sure what it's gonna be. And meanwhile, trust me to make this decision. Based on what? That's my personal opinion - that was a little venty, but I do feel strongly about that. And as a political consultant who works with candidates and gotten people up to speed on this kind of stuff - people can do better. People can do better. People need to be better. The city needs the people to be better, to deal with stuff like this. Anywho. We also asked about climate change and specifically 2030 climate goals. This is happening amidst a backdrop where it seems like every major body - 5, 10 years ago, people were like, Yay, we're totally gonna make these 2030 goals. We take climate change super seriously, and we've set forth these ambitious targets that we're gonna achieve. Everybody loved announcing those goals and that those goals reflected their commitment and blah, blah, blah - which is part of my problem sometimes, celebrating the press release instead of delivering the result. But when it came time to make the tough decisions in order to get there, they punted, punted, punted, punted until we've gotten a rash of announcements over the past couple of years that - Yeah, so those 2030 goals, we're not gonna hit them, but we're totally gonna hit our 2050 goals, right? And so if we can't hit this milestone, this benchmark, we're not gonna be on track for that. And the issue really is people just don't wanna make the decisions that are necessary to get there, right? Like, incrementalism isn't gonna get us there. And we are experiencing the impacts of climate change and it's not pretty, and it's not gonna get any better, right? Like this is the best it's going to be for a long, long time - and it's worrisome. So this is important. And specifically, it is 2023 - 2030 is right around the corner. There's a lot that can be done. And there's a lot of money being raised by the carbon credit auctions from the Climate Commitment Act. There's a lot of investment available throughout the state. Do they have plans to pursue and get some of the - what are the plans here? But we need to get on track and be serious about 2030, get back on track for 2030. 'Cause if we can't hit that, we can't hit anything. And we're in for a world of hurt. It's a serious thing. [00:46:22] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, I mean, I think it's trying to understand - does this candidate have or feel a sense of urgency around this? Are we actually gonna put a honest effort into trying to meet these goals? And what are their ideas about how to do that? Because as you said, we needed to be doing this stuff yesterday, but the next best time to do it is starting now. And so what is the plan? [00:46:47] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and there were some candidates - a couple that I'm thinking of - that had some good concrete ideas for this. There were others who very much did not. But also with this - candidates also learn from each other during the campaign trail. And one thing that I do think that we need to do is to encourage that more. The more candidates can learn - like actually engage with solutions - is a good thing. Sometimes - obviously if someone's biting a speech word-for-word, which happens sometimes in politics with candidates - that is irritating, especially for the people in campaigns sometimes. But if there's a good idea and someone else is - You know what, that makes sense. - that's a good thing. We should encourage that. And so I do hope - with a number of these responses, and definitely this one too - that people pay attention to what other candidates, even if they aren't in their same district, say because there are some good workable, achievable plans and ideas on the table that could definitely help. And if a candidate hasn't really engaged with that or thought about it before, there are other candidates who are great resources for them. [00:47:51] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, I think so. I think my experience, having gone through all these candidate interviews, is just every candidate is unique and is coming from a different place to run for office. And they do come with different expertise and experience. And so I think it is kind of a helpful resource to look at for other candidates, whoever ends up getting elected, people who are just concerned about our community as a whole. What are these candidates talking about as being the issue? Why are they stepping up to do something that - to me, sounds like an awful thing to have to do - put yourself out there, and get scrutinized, and knock on doors every free moment of your life. I don't know - I mean - but they wanna do it. [00:48:35] Crystal Fincher: Shannon is a notorious introvert, yes. [00:48:38] Shannon Cheng: They wanna do it. And there's a reason why. And maybe listening and trying to understand - what is that reason and what can we do about it? What are they saying would be helpful to them to address the thing that got them to do this incredibly hard thing? [00:48:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. Another question we asked was just - was about childcare, which is a really, really big deal. We talk about - housing is on everyone's mind, it's on everyone's agenda because it's such a major expense and it keeps rising wildly. It is unsustainable, right, in this situation. The number two expense for most families, which sometimes creeps into number one with multiple children, is childcare. We talk about groceries, we talk about gas and people definitely feel those, but people are feeling childcare in a way that is wild. It's more expensive than college and college is wildly unaffordable, right? This is so expensive and it directly impacts whether people can work - period - whether people can participate in this economy. It is cost prohibitive to get childcare for a lot of people. It's cheaper just not to work, right? And that impacts people's upward mobility, likelihood to be in poverty, to be able to get out of poverty if you are in, whether they're going to need government assistance, right? This impacts so many different things. And the way kids develop depends on the quality of care that they receive from early childhood on. And so this is directly impacting many families, indirectly impacting everyone in the community - from businesses, the regional economy, other parents, community members. And so we don't talk about it enough still. There are a lot of people who are and that's awesome and great, but I think it needs to be elevated even more. And for anyone who's talking about issues of affordability, who's talking about inflation, who's talking about just families having a hard time dealing with expenses - you cannot have that conversation in any credible way without talking about the cost and accessibility of childcare. So that's why we talked about that. And then, just general - Why are you running? What are the differences between you and your opponent? I will tell you - just from my perspective as a political - this is a question that I would ask candidates before deciding to work with them. And I'm looking, in that question, to hear specific and tangible things that they wanna do for their community. It is a big red flag when that answer doesn't include how they want to help people. If the answer is just about them - Well, you know, this was the time for me and lots of people came to me and like, blah, blah, blah. People know - different jurisdictions are different. They suit different leadership types, personality types - depending on what you wanna do. So is this someone who's running for every open position available under the sun? Or do they have something specific that they wanna do in the role that they're seeking? Do you have something tangible you wanna accomplish? People should have tangible things they want to accomplish, and not just running for vanity or because power is attractive, or it's something to put on the resume or whatever - run to accomplish something to help people. I am drawn to people who are rooted in that and have answers with that. I will say just in my experience overall - that determines how someone, absolutely determines how someone governs, how consistent they are to governing - and the way that they ran absolutely has an impact on that. And even beyond, even for candidates who lose, right? Usually candidates who are like - You know, I'm running because I see this as a problem impacting lots of people, and I think that I can be part of the solution in fixing it. - is that if, even if they lose, right, they still stay engaged in the community and working on that. You can see the motivation is not power for me - to them. It is actually doing something to help the community. And so, I look at a variety of different people who've run over the years, and it's interesting to see the people who are still active in community versus those who just disappear. And it was like a phase - them wanting to be involved. Now that's - obviously there's nuance to this conversation - people don't owe their lives to serving and all that kind of stuff. But if you are saying this is an important part of who you are, it seems like that would continue beyond a campaign and that you would see consistency there. So that for me, as a person who is either deciding who I'm gonna vote for, or who I'm gonna work with or in support of - that answer matters a lot to me. That motivation matters a lot to me. How do you see it? [00:53:17] Shannon Cheng: I agree with a lot of what you just said. What I really liked about the interviews we did was that opportunity you gave them to just talk without time limits that forums often impose. And it was refreshing to kind of hear people kind of being more their authentic self. And I think that's just - I don't know that I can describe it, right? But I think just you have to listen and hear how they talk about things. And that was - there were many candidates who came on who, just based on reading, doing all the research ahead of time for their interview and reading about them - and then when they came on, they were not what I expected. I mean, some were. But there were some surprises as well. And I mean, that was, it was really great to - ultimately, these candidates are all people. And I think on the campaign trail and it can get heated - sometimes it can get kind of boiled down to a caricature almost, or just what their campaign website makes them out to look like. And I don't know that that really is the most informative in terms of understanding who these people actually are. And for me, that just feels like - I wanna know that the people who are making these hard decisions for myself, and people I care about, and neighbors who I care about - even if I don't know them directly - I just want them to be good people. [00:54:45] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I want them to care. I want them to see the people and the humanity. I want them to not see statistics. I want them to understand that it's people. I want them to not celebrate the fact that they - it's fine and good - Hey, we passed something. But that then has to be implemented in a way that is felt by the people who it's intended to help. And if that doesn't happen, it all doesn't matter. And I feel like we don't pay enough attention to that part of it a lot. And so I personally, as a voter, am looking for people who understand that and who at least value writing legislation that has a reasonable shot at being implemented well and can deliver on the result. And who track that and who are willing to course correct there and not just paper over things that may not be great and act as if they are - 'cause the goal is to help people. I do wanna talk about - so we took a little bit of a different approach to editing. Candidate interviews - I know how things can get in campaigns and being a candidate is not easy, it's nerve-wracking and being in these interviews - and editing can make people sound better, sound worse. Sometimes people take a pause to consider, or - and that is a, Shoot, I don't know, or like, will say different things, right? And so the approach that we took to candidate interviews - particularly when we had both candidates in the race - we wanted to present them as straightforwardly as we could, to basically not edit their answers. Because there was a lot - we would lose things on a variety of sides, right? And my goal is to not interject our presentation of the candidate. It's to give you the candidate. And I think people can hear throughout these interviews that you can hear someone thinking, you can hear someone processing, you can hear someone being - dodging, or like really contending with someone - like that whole thing mattered. And it seemed like we didn't - editing that, that was just gonna be a no-win situation for - Are we making someone look better? Are we making someone look worse? Are we interjecting what we think into there? So we actually decided just to - sometimes I would flub up a question, right? And like that's edited out, but we let candidates just answer and let their answers be their answers. And you can hear them. And they are people, right? And this isn't easy. And people can be super nervous in an interview, right? Like this is - I get nervous sometimes before I do things - that's totally fair. So I - if someone - I'm not looking for someone to sound perfect or perfectly polished, right? There are some times you can sound too polished. But just to give people an accurate impression of who they are, and how they're engaging with the answer, and can make their own call on whatever that is. But basically it was like - we don't record live, but you got the answer as though it was. So that's the approach that we took there. 'Cause we did get a couple of questions on - Are these edited? Or like, How, like, are you going to do that? Or like, Did you, you know, take - No, that's, that's exactly how it happened. [00:57:50] Shannon Cheng: Yeah, we cut out things like coughing fits or the ever-present train siren behind Crystal. [00:57:57] Crystal Fincher: Yes, yes. [00:57:58] Shannon Cheng: Otherwise - tried to keep it real. I mean, you know, our goal with this project is to educate people about who they are going to make choices between and hopefully inform them in that decision that's coming up. November 7th! [00:58:13] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. You can register to vote online. Even if you have been convicted of a felony and have been incarcerated, the moment you are released, you are eligible to re-register and vote again. Just be involved in making this decision. Voting locally is really important. It's more consequential than all the federal stuff that's going on. Although we hear wall-to-wall coverage and every news program every night is talking about Congress and the president - and not that that's not important. But like, look at how different states are. Look at how different Washington and Alabama are. Look at how different Forks and Seattle and Cle Elum and Spokane and Ellensburg - that is how much control cities have over who they are and how they operate. It can be as different as all of these different cities. They can be night and day difference. And that is all the impact of these local officials that we're electing in the elections that we're having this November. So that's why I do this show. It's really, really important to talk about this stuff and not enough people do regularly. And I'm not saying that it's easy - we make it hard for people to understand and participate in these issues. So just trying to make that more accessible to more people and to help understand where it may be helpful to focus and consider and engage. But this matters, and it matters to try and elect people who will actually deliver on the policy that you think they should be delivering and implementing. So that's why we did this and appreciate you listening to our little explainer about our approach. [00:59:47] Shannon Cheng: Thank you everyone! [00:59:48] Crystal Fincher: Thank you! 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.

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Hour 2 - SPD officer should not be charged in accidental death

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 18, 2023 42:53

What’s Trending: Video, witnesses clear Seattle officer in Jaahnavi Kandula’s death and the left is telling you to not trust the Israeli government. Big Local: A Kent woman fights off an armed intruder and a Lynnwood woman will be on one of Rantz's favorite shows. You Pick: Useless tips to not get scammed this holiday season.

israel video seattle israelis officer trending charged lynnwood accidental death rantz contentpasted0 jaahnavi kandula contentpasted1

Week in Review: October 6, 2023 - with Lex Vaughn

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 6, 2023 46:43

On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Founder and Editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn! They discuss how the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) Vice President who mocked Jaahnavi Kandula's death is now on red light camera duty, how a KING 5 story effectively victim blamed Kandula for what she was wearing, and how Seattle will pay nearly $2M after a man died of heart attack after incorrectly being on a 911 blacklist. Crystal and Lex then talk about Senator Nguyen's bill to detect gas price gouging, the Week Without Driving, Burien making their camping ban worse, how Bruce Harrell's dual responder program fails to civilianize crisis response, and a new GOP candidate in the 3rd Congressional District race. 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, Lex Vaughn at @AlexaVaughn. Resources “Maritza Rivera, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 4” from Hacks & Wonks “Ron Davis, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 4” from Hacks & Wonks “Seattle police officer heard joking after woman's death has been taken off the streets” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times “New video shows moments before woman is hit by Seattle police vehicle” from KING 5 “Seattle to pay nearly $2M after man dies of heart attack at address wrongly on 911 blacklist” by The Associated Press and KIRO 7 News Staff from KIRO 7 “Sen. Nguyen moving forward on bill to detect price gouging at the gas pump” by Brett Davis from The Center Square “Could You Go a Week Without Driving?” by Tanisha Sepúlveda from PubliCola “Burien Makes "Camping" Ban Worse, Auderer Now on Red-Light Camera Duty, Harrell Order Subtly Improves New Drug Law” from PubliCola “Harrell's Dual-Responder Proposal Would Fail to Civilianize Crisis Response” by Amy Sundberg from The Urbanist “Lewallen emerges as GOP alternative to Kent in rematch with Gluesenkamp Perez” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times 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 this week's topical shows, we continued our series of Seattle City Council candidate interviews. All 14 candidates for 7 positions were invited and we had in-depth conversations with many of them. This week, we presented District 4 candidates, Maritza Rivera and Ron Davis. 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: Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and Founder and Editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn. Hey! [00:01:36] Lex Vaughn: Hey, nice to be back. [00:01:38] Crystal Fincher: Great to have you back. And I just have to say before we get into it - The Needling is so good. You do such great work there. And like the last two weeks are as good as it has ever been. There's no one in the country doing it better than The Needling right now. It's just absolutely great. If you guys are not tuned into The Needling - website, Patreon, social media - please get into it. [00:02:03] Lex Vaughn: Thank you so much, Crystal. [00:02:05] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, we have a number of things to talk about this week. Wanna start off talking about an update to the story of pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula, who was killed by an officer who ran over her while going over 70 miles per hour in response to a call - although he did not have his siren going at the time - and a story that came out in KING 5 also related to that. But just starting - update to that story is the SPOG Vice President, Daniel Auderer, who was caught on tape mocking Jaahnavi's death is now on red light camera duty - has been taken off the street. It is not uncommon for officers to be reassigned to administrative positions while investigations are ongoing - that's the case here. What do you think about where we stand here in terms of accountability? [00:03:00] Lex Vaughn: I think no one should feel like anything real has happened as far as accountability or punishment goes - he's been reassigned, but he could be, as soon as we take our eye off this, he could be put back in the same position he was before. Auderer is still a major part of the guild leadership, so it's like - this isn't just any cop. This is guild leadership that forms a lot of the culture of the entire department, so it's upsetting to not see - once again, how - it's just upsetting to see how hard it is to even get real punishment happening for some of these people after what they do. They should be fired. And I think the next thing I'm focused on is just what's gonna happen in this next police guild contract - it's up this year and it's in negotiations right now. I just, I hope it's slightly better than the contract before - and it would just be nice if it was easier to hold police like this accountable. [00:03:59] Crystal Fincher: I'm right there with you. And I hope it's significantly better than it is right now. And there's a model in place for it - the City of Seattle passed an ordinance in 2017 that included many accountability procedures that the SPOG contract that's currently in place, that was signed in 2018, supersedes. It has written in there that it supersedes City law - so if there's a conflict, the SPOG contract is what wins, basically, over what the City says. And as we've seen, there've been several examples of things that regular people look at and say - This is not okay, this is not what we want - where we see officers commenting across the country saying - This is inappropriate, incorrect. Yet it seems like not much can be done, and the most that's done is they're suspended without pay then reinstated, or assigned to desk duty, various administrative tasks. It's a challenge. [00:04:55] Lex Vaughn: And I'm so tired of the shrug that happens - Well, I don't know, police contract. What are you gonna do? Well, now we're in negotiations. You are actively in a position to do something about it long-term. I don't want any shrugging right now about this 'cause we are actually in a zone where we can change the contract, or change how the City interacts with that union as a whole. I'm just learning myself about what options there are in increasing accountability. Is there a way to decertify this union completely if - I mean, I think a lot of what they support and don't fight against in their own ranks is kind of criminal itself. You're enabling people to kill innocent people - for me, to me, that's criminal. And it's like, I wish that was kind of acknowledged more often - where's the line here where some of what they're doing is criminal. [00:05:49] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and you know, the other thing I look at here is this is a threat to public safety in Seattle, particularly for people who say and believe that - Hey, we need more officers on the streets now, we need to hire more officers, there is a shortage. One, if there's a shortage, why are they responding to overdose calls, crisis calls in the first place and redeploying it? [00:06:11] Lex Vaughn: You know, as outlets like DivestSPD have reported in detail, it's - this call, where this young woman was killed by a cop going three times the speed limit in a high pedestrian area at night without a siren - he was rushing to a reported overdose call where health personnel, paramedics were already headed there. And apparently there were like six police units headed there as well? This is just inefficient, like at a minimum, at a minimum - incredibly inefficient and dangerous. And it really kind of underlines - how could you think we need more cops when in a situation like this, they're over-responding and actually a danger to the community. The entire way this operation is working is faulty and not increasing public safety. [00:07:07] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely not increasing public safety. And hurting the effort that they've invested a lot of money into to recruit additional officers. Since they offered retention bonuses, you know, there was a lot of talk over the past couple of years that - Oh, they need more money, they need an incentive to stay. Well, the incentive is not money. Many of them are compensated fairly handsomely, but since that was approved and they've been receiving retention bonuses - the attrition has not improved - we're still hurting as badly as we ever have. And it's time - and I appreciate Tammy Morales in a forum last night, as well as others, and there've been several other people who've also talked about this - just plainly stating, Hey, these incidences happening are a problem, are a disincentive for people to apply to be a police officer, to want to be a police officer, particularly in Seattle. And especially when so many cities are talking about having shortages, why would they choose a city that has so many visible problems and problematic officers instead of another one there? So, I mean, this is - the culture is as much of a problem in terms of recruiting as anything else. But also, we do have to stop and say - What are we even doing overall? - to your point. I also want to talk about this KING 5 story that came out recapping it, but got a pretty severe pushback and lots of call-outs - because in that story, they detailed what Jaahnavi was wearing, while it - was it dark colored this or that, you know, potentially talking about a drug test. And as you said - to be clear - she was in a crosswalk. She was doing exactly what she was supposed to be doing. The person doing what they weren't supposed to be doing was a person responding to a call that was questionable that they should be going to anyway. [00:08:55] Lex Vaughn: I cannot stand anyone acting like - Oh, she just didn't look both ways. This was a high pedestrian area - at night, no sirens. How many of us would expect, as soon as we're entering a crosswalk, for a cop, a giant car to barrel at us at over the speed limit of what's, on our freeways? Okay - that's fast. She didn't, she barely comprehended what was going to happen to her before it happened to her. [00:09:26] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and when you look at there, it's not - one, it's a crosswalk, and drivers should be aware of crosswalks and crossings marked or unmarked. This is a marked crosswalk - there's a crosswalk sign, there's barriers in the road - this is not an area - Oh, who would know that there would be a pedestrian there? Like, if there was a place for a pedestrian to be, it is there. And to essentially victim blame in that way and not talk about the responsibility of the person in the vehicle that has the power to instantaneously obliterate someone - what their culpability and responsibility was there - is just really disgusting. [00:10:04] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, I have to say, I'm really disappointed in KING 5 for that report, 'cause I mean, in Seattle, I think we tend to think of KOMO as the station that would run something like that, not KING 5. And it's hard to understand what the motivation of that report was. I mean, I guess they were maybe giddy that they had new video that hadn't been seen before, and I don't know, maybe there was only so much they had to say about it - she's wearing black clothes - but it just came off as very victim-blamey. You know, this is not a report that you wanna turn into a pedestrian safety cautionary tale - where that's not really the moral of the story here - 'cause I think any of us, most people, that would have happened to them, no matter what they were wearing, I doubt that cop would have all of a sudden had time to brake if she was wearing yellow. He was going way too fast. [00:10:57] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Absolutely going too fast to respond in any kind of way at that speed, to be able to take any kind of evasive action - and we see that in how the accident played out. I think this is reflective of the super car-centric culture and how problematic that is - instead of realizing that everyone has a right to use the roads and therefore everyone, whether you're walking, biking, riding. But the responsibility that people have in understanding that - yes, if you have the potential to do greater harm, then you must take greater responsibility. The consequence for a pedestrian walking out into the street to a car is negligible - there's going to be no damage there, right? Like, you know, looking at the worst-case scenario is entirely different than someone losing their life. And so I suspect in this situation - a problem that we've seen in lots of news media in that they saw the video, they looked at the police report and what the information that the police gave out, which unfortunately too often only focuses on, especially when situations when police are involved, only focuses on the pedestrian that is involved or the non-police entity that's involved. Just really striking, we - was the officer driving - were they tested for drugs or alcohol? Were they, I mean, you know, a sign of impairment there, so how in the world it makes sense? [00:12:22] Lex Vaughn: They were not. She was, he wasn't - despite the fact that this guy who ran her over, apparently had had his driving license suspended in Arizona the year before he came here and got hired with a bonus. So, you know, if you think these bonuses are getting us anyone quality, all you have to do is look at this case - not the case - we're not getting anyone special here. [00:12:48] Crystal Fincher: Well, you know, I don't know who it's bringing, but there absolutely needs to be a different strategy implemented here. And everyone needs to do better in reporting, and considering how they talk about this, and what our stance as a community is about this. I also wanna talk about another story this week that didn't seem to percolate, but that was surprising to me. And it was news that Seattle had to pay nearly $2 million to the family of a man after he died of a heart attack after getting delayed response because his address was wrongly on a 911 blacklist. One - okay, there's a 911 blacklist - there's news. [00:13:29] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, I did not even know that. Oh, God. [00:13:32] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, so the situation is this person had a heart attack, fell out - had lived in the unit for a year. The people who lived in it before him wound up on a list - and responders and police say they keep a list of people who have been hostile to or problematic with police, which, you know, I don't know what hard and fast rules about that, how subjective that is, but you can see how that could come to be. But they wound up on this list because of a prior tenant - that wasn't told to them on the call, there was no indication, you had - no one has any idea - [00:14:06] Lex Vaughn: I had no idea that was a thing. [00:14:09] Crystal Fincher: - that - yeah, that the list exists or that they may or may not be on it. So this guy's lived here for a year. It's not even like he just moved in there. [00:14:16] Lex Vaughn: And I'm like - oh my God. So it's like based on address, not even like phone numbers? 'Cause like I would imagine almost everyone has like a cell phone now. Like almost no one has a landline. [00:14:27] Crystal Fincher: Some people have a landline. [00:14:28] Lex Vaughn: I mean, okay. [00:14:29] Crystal Fincher: Some people don't have cell phones. [00:14:30] Lex Vaughn: It's like a small fraction of people. [00:14:32] Crystal Fincher: Most people do, some people don't - but either way - so they call and they're like - Okay, help is on the way. But the help is - they see there's a flag, so they have to wait for basically police to co-respond with them, which delays the call. You know, another 911 call comes in after a paramedic is apparently on the scene, but not going in because they're waiting for police. And they're saying help is on the way, but no indication that there's a delay. The man passes away because of - looking at the settlement, feeling like had he received more timely medical care, he certainly would have had a better opportunity to survive. But that this was the reason why he died - and that this list exists, that finding out through this, that evidently the list was neglected - they don't take people off the list or hadn't before this - was very problematic. In response to this, they're now saying they'll age people off of the list after 365 days. But you can imagine- [00:15:28] Lex Vaughn: Why did it have to take this to do that obvious a thing? [00:15:31] Crystal Fincher: Why did it have to take this? And how does no one engage with the fact that, especially with half of Seattle residents renting, right? [00:15:39] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, I'm a renter. And I read this and I was like - Okay. I mean, I've lived in this place that I'm in for three years, so well - I mean, I don't know. It's like, I want to check - I don't know who lived here before. [00:15:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, how do you get on? Is there an appeals process to come off? The lack of transparency surrounding this seems like it could create another situation like this in the future. So this was a story reported by KIRO 7 - would be interested to find out exactly what criteria are to get on the list. Are people ever removed from the list now other than aging off? And even with things aging off over a year, people move all the time - renters move all the time - this is absolutely disproportionately impacting people who rent. And a year is a long time to wait for something to edge off. If you have an emergency and you haven't lived in your place for a year, who knows if when you call 911, there's some reason that you don't know why people aren't responding. So I found that just really interesting. [00:16:43] Lex Vaughn: And just another important part of that report is that apparently a dispatcher was punished and also sued the City because he tried to fix that system. And he was kind of like wrongfully punished on the job for trying to bring up and reform that 911 blacklist. And it just seems like - wow, you know, a person like me - I didn't even know it existed, but I think we all got to take a hard look at that 'cause that's a tragedy that didn't have to happen. [00:17:14] Crystal Fincher: Absolute tragedy. And very interested to learn more about how that list operates and if it is in line with best practices and it just seems- [00:17:24] Lex Vaughn: It seems very outdated. [00:17:26] Crystal Fincher: It really does. Wanna talk about another story that is part of a larger story. And it's Senator Joe Nguyen, our state Senator, is moving forward on a bill to detect price gouging at the gas pump. Gas prices have been in the news a lot lately - they find their way into the news every year for a variety of reasons that - the price of gas is high. It's a cost that a lot of people incur. And as the prices rise, people feel that in their budgets, certainly - don't wanna minimize that at all for people who are on a tight budget. But for people who care about that, I hope they also have urgency in dealing with housing costs, childcare costs, some of the biggest costs that people have. But gas is a factor in there, and so we have a situation where gas prices are volatile - they have been, they always are. In this situation, we have Democrats and Republicans calling for a couple of different solutions. Republicans call for a gas tax holiday, they blame the Climate Commitment Act - which was passed here in this state, which assigns basically a price to carbon - and saying, This is the reason why gas prices are high. Other people have pointed out for quite some time that we still have these oil companies making record profits and that accounts for more of the gas price there. And these increases in price don't seem to correlate with the increase and decreases in cost. And we hear - Oh, you know, refinery's offline for maintenance. Well, that seems to coincide with major holiday weekends and times when they know people will be driving to make the price skyrocket. California passed a bill similar to this, which Joe Nguyen said he looked at and is modeling this off of. And they found that there was some, you know, shady stuff going on. And what this does is basically establish a commission, or a tribunal, or some organization that can review pricing information and kind of proprietary data from these companies - saying that this isn't public data, so it's not like there are gonna be competitive disadvantages for sharing and it's not gonna be given to the public. But this group can review it and say - Okay, is this in line with costs, or are you just raising the price of gas to price gouge consumers - which appears that it's happened before. So this is an interesting bill that Senator Nguyen is moving forward with to detect price gouging. And I'm gonna be really curious to see how this plays out. What do you think? [00:19:47] Lex Vaughn: I mean, I'd be interested to see how they plan on changing that behavior. 'Cause I guess I applaud the effort to detect price gouging and do something about it, but I'm almost in like a state of - I've just accepted oil companies do that all the time. I mean, I think especially in that year after - since the war in Ukraine, it seemed like there was a period where they were artificially jacking up the prices when they didn't really need to - even after President Biden had taken action to reduce that problem, the prices were still high. So I'm just so used to the price gouging that I assume is always happening, I'm like - Oh, okay, you gonna do something about it? Good luck with that. I don't have high hopes, but- [00:20:34] Crystal Fincher: Well, I think there are bigger structural issues involved. I mean, we are trying to phase out fossil fuels in a long-term perspective, and that is going to make the cost of gas increase in the long-term. Now, as with many things - and part of that is the price is inherently volatile, it's gonna become more volatile, especially as - even if we wanted to burn all the oil in the world, there's a limited supply of oil. So this was coming at some time. How do we make this transition in a way that is as fair and equitable as possible? And that's what the proceeds of the Climate Commitment Act are supposed to do - these proceeds that are exceeding expectations from these carbon credits - that's what the push towards more renewable forms of energy, electric cars - but even better, getting the cars off the road and using transit - and making, building our infrastructure and building our communities in a way that make that a viable and attractive option for people. 'Cause right now we still have a long way to go for that. And in this Week Without Driving, many of us are experiencing that firsthand- [00:21:39] Lex Vaughn: How was that? [00:21:39] Crystal Fincher: It's still ongoing. I shared online that I have a trip today to make where it's a two hour one-way trip, even though it's only 17 miles - but it underscores how important it is to improve transit service everywhere - and it benefits everyone. We have to get out, we have to mitigate the impacts of climate change. We have to get on this and accelerate our efforts to meet our 2030 goals - to have a shot at meeting our goals that are further down the line. We have a long way to go, but improving the accessibility and the experience on transit will improve traffic, will improve air quality, will improve finances. It costs a lot less if that's a reasonable option to do. [00:22:24] Lex Vaughn: I'm always shocked when people aren't completely on board with building great public transit as fast as possible everywhere. 'Cause even if you're a driver and you're never taking public transit, how is it not in your interest as well for as many people as possible to be in public transit? You get less traffic. It should be a win-win-win for everybody to get more of these things online. [00:22:49] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think there's a lot of misinformation about there. And I think the way that we have allowed communities to build and grow - that we've allowed sprawl and basically enabled- [00:22:59] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, yeah. [00:23:00] Crystal Fincher: -the inaccessibility of transit in communities makes people - the default lifestyle for many people is a car-based lifestyle. And we've allowed transit to atrophy in many places, if it even was readily available in the first place. So people - when people can't see it and can't see it working, they have a hard time conceptualizing it. [00:23:22] Lex Vaughn: Oh yeah. And I mean, whenever you do that Google Maps route - I mean, I do that sometimes where I'm like - Oh, what's the public transit route? If it's very long, I'll opt for using my car for part of that trip somehow. And that usually is the defining thing, right - is just looking up on a Google Map - is this a half hour trip or a two hour trip? [00:23:43] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. [00:23:44] Lex Vaughn: I mean, that's a big difference. [00:23:45] Crystal Fincher: It's a humongous difference. And for several - I fortunately am privileged enough to not have to drive often. But for those I do, that's an absolute consideration. And I would like to take transit. And there are some advantages even on a longer trip - you can do other things, you can multitask, you can just decompress - you don't have to be present and aware, paying attention while you're driving, you don't have the stress of traffic sometimes, which is nice. So I mean, even on a longer trip, there are some advantages to transit, but also it can be less convenient depending on there. And if you have to walk a long way, especially in poor weather, when it's cold. Or if there aren't adequate facilities at a transit stop - I saw someone yesterday comment, Hey man, I looked up something and it was a two and a half hour trip, and my bladder can't securely make that trip and we don't make public restrooms readily available to people. There are a lot of structural barriers in place for people to be able to use transit, and we have to do a better job at removing those barriers if we're gonna make progress. And so the Week Without Driving is really bringing that home to a lot of people in ways that we can talk about, but when you do it and you feel it, it just provides additional insight and urgency into that. I also wanna talk about the City of Burien - yet again - who passed their camping ban and then decided to make their camping ban worse. So what Burien did was now expand the number of hours per day in which being unsheltered will soon be illegal. PubliCola has been doing an excellent job covering what's been happening in the City of Burien - we will link this article and update in our show notes also. But basically the Burien city attorney said that the city decided to make the adjustment after learning that shelters begin making their decisions about who to admit around 4.30 in the afternoon. And by 10, most are closed. And according to him, it would be too late to take people there - that's questionable reasoning. And by starting the ban earlier in the evening, the city thinks that it can plausibly say shelter was available - which is important in order to pass the constitutionality test - and that people refuse to accept it. Those are not hard and fast rules, and especially with some of the new shelter coming online, it is more flexible. The shelters making such decisions and closing early are part of the reason why it's hard for people to do that anyway. A meaningful percentage of people who don't have homes still have jobs. Lots of people who don't have homes or who are housing insecure have jobs. And if their shift goes beyond 7 or 8 or 9 or whatever the closing time is- [00:26:32] Lex Vaughn: Very unreasonable. [00:26:33] Crystal Fincher: -you have to choose between keeping the job that has a shot at either getting you back into housing or keeping you from falling into a further precarious position on the street. It just doesn't make sense. So they expanded the hours that they were doing that. During the meeting - there's a lot of misinformation that comes from the council majority on this council - they were saying that they, Hey, it increases the amount of time that they're able to camp, which is just false. Like it was weird. It only allows camping between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m. - or the ability to be in public while you're unhoused, basically - even though that there aren't good options for where these people to go. And as we've been reminded several times, options are available and on offer to the City of Burien to have people have a place to go - land has been identified for them. And this is a seven-member council, it's a split council - so four members in the majority, three members in the minority. That four-member council majority has not decided to take the county up on the offer of a million dollars to help with long-term placement, hasn't taken - two entities now who have offered Pallet shelters here. It's just really unfortunate. [00:27:49] Lex Vaughn: Has that city been sued yet? Or like - 'cause it does seem illegal. I mean, they're not even, they're rejecting housing for these people and then doing this camping ban at the same time. I would think that's illegal. [00:28:03] Crystal Fincher: Well, that's the question. And it does strike a lot of people as illegal, which is one of the reasons why the King County Executive's Office sent a letter to Burien saying that - Hey, because your police department contracts with the King County Sheriff's for your deputies, we're telling you our deputies cannot participate in these sweeps because it's unconstitutional. [00:28:23] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, that's great. [00:28:24] Crystal Fincher: And they say - Ah no, it's not. They try to do an end around and find a loophole by leasing to a seemingly faux dog park organization that - then they could trespass people off of land. It's just a whole mess. [00:28:40] Lex Vaughn: The extent they're going to boot homeless people out of their city is crazy - without helping them. [00:28:48] Crystal Fincher: Without helping them, yeah. [00:28:49] Lex Vaughn: The option is right there, the money is right there - and they're not using it. I imagine a lot of these things just aren't true that they're saying? But is that true - that thing they said about all these homeless shelters accept people at 4.30 and not afterward? Is that a thing? [00:29:06] Crystal Fincher: And the way he phrased it even is vague in and of itself - they begin making their decisions at 4.30. [00:29:12] Lex Vaughn: Begin making their decisions at-- [00:29:14] Crystal Fincher: Yes. [00:29:14] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, and it's like - yeah, just think about, I mean, the average person is not done with work at 4.30. They're not even home from work at 4.30, if they're not a remote worker. And yeah, and there's a lot of different shifts out there that people might be taking. And it assumes that people who don't have shelter don't have jobs, which is just the worst piece of misinformation. [00:29:38] Crystal Fincher: Or don't have any other interests, or places to go - it's just challenging. And speaking of the King County Sheriff's, this is a big concern - who are they gonna have to actually enforce this? - which is a question that was asked. And Deputy Mayor Kevin Schilling said on the dais that - Hey, the King County Sheriff's Office signed off on the change. However, PubliCola followed up with the King County Sheriff's Office, and a spokesman for King County Executive Dow Constantine told PubliCola that the county has not made a decision about whether and how to enforce the law. So, that is absolutely not true - what Deputy Mayor Kevin Schilling said - that evidently is still under review. And it looks like they were, once again, in a rush and moved hastily without even knowing if this is something that they can enforce. It is just, it's just a challenge. [00:30:31] Lex Vaughn: Come on, Burien - get some new people on that council. [00:30:34] Crystal Fincher: Speaking of challenges that are pretty easy to foresee, or things that don't quite make sense based on what we're being told - is news that, hey, finally, finally, the mayor's office who has had the funding to do this and for some reason hasn't for a long time, announced that they're going to launch a dual responder program. However, this dual responder program would still fail to civilianize the crisis response, which is what the mayor's office had initially said they wanted to - we had a conversation with Deputy Mayor, then-Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell on this show about that before. But in the way this is going to be - in the way it's proposed, in the way it looks like it's going to happen - a new Community Assisted Response and Engagement Department, or CARE Department, will launch a dual dispatch pilot consisting of teams of two civilians, some of whom are behavioral health providers, who can be dispatched alongside SPD officers. And so this program hired six responders so far, $1.8 million has been proposed from the mayor in the 2024 budget. And in the press conference, which I think you said that you watched, they talked about this being similar to or based on programs that have gotten acclaim in a few other major cities. However, ours is substantively different than theirs - in that, theirs don't rely on co-response - meaning that an armed officer has to go with someone all the time - or they have options out of that, that is not a requirement of the dispatch. And there's good reason for that. One, most of these calls don't apply to that. In Denver's program, they found that they only needed to call for armed police response 2% of the time where their crisis responders were dispatched - especially as you said before, when they're saying they don't have enough cops to do the job that is expected of them, you would think that'd be like - Oh, that's great news. We can deploy our resources in areas where they can be more effective. [00:32:44] Lex Vaughn: That's why it's probably a dual response. They don't want our city to discover that we don't need police at every single one of these calls. And it's unfortunate that the mayor and this police department are more concerned with how can we get this police department more money, more people. It's, I guess, a rough transition here - to say the least - to get this city to wrap its head around the fact that you do not need police at every single one of these 911 calls. And in fact, it's very dangerous for a lot of these cops to show up, especially in cases where someone's having a mental health crisis or something. When I was a reporter at The Seattle Times, I unfortunately reported on cases where someone was having a mental health crisis and they were shot for not immediately obeying orders. That was, you know - I - if you have a loved one that struggles with mental health issues, the police - they're not who you want to call. It's dangerous, 'cause I think a lot of police are - they're just too willing and ready to shoot as soon as they're not listened to. And so I'm very disappointed that this is a dual response thing, when it's so clear we need that CARE team to just respond on their own, with their own expertise, without anyone armed on the scene. [00:34:09] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and especially in crisis calls, armed responses - an armed presence - is its own escalator. [00:34:17] Lex Vaughn: Yes - yeah, like duh - for anyone. And then imagine you're also in crisis - just not a great mix. [00:34:24] Crystal Fincher: It's challenging. You know, Crosscut previously reported that while only 2.2% of calls for service in Seattle were crisis calls, those calls accounted for 25% of Seattle officers' use of force. And if we recall, Charleena Lyles in 2017 was a perfect example of that, really unfortunate example of that. It's just really challenging. They seem determined to have an officer respond - to your point, it seems like they are afraid of relinquishing anything. But that seems to be happening - if you listen to their logic - at the expense of everyone else's safety and more effective deployment across the city. Then another really meaningful point brought up is just the scale of this pilot - what are we really able to see? [00:35:12] Lex Vaughn: Six people, right? [00:35:12] Crystal Fincher: Six people - yeah, absolutely. And that is completely out of line with the scale of the programs in these other cities. [00:35:21] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, Albuquerque - 70 people. They're really doing it. [00:35:25] Crystal Fincher: Look at how many officers we have. Look at the size of the city. And one thing that's been noticed by lots of people for a long time is that we put out these pilots, we say we need to see results, and we need to get data on them to see if they're gonna continue. And you just throw a couple people out there - and you can't reasonably expect any meaningful intervention from a few people. Now when you do look at that, they do outsize good for what they're there. So it's like, just imagine if we were to appropriately invest and deploy in numbers that could effectively manage this problem citywide. But we continue not to do that, which is frustrating, and watch more of the budget continue to go to police officers, vacant police officer positions - and it's just frustrating. [00:36:16] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, I mean, it's like the police department and the City are trying to make this argument that we don't have enough officers. And it's like - Well, what if we're just not doing this efficiently at all? And it's just unfortunate to see that the priority here seems to be retaining dependence on a police department that is as bloated as possible, and not just creating a more efficient public health and public safety kind of operation system here. Like you said, a lot of these calls - they do not need an armed cop, especially one that might be barreling through a high pedestrian area at 75 miles per hour, coming to the call. And if we're really interested in public safety here, I really think we don't need more cops. We need to use the cops we have more efficiently, with more accountability. And expand this other program, the CARE program, and let them respond independently to a lot of these calls and expand it. And I'm worried that this program is being set up to fail. Some people might say that - Well, this is better than nothing. It's a start. - I guess, but I think it's being set up to fail. This is six people - not that many people - and they're not being allowed to be the first to intervene, which is really where I think the magic of those programs happens. It's like - Wow, the situation did not get escalated. This person got the help they needed without a gun on the scene. [00:37:48] Crystal Fincher: And it feels like someone is coming to help, right? And it really is the difference in - is someone coming to help me, or is someone coming to control me? Is someone coming to make me do something, to stop me? [00:37:59] Lex Vaughn: Yep, that is - that's it - right there, yeah. [00:38:04] Crystal Fincher: And that makes such a big difference when someone is already in a place where they're unstable, where they're worried, concerned, where they're not perceiving things as well as they can be. And then expecting them then to be able to - oftentimes be calmer than the officer that's responding - and just rationally follow everything. You're being called because this person is not behaving rationally, right - so we know that from jump - everything else that stems from that, it's predictable that that's not going to have a great outcome. And again, we have to get to dealing with the root causes of this. There's nothing a police person can do to address a behavioral health crisis. [00:38:47] Lex Vaughn: That's not their expertise at all. [00:38:49] Crystal Fincher: That's not their expertise, it's not their job. It's not their - no training, no resources in order to do that. The people who actually can make those connections - who do understand our complicated and inadequate, but you know, system - and to try and get people in there and to get them some help that they need, so this is not a chronic problem. So this doesn't escalate. It's really important. The last story I want to talk about today is the emergence of a new GOP candidate in Washington's 3rd Congressional District. This district is now notorious for being one of the biggest districts in an upset race in 2022, where Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez beat Joe Kent, a very far right-wing Republican in 2022 - biggest upset race in the country. And so Joe Kent announced that he was running again, he's been running, and he's endorsed by the likes of Trump and you know, a lot of really, really, really far right extremists. And that is what a lot of people blame on his loss that - wow, even that was too much for this pretty solidly Republican district. So it looks like other Republicans in the state - I don't want to call them moderate Republicans, 'cause I don't think that is an accurate descriptor - but ones who realize that Joe Kent- [00:40:11] Lex Vaughn: Maybe just smarter, like more strategic Republicans. [00:40:16] Crystal Fincher: Right - is a tainted brand, right? And are trying to operate more strategically. And so Leslie Lewallen, a city councilmember in Camas in Clark County, has entered the race and drawn early support and endorsements from prominent Republicans like former Attorney General Rob McKenna, former Secretary of State Sam Reed, and Tiffany Smiley. And Tiffany Smiley, who's the challenger to Patty Murray in 2022. And so they are not going the MAGA route, they're trying to go the other route. Although if you look at the issues that she's talking about, this is really, you know, how they're dressing up someone who holds a lot of the same core beliefs when it comes to women's choice, when it comes to these really troubling attacks and book bans that we're seeing in schools, attacks on the trans community and the LGBTQ community - just a lot of worrisome things. This is not, you know, what we had previously described as a moderate Republican. This is still a pretty far right Republican, but it's not Joe Kent. And, you know, Joe Kent is out of touch with reality in a variety of things - it's hard to really explain how wild this guy is without just being like - look at this, I cannot - I had to do this in 2022. Like I can't do justice to what this is with an explanation, just watch him talk. [00:41:42] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, him and Loren Culp were kind of an insane, you know, pair to talk about back then. [00:41:48] Crystal Fincher: They were just not in touch with reality. But, you know, this will be interesting. And we see this effort, with Dave Reichert in the governor's race, to try and dress someone up as a more moderate Republican to kind of assuage some of the fears that people have of someone too extreme. MAGA - the MAGA brand - is not popular throughout the state, that's not a winning brand in the state. And Republicans have been losing ground because of it. But I think, especially when we look at a lot of these races in King County - like I'm thinking of the 8th Congressional District race, the Reagan Dunn race against Kim Schrier - even someone who has, you know, traditionally branded themselves as a moderate, they still hold beliefs that are pretty repugnant to lots of people. Kind of first and foremost, the issue of abortion rights, right - these are pretty fundamental rights. The issue of privacy protections - pretty fundamental rights. Wanting a stronger safety net - pretty fundamental, you know, support by a lot of people in the state. And Republicans seem to disagree with that. [00:42:48] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, or at a minimum, they're just spineless because Reagan Dunn, at certain points, has - if it's advantageous to him, you know, hasn't been as conservative, but just depends on where he's trying to mold himself. [00:43:03] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. [00:43:04] Lex Vaughn: Yeah. [00:43:04] Crystal Fincher: So at this moment, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez has a pretty substantial financial lead. I think I read that she has like a million and a half dollars and Joe Kent has like a shade under $500,000. But I - this will be a district that this cycle, I'm sure, attracts a lot of attention and a lot of outside spending. Definitely on the list for Republicans to pick up. Now, you know, we're sitting here as Republicans just kicked out Speaker McCarthy, which makes Patty Murray now second in line to the presidency since there's no current Speaker of the House. But, you know, Republicans have problems from the very top of the ticket all the way on down, so it'll be interesting just to see how they manage this chaos. [00:43:49] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, well, this whole next year is gonna be an interesting Republican identity journey - I don't know if it's a crisis, they've kind of been in crisis for a little while, but it's - they're gonna have to make some decisions about who they're gonna be in the future. Are they gonna continue the Trump route or are they trying to find this other, I don't know. I guess almost as far right, but just a different tone, different leaders at the helm kind of leading that. I don't know. [00:44:24] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, very - it'll be interesting to see. And, you know, we'll have another shutdown battle coming up in about a month. Who knows if we'll have a speaker by then? Who knows if we'll be in any better position for anything by then? [00:44:39] Lex Vaughn: I just heard yesterday there's a possibility of Trump being a speaker? [00:44:43] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, so- [00:44:45] Lex Vaughn: Oh my God, I didn't know that was a thing. [00:44:47] Crystal Fincher: Fun fact is the Speaker of the House does not have to be a member of the House or Congress. So yeah, they can appoint - they could do that with Trump if they wanted to, I think? [00:44:58] Lex Vaughn: Ahh, this world is insane. [00:45:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's, you know - it is frustrating - the Republicans are not a party serious about governing right now. And I just wish we would contend with that more directly. Or at least- [00:45:14] Lex Vaughn: And the people who vote for them. Like what are you doing? [00:45:16] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. So we'll continue to follow this, but that will certainly - is an interesting new element in that 3rd Congressional District race that will have impacts here locally and nationally. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, October 6th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful cohost today is Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Founder and Editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn. You can find Lex on Twitter @AlexaVaughn, V-A-U-G-H-N. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can find me on Twitter and most other networks @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 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. [00:46:41] Lex Vaughn: Bye.

Seattle is bringing back the War on Drugs, during a Seattle Police PR nightmare

Activist Class

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 27, 2023 60:51

In the heart of the neoliberal capital, Seattle, The Activist Class takes a closer look at the recent PR nightmare that the Seattle Police Department has found itself embroiled in. First, we delve into a leaked body cam video that sent shockwaves through the country. The footage captures the Vice President of Seattle's Police Union laughing callously in the aftermath of a tragic incident involving a South Asian woman named Jaahnavi Kandula, who was fatally struck by a police cruiser. We then turn our attention to a contentious Drug Bill passed by the City Council that threatens to revive the War on Drugs. This legislation will re-criminalize public drug use, setting the stage for a troubling sequel to an already disastrous policy. Lastly, we bring you exclusive audio evidence, via THE STRANGER, of an off-duty Seattle police officer using racial slurs to verbally harass his Chinese neighbor. Class is in Session

pr chinese seattle vice president class stranger war on drugs city council south asian bringing back seattle police department seattle police pr nightmare jaahnavi kandula

Crime & Updates

Murder In The Rain

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 26, 2023 38:51

In this week's Murder in the Rain we'd like to offer a warm welcome to new friends from CrimeCon! We're also giving some updates from cases we've recently shared as well as sharing some information about two local cases that many listeners have been asking about. First, Emily will provide the latest information we have on the potential Portland area serial killer who is tied to the murders of four women; Charity Perry, Kristin Smith, Ashley Real, and Bridget Webster. Next, Alisha shares the recent story around the death of Jaahnavi Kandula who was mocked by someone who was sworn to protect her. If you have information on the Portland deaths of four women who are connected to person of interest Jesse Calhoun, you can contact the following agencies: Kristin Smith Case – Detective Jeffery Pontius – jeffery.pontius@police.portlandoregon.govCharity Perry Case – Sheriff's Office Tip Line: 503-988-0560 | Detective Kevin Odil – Kevin.odil@mcso.usBridget Webster Case – Detective David Shorter – shorter.david@co.polk.or.usAshley Real Case – Tip Line: 503-723-4949 | Online Tip Sheet: https://www.clackamas.us/sheriff/tipFor photos and sources for today's episode, check out the Murder in the Rain Episode Blog. If you'd like more episodes of Murder in the Rain, Patreon members at the $5/mo+ level, gain access to exclusive episodes, ad-free episodes, bonus content, and more.Follow us on:Instagram https://www.instagram.com/murderintherain/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/mintherain/ Twitter https://twitter.com/murderintherain TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@em_murderintherain Website https://www.murderintherain.com/ Email murderintherain@gmail.comOur Sponsors:* Check out Factor 75 and use my code rain50 for a great deal: https://www.factor75.com/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/murder-in-the-rain/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

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092323 National Headlines Proving we Still Need Social Justice Reform (Part 2)

Civic Cipher

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 23, 2023 22:59

In the second half of our show, we discuss the story of a police officer caught on video describing 23-year-old Jaahnavi Kandula as having “limited value” as well as the story of the DC police training officer who shot and killed a Black female officer in training in the middle of the training class.Support the showwww.civiccipher.comFollow us: @CivicCipher @iamqward @ramsesjaConsideration for today's show was provided by: Major Threads menswear www.MajorThreads.com Hip Hop Weekly Magazine www.hiphopweekly.com The Black Information Network Daily Podcast www.binnews.com

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Week in Review: September 22, 2023 - with Ashley Nerbovig

True Crime: By The Book/ More Than A Movie

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 22, 2023 44:06

On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by staff writer at The Stranger covering policing, incarceration and courts, Ashley Nerbovig! Ashley and Crystal discuss (and rant!) about continued and international outrage over Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) leaders caught on body cam laughing about a fellow Seattle Police Department (SPD) officer running over and killing Jaahnavi Kandula - how the SPOG contract makes it near impossible to discipline or fire officers, Mayor Bruce Harrell's responsibility in creating the mess by voting for the contract as a City councilmember and in possibly getting us out of it by delivering a better one from the current negotiations, and how our recruiting problem is a culture problem in a competitive marketplace. The show then covers passage of the War on Drugs 2.0 bill by Seattle City Council, the start of the trial for three Tacoma officers accused of murdering Manny Ellis, and a rally held by Seattle City employees for fair pay. 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, Ashley Nerbovig, at @AshleyNerbovig. Resources “Tanya Woo, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 2” from Hacks & Wonks “Tammy Morales, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 2” from Hacks & Wonks “Seattle Police Officer Probably Won't Get Fired for Laughing about Jaahnavi Kandula's Death” by Ashley Nerbovig from The Stranger “Police response time to Wing Luke Museum 911 calls raises questions about priorities” by Libby Denkmann and Sarah Leibovitz from KUOW “Seattle Police Officer Hurls Racist Slur at Chinese-American Neighbor” by Ashley Nerbovig from The Stranger “‘Feel safer yet?' Seattle police union's contempt keeps showing through” by Danny Westneat from The Seattle Times “Amid SPD controversy, Mayor Harrell leads with empathy” from Seattle Times Editorial Board “Seattle Launches Drug War 2.0” by Ashley Nerbovig from The Stranger “Council Passes New Law Empowering City Attorney to Prosecute People Who Use Drugs in Public” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola @daeshikjr on Twitter: “BREAKING: Seattle City Councilmembers revived a recently voted down bill that many community activists are calling War on Drugs 2.0. We spoke with Sara on her campaign trail about her experience with drugs, mushrooms, and what she hoped to accomplish while in office. …” “Trial begins for Tacoma officers charged with killing Manuel Ellis” by Jared Brown from KNKX “Trial of 3 Tacoma police officers accused of killing Manuel Ellis in 2020 gets underway” by Peter Talbot from The News Tribune “Historic trial begins for 3 officers charged in killing of Manny Ellis” by Patrick Malone from The Seattle Times @tacoma_action on Twitter: “Here's how you can support the family of Manuel Ellis during the trial…” Trial Information for State v. Burbank, Collins and Rankine | Pierce County Courts & Law “City Workers Rally Their Asses Off” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger 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 this week's topical shows, we continued our series of Seattle City Council candidate interviews. All 14 candidates for 7 positions were invited and we had in-depth conversations with many of them. This week, we presented District 2 candidates, Tanya Woo and Tammy Morales. 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 to the program for the first time, today's co-host: staff writer at The Stranger covering policing, incarceration and courts - and rocking that coverage - Ashley Nerbovig. Hello. [00:01:42] Ashley Nerbovig: Hey, Crystal - thanks. Hi. [00:01:43] Crystal Fincher: Glad to have you on the show. We have no shortage of things to talk about and particularly this week where everything public safety was exploding, imploding, just all over the place. I want to start off talking about a story that is now making international headlines - the release of the video of an SPD officer, a SPOG executive, mocking the death of Jaahnavi Kandula, who was killed by another policeman while she was just a pedestrian just walking and run over by a policeman who - it didn't seem like he had his lights and sirens on, going over 70 miles per hour. Just such a tragedy in the first place, and then outrage was the dominant feeling nationally, internationally when that video came out. What is going to happen or what does it look like is going to happen? You wrote a great piece this week about that. [00:02:42] Ashley Nerbovig: Yeah, he's not gonna get fired - for sure - unless something wildly out of the normal process happens. And even if that does, the arbitration process is such that they would look at the SPOG contract and be like - There was nothing in this that he did that's actually fireable. - and it's super frustrating to watch. And in that story, I break down how we've seen these cases before - that cops have said really outrageous stuff, or even done something pretty outrageous, or something that the public looks at as pretty outrageous - and the reaction has been either it's a written reprimand or it's unsustained findings. One of the examples I gave was that there was multiple officers in one car who - one of them said - they accelerate toward protesters, people can be heard to be laughing. And so one of them says - I effing hate these people - or something along those lines. And because they couldn't narrow it in and prove who said it, and none of the cops inside said who said it - it's frustrating, but it also makes sense when you read the SPOG contract - because they have to prove beyond a preponderance of evidence, which is more than 50%, which sounds like a pretty low standard to hop over. But actually, I think they did a review of a bunch of different cops' policies on what they have to prove to require discipline across the country and SPD is in a very small minority - the majority of people have something that's lower or at a preponderance of evidence, and our standard is right above it. You see all of this outrage, and then you see Andrew Lewis and Lisa Herbold and Mayor Harrell and SPOG all say, essentially - We want to watch the OPA process, we're excited to watch that investigation. - as if they don't know that anyone reading the SPOG contract, anyone who's read enough OPA cases knows that this is going to end in the cop continuing to be on the force. And to some extent, you can make the argument that if this was one isolated comment, maybe it wouldn't be a firing that was justified. But when you look at his entire career, and then when you also look at what the actual other punishments are, right? You can get suspended, but you don't have that suspension served consecutively - you can serve it throughout a year. So it means that - the whole point of having a suspension is that they don't get paid, and it hurts their bottom line, and it's something to avoid. If you're just serving out a 15-day suspension over a year, and then you're making it up with tons of overtime, what are the consequences for cops in this city? And the answer is that our police accountability systems do not have actual consequences for our officers right now. [00:05:28] Crystal Fincher: Not at all. And it's infuriating. And this has kicked off a conversation that we've had before - just talking about the SPOG contract and the importance of that - there are a lot of people who are new here who weren't paying attention several years ago. There was an attempt that the City of Seattle - the council in particular - attempted to do this. They passed police accountability legislation that tightened that up. But then the current SPOG contract that's in place - was approved by Mayor Harrell on the council, by the way, who voted for the current contract that is currently handcuffing him and preventing him from being able to do anything about this - that superseded many of the City ordinances that dealt with this. And one thing that a lot of people don't know is that contract can supersede City law. So the things that the City thinks is happening, the process that we have - our democratic, our initiative process, the council process - all falls by the wayside when this is approved. And at the time, this was approved on a narrow vote - this was not, the conversation leading up to the approval of this current contract was not like - Oh, this looks great, it's fine. Lorena González infamously toiled over the vote that she was going to do, and later said that she regretted voting to approving it. But they were warned that this was going to happen. They were warned that moving backwards on accountability was going to produce really unsavory results. And lo and behold, here we are. So once again, we're in a situation where everyone - almost everyone - agrees. Most members of the public, of the national community, international community agree this is egregious. This is unacceptable. And the City's handcuffed because of this current contract. And I just want people to be aware that the next contract is currently being negotiated. The mayor's office - the same mayor who approved this current contract - is currently negotiating this next contract. And is Bruce Harrell going to ensure that something like this can't happen again with no remedy, or recourse, or consequence? That's really going to be up to how this contract is negotiated and structured. I don't know what's going to happen with this officer in this incident - he has a long record himself of issues, complaints - and I don't know what's happening with that is going to go through this process. But the executive's office, the council who will ultimately have to approve this contract does have a say in whether or not something like this can happen again. And I think they owe the residents of the city assurances that this shouldn't happen. We're seeing so many of these examples. This isn't the first example of a death mocked - it's just the first one that we have on video that's public. There was a tombstone before, there's been social media posts before. And also the fact that this was, I believe, VP of the Seattle Police Officers Guild. When you have leaders doing this - similar to the assistant police chief in Kent who displayed literal Nazi memorabilia - that speaks to culture. These are leaders. These are people dictating what we have here. And tangentially, and this is going on while we're having a conversation about police being short-staffed, while we're having a conversation about how hard it is to recruit - after the city has thrown money and recruitment bonuses and retainment bonuses at people. And can we just acknowledge that someone looking at this, now that they have the choice to join any police department, basically, they want to - they're all hiring - why would they join Seattle? This is the recruiting problem here. It's this culture. It's this continued drumbeat of toxic, distasteful stuff. [00:09:06] Ashley Nerbovig: I think you're right about it being a culture problem. But I also think that the strength of our SPOG contract - you could make an argument that these are some of the most protected City employees. And it's across the board that people don't want to be cops. And it makes sense because even if you take away all of the controversies, local governments overall are struggling right now to recruit people for any job. And then on top of it, you're talking about a job that requires a lot of no work from home - we've had a complete culture shift in what we value about work. And I think when you look at what the job of being a cop is, it's you have to live in a certain location, basically, you can live - although Auderer lives in Olympia, I think, so you can live far away - but you have to be able to go to work in-person. And then on top of it, you're tied to all of this really negative associations that we have with cops, and this shift in how we've thought about cops. And you're competing in a really tight job market where there's a lot of really - yes, you get a lot of money being a Seattle police officer, but that requires a lot of overtime. You can make that same money just like having a normal 40-hour workweek if you work something tech, and it can also be more flexible and more remote. I just think that the problem is exactly that being a cop is not appealing, and we can't change that - no one wants these jobs. And so why are we not talking about what people do want to work and starting from that place of - people do want to help people. I think a lot of cops in those positions talk about reshifting budget priorities, and that would mean changing their jobs. But cops were the first people to tell me that they didn't want to be social workers, that they weren't trying to do social work - and that they felt like they didn't have the tools and they weren't the people to be doing mental health intervention, or drug abuse intervention. Or homelessness intervention. You can't help someone unsheltered when you're a cop. The only thing cops can do is jail. I thought something really interesting - I know this is something we're going to talk about in a bit - and I really want to say something that I thought about with the SPOG contract. One of the things that I can't remember if it was Teresa Mosqueda or Morales who said it, but one of them was like - If we aren't funding these treatment options - when they were talking about the drug vote - If we aren't funding these treatment options, and we aren't funding these diversion programs, the only thing cops are going to be able to do if they want to get someone off the street is put them in jail. And I think that people have this idea that cops have other options, but that's their tool. It's not a choice for them. The only solution for cops is to arrest - that is their main job activity. And just this idea that people don't want these jobs, they are not effective for the problems that we have, and yet we have this desperation - and Bruce Harrell has this desperation to cling to tough-on-crime policies. And it's dumb. And you don't see any solutions, but people like to pretend like they saw some improvement - when they just like the feeling of, oh - you don't see anything change when you put a tough-on-crime policy. There's this idea that all of our - anytime we do something that's like violence intervention or like a community-based approach - that we don't see the results very quickly. And it always is so funny to me, because I'm like, you don't see - no one in their day-to-day life, if we tomorrow said you can arrest - other than maybe someone who went downtown and all of the homeless people, we can't even put anyone in the King County Jail. So I don't know what they're talking about right now, but you don't actually see a marked improvement - you just get a shift in media narratives - that's all that changes, really, in my opinion. [00:12:49] Crystal Fincher: This is the same thing that we're doing - and your point is exactly correct - we're only funding one thing. And what you fund, what you put resources to, is what you're going to have. We are so desperately short of other support services, behavioral health support services. And there are entities in the process of addressing that, right? Absolutely frustrating that it's not here now, there is some work being done there. So progress is being made largely at the county level and regionally. But this is not going to work. This is the same old thing. The thing that I find troubling, particularly as a progressive political consultant, is that this makes passing progressive policy harder. Because if you dress something up like progressive policy - Oh, it's really important that we treat root causes. And yeah, we all believe it. - and they all say that until it's time to actually put their money where their mouth is, to actually do the thing, to implement it. And then what we get is this warmed-over piece of legislation that does one of the things - yes, we can arrest - and makes it harder than it was before to do the other things. And it was astronomically hard before. We know what's going to happen with this. So the real question is, so what are they going to blame for the failure of this next? What excuse is coming up next? I talk to a lot of people, lay people, some people - I just like hearing an unfiltered opinion of someone who's not an insidery insider and paying attention to all the policy and stuff. And you would be shocked by how many people who are - they don't consider themselves super leftist, probably general Democrats, but they don't really pay attention to much - who are under the impression that Seattle's progressive city council has run amok. And it's like, when it comes to public safety, they are not passing progressive policy. Unfortunately, the conservative council - that is the policy that we have and that we've continued. And when everybody rushes to put that label on it - we're going to see a lot of political communication coming up soon, where I'm sure everybody is going to call themselves a progressive, probably pragmatic progressive, responsible progressive - but like they cling to that word and they want to present their policy is that. But when it's not, all it does is hurt actual progressive policy. So it's important for people to stand up and be like - No, we see that, and we see that it's not what the community is demanding and asking for. It's just really frustrating. We should probably get back to some of this news a little bit. [00:15:02] Ashley Nerbovig: There's just one last thing I want to say about Danny Westneat - this is going back a couple topics, but it was something that you said about the SPOG contract and that this is the leadership of SPOG. And Danny had a - bless his heart, he tried, probably - I quote tweeted it when I read the first couple of graphs. And then I went back and read his whole column about Auderer - I can't even say his last name - but the SPOG VP's comments. And he said quite a few things that were just absolutely ridiculous, where he talks about how SPOG uses public safety as a bargaining chip and says essentially - Oh, it'd be a shame if something happened to this beautiful city of yours. And then he goes on to give them that bargaining chip and say that Seattle desperately needs more cops. And then he goes to talking about how - he names a city that basically did defund because they also broke up their cop union. And it's just such a wild series of thoughts. And he concludes it on - SPOG needs to clean house. And it's so frustrating - even if you're just thinking of it logically - if you are a member of SPOG, and your vice president has gotten out of this many OPA investigations with little to no punishment - you don't think they know who is leading them? That's who I want as my union vice president - I want someone who's gotten away with a bunch of stuff - that is how you stay safe and stay protected - and who's going to clean house - the leadership? The leadership is the problem. Anyway, I just wanted to fully round that out by giving Danny like a 2 out of 5 stars on that column. [00:16:35] Crystal Fincher: There are a lot of people who are like - Wow, okay, didn't think there was going to be a day where many of them agreed with Danny Westneat. He got some of the way there. I think one of the challenges with that is a tendency to view unions as separate from workers, and the union as separate from the cops. They are elected by their peers in the union - this is representative of the culture, this is the result of them saying these are the people we feel best represent us. And this is what it is. If that's not a red flag, I don't know what is - but here we are. And it's hard for me to separate SPOG versus police because SPOG is police. And it's just time we had a serious conversation about real accountability. And it's a tangible conversation - there is someone responsible for this, there is an intervention that can work here - we can negotiate this. It's up to the mayor, the people on negotiating committee, it's up to the council who's going to approve this. This doesn't just happen - they're permitted to happen by a contract that is in place. And if we're unhappy with it, and if City Hall can't see that the people are unhappy with a contract that enables this, the question is - particularly for Bruce Harrell, who is the boss of the police department - they literally report to him, police chief literally reports to him, direct report, his responsibility. What is he going to do now? Is he going to respond to this and say, I'm going to ensure this doesn't happen again? Because that's a buck-stops-here attitude that is normally expected of an executive. That's the job. What is he going to do to ensure this doesn't happen again? How is he going to live up to his word that he's going to improve the culture and improve public safety? We're waiting. And it seems like they're just permitting this. They're just - Oh, that's too bad. [00:18:20] Ashley Nerbovig: The Seattle editorial board said he's been leading with empathy. If anyone really wants to rage out, read that editorial. I don't know if Bruce called and said he was going to cancel the whole city's subscription to The Seattle Times, but it's just absolute garbage. Kandula was killed while Officer Kevin Dave was responding to a guy who had too much cocaine and wasn't even ODing. Rich, my editor, said this to me earlier this week, where he was like, we were talking about the drug vote, and he was saying - This is just another example of how cops shouldn't be the ones responding to people overdosing. EMTs can go to these things. [00:18:56] Crystal Fincher: And do in most other cities - without police, to be clear. [00:18:59] Ashley Nerbovig: And you mentioned earlier that it was unclear about his lights. And I don't know for sure what was going on there, because I know his in-car video wasn't working. But I've read another OPA case where someone had said that a cop was just turning on his lights and sirens to get through red lights - and the justification for that that they showed was that it was like - oh, he was tactically using his lights and sirens, which means that they only turn them on to get through lights and stuff, even though he's responding to a call. And when they do that, it means that their in-car video doesn't turn on. And that's allowed because - oh, it's a tactic. And super curious to see the end of this OPA report for Kevin Dave. EMTs are not worried about sneaking up on people - they just turn on their lights and go. But yeah, it's going to be really frustrating to watch. [00:19:45] Crystal Fincher: So now can you break down what this legislation does? Because I've seen it characterized in a number of different ways - Oh, it's making drugs illegal. It's like doing different things. What did this legislation actually change? [00:19:56] Ashley Nerbovig: This particular piece of legislation - to do my full roundup of this - everybody knows that in 2021, the Washington Supreme Court struck down our felony drug possession law. The Washington State Legislature scrambled to pass something - and they passed this idea of we're going to do two referrals to treatment before we arrest anyone, and we're only going to arrest on a misdemeanor, and that went across the state for people in possession of drugs. That went on for two years and it was unworkable - they didn't structure it, they didn't create a database for people to be marking referrals - it's called a stopgap measure. It was one of those things where it was a really half thought-out piece of what potentially could be progressive legislation, did more harm than just making it a misdemeanor and then trying to talk about decriminalization a little bit later - I think that might have actually ended up being strategically a better way to go, except you would have seen a bunch of people arrested in that time. The result is that they came back this session and they said - Okay, no. They had that big fight and they said - We're going to make it a gross misdemeanor, your first two offenses you're going to get a maximum sentence of 180 days, any offenses after that you're going to go up to 364 days. And they said - We prefer people defer to treatment, we prefer cops defer. - that was one thing that Herbold and Lewis both kept saying is - their City bill, that it was different from the state bill and that it starts the diversion out of the system process at the cop level before people even have a case started, whereas they kept describing the state bill as getting started. There are multiple places throughout the system that you can get diverted - you can get diverted before you get arrested so there's never anything on your record, you can get diverted after you've been arrested by the cops and now the prosecutors are in charge of your case and they defer any charges or defer any charges from getting actually convicted and then you're able to get it off of your record. So that's deferred prosecution. And then there's, you can get stuff - after you've been sentenced, you can get stuff wiped off your record. The argument that the City was making in how their bill was different from the state bill is they're saying - Oh, we really make it clear that our policy is not to arrest. The state bill does too. They say that it's their preference that people are diverted to treatment rather than be arrested. They also put a bunch of deferred prosecution stuff in there to divert people out of the system once they have charges against them. It's easier to talk about what this bill didn't do. It set a policy that said - This is our preference by the City of Seattle. So the state law was already in place. And now because it's a misdemeanor, state law passes - that starts in August, like everything gets implemented. So technically, cops could find people who were using drugs in public or possessing drugs in public and arrest them on a gross misdemeanor. And I think the using is such an interesting part of this, because there's nothing about possession as a charge that doesn't get at the same thing that public use does. When you make it all about public use and you add public use plus possession to this law, it is such a dog whistle towards people who are just mad at unhoused people. Morales said something really clear in the City Council vote, which was that this bill is not going to curb public use because the people who this bill is targeting have nowhere else to use. And so the state law passes, SPD cops can do this. But if SPD cops right now in Seattle - or right before this, because Harrell signed the bill yesterday - before this bill passed, if they arrested someone, their charges, because Seattle doesn't have its own ordinance, would have gone to Leesa Manion's office, the King County Prosecutor's, which would have made a ton of sense. King County Prosecutor's has a bunch of programs already in place for this - they've already been dealing with felony versions of this for a long time. But her office did a weird thing and got really like - We don't have the misdemeanor staff to handle this and these felony drug courts that we have wouldn't even apply to this. They did a bunch of workarounds - they really quashed the idea of these cases getting referred to them really early on, or at least they asked for money from us that apparently City Council just was unwilling to try to negotiate - or they were unwilling to negotiate trying to work out a contract. I never really understood what her motivations were with that or were slamming it down so hard. And so the City said - We're going to implement this ordinance and we're going to send these cases to our city attorney, Republican Ann Davison. So that's what this law does is that it doesn't - anyone who describes it - all that this law does is say that now Ann Davison can prosecute these cases, and also we would really like it if cops didn't arrest people on these charges. And it says - and I'll give them this - it adds a bunch of paperwork that cops now need to have when they do arrest someone on a drug possession charge. But I think Morales really summed it up really well where she said - This does not expand any diversion, it doesn't expand any treatment. - and this is probably a little bit more opinion-based, but - It doesn't improve public safety in any way. And I think that's so key is that we can ask - even if it's not, even if you aren't someone that believes in the nefarious, like that cops are all like Auderer and don't care about behavioral health and don't really look at people who are addicts on the street as someone that needs public health intervention - let's buy the premise that there are well-meaning cops out there who want to take these people to treatment. We do not have resources. And this idea that - in the City Council staff member, or the City Council Central Staff's memo, they said - Diversion requires social workers. These are actually much longer, much more resource-intensive cases. And cops are going to maybe divert the first or second time that they find someone, but then there's no resources to pick that person up - there's nothing to actually help them, maybe they're not ready to get treatment yet. And at some point, they're just going to arrest them and they're going to go through all of the charges. And maybe they're not going to go to jail because King County won't take them right now, but it's creating the structure for that. And they're still going to have to continue to show up at municipal court until they get something on their record that ends up putting them in jail. And we know how bad jail is - we know that it increases the chances of overdose. I think this bill kills people - I think that's the bottom line of what this bill does - is that it's going to kill a bunch of people, and make a bunch of people poorer, and do nothing to curb drug addiction, and fill our jails, and just continue the cycle of mass incarceration. [00:26:51] Crystal Fincher: The outcomes from this type of policy are clear. We have so much information about what happens when you do just fund, enable sending people to jail without doing anything to address the root causes for why they're there. Also, there are some people rejoicing over this - like it is going to help - I'll be curious to see their evaluation after a period of time, to see what their perception of what results. But it's just frustrating because we could choose to do what has shown to be effective elsewhere. Everybody is frustrated. I don't think anyone is happy. I don't want to be in a space where someone is using publicly, right? And perhaps inhaling secondhand something or whatever. But I also recognize that generally people who do use in public don't have another place to use. And if it is an issue of - addiction isn't logical, right? Addiction isn't reasonable. It's not - Oh, there are consequences for me going to jail now, so I'm just going to stop being addicted. The thing about addiction is that you can't decide to stop being addicted. It's not up to you. And that people fall into addiction for a variety of reasons. And being addicted is a reality that so many people face - to treat it as like they're less than human for struggling with that particular issue is ridiculous. But we do that from a public safety perspective. And as you said, this is going to largely wind up targeting the homeless - that's usually who this applies to - people. We can talk about the drug habits of executives and rich people, and the rates of drug use are not low across the board. I always find it so curious. We drug test minimum wage and low wage workers, but not high wage executives. I'm pretty confident what results we would see if we did that. There's an interesting video with Sara Nelson - yeah, speaking of politicians using drugs, and then voting on drug ordinances - but Sara Nelson has a place to use privately. That's the difference. [00:28:52] Ashley Nerbovig: Because we're going after public use, we're not going after possession. And the casual way she talks about it - you are aware that you are growing drugs, and you're telling people where to find drugs - and I can hear her argument against this, right? But the point of it is that drugs are not inherently dangerous, and it was incredibly frustrating to watch that video. And then think about the fact that when this was in front of the Public Safety Committee, Mosqueda came out and said - I want to make it very clear that lots of public health agencies at this point have said that breathing in secondhand fentanyl smoke is not dangerous to your health. I am someone who opens a window if someone blows vape smoke too close to me - I don't like it, I don't want that smell, I am not totally convinced that the smell will not linger. But it's like that, right - it's a smell, I'm not worried about getting a nicotine contact high. And the way that fentanyl gets demonized as the worst drug that we've ever seen, it's part of how we can dehumanize the people who are using it. And I think it's so interesting, because if you ask someone to class their own drugs, shrooms and weed and cocaine would be the bourgeoisie of drugs - they're allowed, it's fine - alcohol. All of those things are totally fine. And the people who use them are not degenerates or any way bad. Maybe cocaine. But for the most part, we are totally okay with those kinds of drugs, no matter how alcohol is still one of the most harmful substances in our society. Whenever I call the King County Medical Examiner's Board to get the overdose deaths, it's overdose deaths and deaths due to alcoholism. But they're longer term, right? So I'm not saying that - fentanyl is absolutely killing people - it's in everything. And it is a new, very scary problem because we don't have a ton of ways to treat it. But it doesn't change the fundamentals of what we're seeing, which is you had someone like Sara Nelson who struggled with her own story of addiction. But as soon as it becomes a drug that they view as dirty or not fun to scavenge for, you get this attitude of - We need to crack down on this. And that's how it's got to be a punishment-based system - it's not a conversation, it's not help, it's not treatment - we've got to really show these people the errors, the way to be, and improve their life. And it's just so condescending. [00:31:30] Crystal Fincher: This is the crack playbook at play. And again, to be clear, not at all saying that fentanyl is not very troublesome, problematic, and that we don't want people using that. Those are all true. But to say somehow a unique and unsolvable addiction issue as opposed to opioids, as opposed to all of the other things. The one thing that we know is that there are new drugs created all the time for a variety of things. There's going to be something more potent. Fentanyl is not the last, right? It's just the current. There is going to be a next. We've been playing this cat and mouse game with the War on Drugs, with all that we're doing - it's here. But hearing the language around that is the same tactic that happened with crack, right? And the justification to pass a ton of laws, super harsh penalties, mandating mandatory time, adding it as a strike for possessing crack, lower thresholds for dealing and all of that, as opposed to cocaine, which was used by a different demographic largely and fueled there. This is pretty transparent. And unfortunately, you hear a lot of the rhetoric in public meetings. You hear it from people - Oh man, this fentanyl, these people are like zombies, this is something completely new we haven't seen before. Those are all the same things that they said with crack. Those are all the same things that they say with the new drug that they want to use when they're in the mood to crack down and jail people - here is where we're at. Acting like fentanyl is just - oh, if you're addicted, you're lost, you're hopeless, is untrue. It is a dangerous drug. We need to address it. Public health approaches have a better record of doing that than punitive jail-based approaches. But it's a problem that we do need to get our arms around, but we make it harder to do that when we pursue policies to jail - which are very expensive to do in every single way. And then say - Sorry, we just don't have the resources to provide more treatment services, to provide more behavioral health services, to provide more housing, to provide detox for people. Those are all necessary for us to deal with this problem, and we just aren't doing it. I would like to do it. I would like to meaningfully address this - most people would - but this makes it much harder. I do want to talk about this week, a very important - and for our state historic - trial starting, of the three officers accused of murdering Manny Ellis. What is happening here? [00:33:58] Ashley Nerbovig: Yeah. So they're still in jury selection. It's going to be a long, drawn-out process. I think opening statements start October 2nd. And for people who don't know the case, Manny Ellis was an unarmed Black man who was in Tacoma - this was March before George Floyd's death, and there are so many parallels. Everything that is terrible about George Floyd is terrible in this case. Bob Ferguson comes in, says that he's going to investigate this case, does an investigation. Tacoma Police Department does not cooperate with Washington State Patrol. Washington State Patrol and AG Ferguson ends up creating this probable cause statement and now three officers, three men are all on trial this week. Or the trial is starting and jury selection is starting. And there's one guy who - I can't remember his name now - but he's live tweeting all of it. And there's been some really interesting tidbits. One of the jurors - the judge asked if there were any jurors who might have conflicts presiding over a case involving law enforcement, no one raised their hands, and then the judge looks at this guy and says - But didn't you say you have a brother in law enforcement? And there's no other details, but that's where it's starting right now. And it'll be a really interesting case - it's horrible to see these cases get to this point - and you wonder about, I don't know anything about the disciplinary records of these cops. But yeah, that's where it's starting. And that's the background on it. [00:35:14] Crystal Fincher: And certainly - it's a trial. And I generally try not to follow these things or get emotionally invested in these trials - for good reason - they often don't seem to wind up with justice, and even what is justice when your loved one, someone you care about, a human being is killed. And just also lifting up - we hear about all these cases around the country - we have more than enough here locally. There's another police officer from Auburn currently awaiting trial for killing Jesse Sarey in Auburn. It's really troubling. And we also have family and friends of Manny dealing with this and having to once again hear the horrific details of this killing. And they're continuing to call for the firing of the cops who've been on payroll this entire time, who are still on payroll. There's a GoFundMe for the family. And court is something that people can show up to and show support if they want to do that also. It's a tragedy. And I hope the family is able to find peace and healing and that this can assist with that. I have no idea where they stand on this, but certainly, I'm thinking of them as this trial continues to go on. Last thing I want to talk about today is Seattle City employees rallying for fair pay. Why did this rally happen? [00:36:38] Ashley Nerbovig: Shout out to Hannah Krieg - she got all the great quotes for this one. This rally happened because apparently, and I'm quoting directly from her story - Bruce Harrell is funny, he's a funny guy, and if this is true, I believe it - Mayor Harrell told them to rally their asses off. The City started their negotiations for a pay increase of 1% and has settled on a pay increase of 2%. And the City workers are saying that's an insane way to start negotiations in one of the most expensive cities in the country. She puts this really good stat in there - that's a pay cut as the cost of, a 1% cost of living adjustment or even a 2% cost of living adjustment is a pay cut as the cost of living rose 8.7% this year. It's really important to note that the SPOG contract guarantees at minimum like a 1.5%, I think - I did a little tweet about this - it's plus COLA or something. But effectively, regardless of what their contract says, they have never gone a year without at least a 3% increase. Lieutenants and higher up guilds just got like a 4% increase. Sometimes I'll get these emails from the mayor's office that's - I'm really like unhappy with how you've portrayed us as prioritizing police. We really prioritize like other things too. - and it's, you can see it, where their money is going. So the workers are contract, are striking because they're not getting, at minimum, just keeping up with inflation. And the City of Seattle seems to think this is just like across the board, boy to cut is in general services and for the city. And that's - I really encourage people to follow Hannah's coverage on this because she's really on top of it. [00:38:17] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's really challenging. We talked about police saying they have a shortage of officers and all of the action that has been taken to fix that including a retention bonus, healthy retention bonuses. And so we're talking about the shortages in the rest of the city, and it just doesn't seem like there is the interest in making sure the City is able to provide essential services and the level of service for everything that is currently happening and that people expect. There have been several council candidates who have said and agreed with - Yeah, we should be giving City workers the same kind of retention bonuses, investing in their retention, doing something tangible to actually address the shortage here. And we're going to be seeing Mayor Harrell's budget come out pretty soon. It's going to be interesting to see how he deals with that and what it is because a budget is a value statement - that's a document of values - where you're spending your money is what you value the most. And other things - you can talk about them and say they're great, but if you aren't funding them, clearly they were lower on the priority list in your estimation. And he may have his reasons to justify that. But it is disingenuous to say - Oh, I completely prioritize that, I value that, and I'm just not going to fund that while I'm going to fund this other thing. So it will be interesting to see. But it seems like the City has a lot of work to do to start to step up. And everyone on the campaign trail talks about their values and making sure people can live where they work, how important that is to our economy - and it absolutely is important - again, what tangibly is going to be done about that? What are we going to see in that budget? And if not, just what is really the tangible impact of that? So we'll continue to follow that. But certainly workers see some definite red flags there and are rallying to make sure people understand that this is a problem that has consequences for the entire city and beyond. And for all the plans that people say they have, they're going to rely on these employees to execute them. So we better make sure that there are people in place to deliver on the policy that we pass as a city. [00:40:34] Ashley Nerbovig: Yeah, I hope we get a strike. I think it would be good for people to feel what happens when they don't - I think that a lot of these services are invisible. And we already see that SPOG is doing all these sick-outs and they're not responding to calls - and a lot of them are blaming it on the staffing shortages. When you hear about sick-outs, you get a little bit curious about those call response times. I hope it turns into a strike because I think people do need to realize how essential these workers are. [00:41:00] Crystal Fincher: Certainly the public - some people definitely see that, some people definitely don't. But a strike will be a failure, right? We're having a rally because an initial offer was pretty insulting. It was not a serious offer. It's a pay cut. If you're starting saying - Okay, how big a pay cut are you going to take to people who are already short-staffed and overworked? Because really, let's talk about it. When we talk about short staffing, that means that the same amount of work is falling on fewer heads. And that's a hard position to be in - and many of these positions aren't like super high-paid positions anyway. People are struggling to just pay their bills and work is getting harder, and now you're going to ask them to take a pay cut. And being disrespectful when that happens - Okay, go rally your ass off. So I hope there is more respect in this process and that lines of communication open and are productive. Because strikes are disruptive, right? They're not fun, they create a lot of drama. It may come to that - and I absolutely support workers' rights to strike and sometime that's necessary to get the job done - but I hope it doesn't come to that. I hope they are able to talk. But it's going to take more respect from the City perspective, realistically - they just aren't starting in a serious place. [00:42:14] Ashley Nerbovig: Yeah, I like what you said there. It would be a failure. My chaotic evil side is - yeah, disrupt it, show people that you exist and stuff. But you're right. It would suck for these workers to have to go on strike because - the no pay and I'm sure they have a fund - you're 100% correct. What I would actually like to see is Mayor Harrell care about these people the way that he has been so consistently able to show care for our police department. [00:42:44] Crystal Fincher: I completely agree. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, September 22, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is the incredible Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was staff writer at The Stranger covering policing, incarceration and the courts, Ashley Nerbovig. You can find Ashley on Twitter at @AshleyNerbovig, A-S-H-L-E-Y N-E-R-B-O-V-I-G. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. You can find me on just about every platform at @finchfrii, that's F-I-N-C-H F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks - wherever you want to listen to us, you can listen to us - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar of your favorite pod player. And 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 - it really helps us out. 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.

death black washington state rich seattle board public addiction george floyd trial nazis democrats acting hacks kent stranger candidate gofundme laughing auburn manny morales war on drugs city council cola fentanyl tacoma city hall spd lieutenant burbank opa week in review harrell diversion seattle times get fired emts king county seattle city council sara nelson mosqueda andrew lewis public safety committee bob ferguson washington supreme court jared brown washington state legislature wonks od'ing lorena gonz wing luke museum patrick malone manuel ellis manny ellis spog teresa mosqueda mayor bruce harrell tammy morales erica c barnett ann davison mayor harrell king county jail jaahnavi kandula seattle city council district

The Alley Vol. 2 | Bad Beats | Franke Case Update

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 21, 2023 57:11

In this eye-opening podcast episode, we delve deep into a series of shocking cases where law enforcement, the very guardians sworn to protect us, fell short of their duty. Join us as we uncover the disturbing details behind the Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt child abuse case in Utah, a troubling incident in Columbus, OH, where officers allegedly blamed an 11-year-old victim of an online predator, and the disheartening story of an officer in Seattle who callously laughed at the tragic death of 23-year-old college student Jaahnavi Kandula.These harrowing accounts shed light on the failures within the justice system, raising critical questions about accountability, transparency, and the very essence of law enforcement's commitment to safeguarding the public. Join the conversation and be part of the movement to demand justice, accountability, and reform within our law enforcement agencies. Don't miss this thought-provoking episode that challenges us all to ask, "How can we ensure our protectors truly protect us?" #JusticeForAll #PoliceAccountability #InjusticeUnveiledBecome a patronContact TashaFollow me on FacebookResources:Franke Case:https://people.com/ruby-frankes-husband-didnt-want-leave-him-wont-sling-mud-lawyer-7971592https://www.newsnationnow.com/danabramslive/ruby-franke-kevin-franke-manipulated/https://www.ksl.com/article/50732942/ruby-frankes-attorney-expects-her-to-be-incarcerated-for-the-foreseeable-futureColumbus police:https://www.tiktok.com/@___meg___23/video/7280243377055059230?lang=en&q=police%20blame%20girl%20instead%20of%20pedi&t=1695230051659https://www.insider.com/columbus-chief-police-apologizes-officer-blamed-girl-11-being-groomed-2023-9Seattle Officer Laughs at Death of Studenthttps://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/in-seattle-the-shocking-laughter-heard-round-the-world/https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Z0KPzar0m1oPalate cleanser cop story:https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/gamer-cop-turns-complaint-call-against-young-man-into-opportunity-to-playtogether-online-watch/Music: https://www.purple-planet.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/true-crime-by-the-book/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

music death seattle utah columbus alley franke ruby franke bad beats jaahnavi kandula

First Move

My Thoughts My Faults

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 20, 2023 72:09

00:00 - when the pod set changes the show gets bad?02:50 - do sisters do what brothers do?03:30 -Mexican independence day Chicago07:50 - the VMA's used to be a big deal11:50 - Nicki Minaj lowers her stock by talking16:00 - Megan thee stallion and Justin Timberlake expose how fake media be18:00 - Googly-Eyed-Bitch21:50 - Bongos23:30 - Chris Brown Vs Tinashe27:30 - DDG slap31:00 - ever been slapped awake?33:00 - Diddy and Nas new album36:40 - Coach Prime41:20 - Couples breaking up46:20 - ashton kutcher and mila kunis under fire over danny masterson48:45 - Drake drop approaching52:20 - Seattle police caught on camera laughing about a girl that was hit by their cruiser56:00 -Elon can go fuck himself 58:50 - Who makes the first move after a successful date?

September 19, 2023 . Seattle officer laughs at death of a student.

Black Information Network Daily

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 19, 2023 10:25 Transcription Available

On today's podcast , Host Ramses Ja offers his perspective on the tragic story of Seattle officer Daniel Auderer laughing about the fatal collision that took the life of 23 year old student Jaahnavi Kandula,See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

death seattle student officer laughs jaahnavi kandula

Hour 1: Rally held where Seattle police officer hit and killed woman

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 16, 2023 30:18

3pm - Rally held where Seattle police officer hit and killed woman // Seattle police union responds to backlash over Jaahnavi Kandula's death // The Dating Pool Dropouts // It's the Breakfast of Champions No More: Cereal Is in Long-Term DeclineSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

woman seattle breakfast killed rally police officers seattle police jaahnavi kandula

Ellen's Mom; Seattle 'Xenophobic' Police; And Other Communism | Fri. 9-15-23

The Hake Report

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 15, 2023 119:48

Jake Paul-Vivek collab. German climate roadblock. Ellen's Early Life check. Seattle cop hit India pedestrian. Mitt texted Mitch. Gen Z stressed over money. The Hake Report, Friday, September 15, 2023 AD TIME STAMPS * (0:00:00) Start, music heads up* (0:00:55) Topics: Jake Paul, German Climate, Bill Maher, Ellen, Seattle police* (0:03:29) Hey, guys! (Mild) hot-sauce tee (gift: Carver, Snake Pit)* (0:08:25) Jake Paul, Vivek TikTok dance* (0:17:59) German climate protesters: Police stop cussing drivers!* (0:25:18) Bill Maher, scab restarts show without writers on strike!* (0:34:36) Ellen Degeneres early life, evil mother, "wife" Portia* (0:50:33) Supers: Apple copystrike? Anton, Landlords, JAH, Ellen/Tim Cook* (0:58:32) 這個冬天不太冷 (Zhe Ge Dong Tian Bu Tai Leng, This winter is not too cold) Jacky Cheung (1995)* (1:05:10) Supers: Yellow tee, Gay-rated, DLive, Groucho, Taco Bell* (1:13:41) Seattle police struck, Jaahnavi Kandula, India grad student, joked* (1:22:19) Mitt Romney texted Mitch before J6 (Kyle Griffin, MSNBC)* (1:29:30) NICK, WA: Conflicting reports, India pedestrians, back the blue* (1:39:36) False start, John, KY: "naggers," racism* (1:40:32) Gen-Z stressed about money, bad mental health? (Gallup)* (1:48:42) WILLIAM, CA: Self-driving cars, no thanks! * (1:57:06) Silence but for the Gentle Tinkling of the Flowing Creek - Frog Eyes (2004, Ego Scriptor)BLOG https://www.thehakereport.com/blog/2023/9/15/the-hake-report-fri-9-15-23 PODCAST by HAKE SubstackLive M-F 9-11 AM PT (11-1 CT / 12-2 ET) Call-in 1-888-775-3773 – thehakereport.com VIDEO YouTube | Rumble* | Facebook | X | BitChute | Odysee* PODCAST Apple | Spotify | Castbox | Substack (RSS) *SUPER CHAT on asterisked above, or BuyMeACoffee | Streamlabs | Ko-fi SUPPORT HAKE Substack | SubscribeStar | Locals || SHOP Teespring ALSO SEE Hake News on The JLP Show | Appearances (other shows, etc.) JLP Network: JLP | Church | TFS | Hake | Nick | Joel | Hassan Get full access to HAKE at thehakereport.substack.com/subscribe

seattle german police silence gen z false taco bell msnbc jake paul anton ky communism landlords gallup mitt romney ellen degeneres mild bill maher mitt carver early life jah groucho dlive snake pit hake jacky cheung et call jaahnavi kandula

Week in Review: September 15, 2023 - with Erica Barnett

Seattle's Morning News with Dave Ross

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 15, 2023 34:51

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.

tv interview washington office seattle write george floyd political republicans democrats paying hacks democratic stranger wa candidate rv ferguson att barnett city hall spd desc jumps week in review harrell pedestrian seattle times dones weirdly jay inslee arresting reichert five year plan city attorney kiro seattle city council tim burgess solan jason rantz public safety committee bob ferguson jenny durkan rich smith durkan wonks attorney general bob ferguson spog king county council semi bird teresa mosqueda mayor bruce harrell erica c barnett city attorney's office jaahnavi kandula mike solan seattle city council district

The Possible Government Shutdown

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 15, 2023 25:46

Margaret Brennan on the possible government shutdown // Feliks Banel with All Over The Map - the history of the Ship Canal Bridge // Paul Holden on the Seattle Symphony's newest special concerts on iconic video game music // Dose of Kindness -- A member of the New Orleans Saints makes the day of kids in Louisiana // Ursula Reutin on the death of Jaahnavi Kandula, and the need for police accountabilitySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Bodycam Video: SPD Officer Heard Laughing About Woman Hit, Killed by Cop Car

Washington in Focus

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 14, 2023 3:29

The Seattle Office of Police Accountability is investigating footage of a police officer who made light of a pedestrian who was struck and killed by a Seattle police vehicle in January. The Seattle Police Department released footage showing Seattle Police Officers Guild Vice President Daniel Auderer on a phone call, reportedly with Seattle Police Officers Guild President Mike Solan, on Jan. 23. That night, Jaahnavi Kandula, 23, was hit and killed by a marked Seattle police vehicle going 74 mph in an intersection. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/washington-in-focus/support

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Week in Review: June 23, 2023 - with Erica Barnett

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 24, 2023 36:02

This week in review, Crystal is joined by Seattle political reporter and editor of PubliCola Erica Barnett! They discuss Everett's OceanGate Inc.'s submersible tragedy, King County Regional Homelessness Authority turmoil, Burien's continuing crisis, a poll showing residents favor a capital gains tax for Seattle, Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell leaving the mayor's office, what may happen to the officer who hit and killed Jaahnavi Kandula, and local publications not crediting Erica and Publicola for their work. 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 “Jorge Barón, Candidate for King County Council District 4” from Hacks & Wonks “Homelessness Authority Distances Itself from Lived Experience Coalition, Won't Re-Bid Entire System This Year as Planned” from PubliCola “Homelessness Authority Attempts to Wrest Control Over Controversial, Consequential Oversight Board” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola “Burien planning commissioner removal is latest in string of encampment drama” by Anna Patrick from The Seattle Times “Burien Decides to Take No Action on Encampment on Its Property, Opening Path for Private Sweep” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola “Poll shows Seattle residents support citywide capital gains tax” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times “Mayor Harrell's niece out as senior deputy mayor” by Sarah Grace Taylor from The Seattle Times “Seattle Police Officer Was Driving 74 MPH When He Hit and Killed 23-Year-Old Pedestrian” 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 Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. If you missed our Tuesday topical show, I chatted with Jorge Barón about his campaign for King County Council District 4, why he decided to run, how 17 years at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project has prepared him for the role, and his thoughts on generating progressive revenue for county services, drug possession and substance use disorder, addressing overcrowding in the King County Jail, improving frontline worker wages and workforce issues, air quality and climate change, and the importance of oversight in genuine community engagement and policy implementation. Today, we are continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Seattle political reporter, editor of PubliCola, co-host of the Seattle Nice podcast, and author of Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery, Erica Barnett. [00:01:46] Erica Barnett: Great to be here. [00:01:47] Crystal Fincher: This has been one wild week of news. I guess we will start out talking about the Everett submersible tragedy - what we now know is a tragedy - and just an odd situation. And to me, really, the height of hubris. What did you see as this unfolded and what are your thoughts? [00:02:08] Erica Barnett: Yeah, hubris is such a great word to describe what happened in this tragedy involving five people who went down in the submersible that - the stories are coming out now about the extent to which it was not safe and people were, within the company, were blowing the whistle. A guy was let go after saying - This, we need to do more safety analysis of this submarine, submersible rather - I don't really know the difference but it's a submersible. And it seemed like a pretty unsafe situation for everybody involved, yet the owner of the company essentially said safety checks are stupid, regulation is anti-innovation, and I'm going to go down in the sub that's run by a PlayStation controller, and everything's going to be good. And for the sake of what? It's deep sea tourism for rich people and they can call themselves explorers all they want, but the Titanic where they were going to - where they ultimately met their fate - is one of the most explored deep sea artifacts known to man. So this just, it just felt like such an avoidable tragedy if the people who ran this company, the people who surrounded the guy who ran this company, were willing to just put their foot down and say no. But of course, it's very hard to say no to billionaires with big egos - look at Elon Musk and his plan for going to Mars and space exploration and his exploding rockets. [00:03:44] Crystal Fincher: It absolutely is hubris. It absolutely was a tragedy several years in the making, and this guy believed his own hype despite the fact that his craft was the only one like it, it wasn't certified for the job that it was actually doing. He thought the certifications were frivolous and just got in the way of innovation. And even his industry association wrote him, basically begging him to stop taking passengers and to really reevaluate what he was doing with that craft. And even if you do want to move forward and support innovation, they're like - Yeah, okay, then go down by yourself - don't take paying passengers who aren't engineers or explorers themselves. This is really irresponsible, this is going to end in a tragedy. And it absolutely did. I just, I feel bad for the 19 year old who evidently had a bad feeling - wisely - looking at the facts of the situation, the disclaimer that they were asked to sign, and his relatives said that he basically went to please his dad. That's really unfortunate. But my goodness the hubris involved, and it's just a reminder that just because we can do something doesn't mean that we should do something. And take a look at - is this really something we should be doing? Why are we going down to look at the Titanic? It's basically a graveyard at this point in time. What are we getting from doing that? I just - there's so much that is beyond me with this. [00:05:16] Erica Barnett: Yeah, there was discussion about what the - in one of the articles I was reading - about what the purpose of this was. And I think their stated justification was - Well, we're studying the way that the Titanic wreckage is decaying over time. But they were going down every year - that's BS - it was, it's an ego trip. And I think this is a general lesson that people who think they're smarter than experts could take to heart, which is that expertise matters and experience doing something matters. And if you are saying the laws of physics don't apply to you, you should talk to some people who know about the laws of physics. And if you're saying engineers are boring, which is a paraphrase of something that Stockton Rush, the head of the company, said - he said, We don't want a bunch of 50-something year old guys, we want young innovators. Those 50-something year old guys were the ones telling him that this wasn't safe and that's not what he wanted to hear. But it turns out, they actually knew what they were talking about. [00:06:14] Crystal Fincher: They did. And it just reminds me so much of - we've heard so many - really tech entrepreneurs most of all - talking about disruption, talking about how regulations and traditional processes are just passe and they get in the way of innovation. And all of these regulations are unnecessary and bad and get in the way of - these entrepreneurs just trying to do their thing and innovate. And they're there for a reason. We have seen how so many of those tales wind up and it turns out they weren't doing anything mind blowing, technologically groundbreaking. They were just looking at different ways to exploit the system. And it feels like this was another thing where he was looking for some loopholes to get through, felt really smart for supposedly figuring it out. But there's a reason that happens - regulations, as they say, are written in blood. And here's yet another example. So I just hope people learn the lesson with this, and we don't see another replay - we'll see how that works out. I also want to talk about the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, which just has a lot going on. What is this week's news? [00:07:29] Erica Barnett: Boy, where to start - there's going to be a meeting today. So I guess I'll start in reverse chronological order - there's going to be a meeting today to essentially take over control of the Continuum of Care Board, which is an obscure but very important body that oversees federal funding that comes in from HUD, but that had a big controversy earlier this year - as I reported - when one of the members of the board shouted down another member over the proposed appointment of a sex offender who had targeted teenage girls to the board. That blew up in a big way, it got picked up all over right wing media - which really distorted the story quite a bit and demonized this volunteer board member. And now I think in the fallout from that and with the departure of former CEO Marc Dones, the KCRHA is trying to get control over that board in a literal way. They're adopting a new charter that essentially takes away some of the board's powers to appoint its own members and that sort of thing. So that is happening today. The KCRHA was also supposed to rebid the entire homelessness system. So basically start from zero, we're going to rebid all these contracts, it might be a whole new set of players - that was supposed to happen next year. And it's not going to happen now until at least the year after that. So there's just a lot of retrenchment going on with the departure of Marc Dones. Helen Howell is the interim CEO and I think that she is trying to do a lot of damage control. They're distancing themselves from this group called the Lived Experience Coalition that had a lot of power in the old structure. So there's a lot of just change and churn happening at the organization right now. [00:09:05] Crystal Fincher: There's a lot of change and churn. We've also seen an op-ed earlier this month, from King County Councilmember Reagan Dunn, calling for basically the end of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. Other people I've seen - who consider themselves progressive - also wondering what the purpose is, what the future holds. Is it really going to continue being such a lopsided or Seattle-heavy organization? Are other suburban cities also going to contribute? What do you think the future looks like for this organization? [00:09:42] Erica Barnett: I think the organization is in a position where it has to succeed - that's not to say that it will - but I think these calls for it to just be evaporated or for it to be defunded are pretty, frankly, stupid and beside the point. Because those conversations have already happened, we decided to create this authority - there were progressive objections at the time too, but here we are. And so I think now what the authority really needs is support from the county and the city. And one thing that has really hindered it is not just lack of buy-in from suburban cities, because suburban cities - it's true, they are not on board with what the authority wants to do by and large, they have various types of objections to various aspects including the whole philosophy of Housing First. But I think the bigger problem is the KCRHA does not have money to be anything other than an administrative pass-through organization at this point. And I think it over promised based on wishful thinking about funding and about what it could do with the money that it had. And they promised that they would be a transformational force to reduce and end homelessness within a very short period of time. And we've heard those promises before and they never come true because, in part, because there's just - we don't put the funding behind it. So the amount of funding they have is basically the same as existed before the RHA was even stood up. So it just stands to reason that they're not going to make a transformational system with the same amount of money. To me, these calls to just dissolve it are beside the point, and also Reagan Dunn and others who are saying this don't actually have an alternative proposal other than just don't do anything. [00:11:23] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and it also seems like we've seen friction between the Homelessness Authority and some of its subcontractors or organizations who are doing some of the groundwork. Has that been a hindrance, and does it look like it may continue to be? [00:11:39] Erica Barnett: It's an interesting question. For example, the authority is doing an investigation into the Low Income Housing Institute - I'm not sure when that the results of that are going to come out. And maybe that's justified, but launching into investigations and focusing on that kind of stuff - that creates obviously tremendous friction between the authority and its contractors - which, again, maybe that's fine if there's problems there. But it does feel like it has been such an adversarial force. And I think that Marc Dones came in with a lot of criticism for the existing system and existing providers and wanting to reinvent the wheel. And as it turns out, existing providers in many cases actually know what they're doing and are experts. And we were talking about expertise - it is important not to alienate everybody that you're going to have to work with that makes up the entire homelessness system. So I think there's a lot of broken trust there that's going to have to be rebuilt. And I'm not saying that means don't investigate agencies where there are problems, but there has just been an adversarial relationship between the authority and a lot of these groups that is going to have to be repaired for the system to work. [00:12:53] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. We will continue to follow what happens with the Regional Homelessness Authority. Now let's talk about Burien - my goodness, Burien. [00:13:02] Erica Barnett: Oh, Burien. What are we going to do with you? [00:13:06] Crystal Fincher: So what has been happening this week in Burien? [00:13:10] Erica Barnett: Oh, goodness - just to briefly recap - the City of Burien, of course, has failed to do anything to meaningfully address and help a relatively small group of people who are living unsheltered in Burien, moved them around from place to place. And last week, they censured and removed from his position the head of the Planning Commission for Burien - because he essentially told the group of encampment residents who were living outside the library about another spot where they could legally be, that's also owned by the city. And I did not attend this meeting, but I heard it was incredibly ugly and that there were tirades from the dais about the role this planning commissioner played in helping these unsheltered people go somewhere safe. And the Planning Commission, or commission of any small city, is - you could say it's not really a big deal. Who even knows about this commission? What do they do? But it's a way of silencing people for what they do in their private lives and punishing them for what they do in their private lives. And these are volunteer commissioners - who show up and do the work. And they could now be censured for stuff they say on Twitter, conceivably, or any sort of actions that the city council and the mayor of Burien don't agree with. And that is just an absurd silencing of free speech, among other things. And I think it's really, really troubling on a much larger scale than just the City of Burien. And also, the city turned down a million dollars from King County that was no strings attached to actually help the people who are living homeless in Burien who are now scattered - to the four winds, essentially - across Burien and across downtown Burien. They had an opportunity to spend this money however they wanted. And they said, we don't want the money. [00:15:03] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and have they even officially said - We don't want the money, or have they just not even bothered to respond to the offer? [00:15:12] Erica Barnett: That's true. I'm just taking that as a "we don't want the money" because you have this offer out here - they're so, in my view from watching the story - they are, they're just so dead set against King County at this point that they won't even work with them is my impression. And I think they just want this problem to go away. I think they want to grandstand and tell homeless people to pick themselves up by their bootstraps or suggest that they're not really from Burien, which is not true from people who have worked with these particular individuals for years. And again, it's a small group of people that are being demonized and singled out for existing homeless in a small city that doesn't have a lot of resources. So a million dollars could have gone a long way. [00:15:56] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, a million dollars plus 35 Pallet shelters ready to go - on offer. And in addition to that, it is just confounding - basically to your point - whether or not they take it up, they've effectively declined it. And this - the saddest thing, two sad things. One, this is a result of a split council majority. And we're used to hearing this kind of rhetoric from MAGA people, from super right wing, far-right kind of extremists. But right now, we're seeing this from - a Democrat is part of this conservative majority on the council - and just really disappointing to hear how extreme the rhetoric has been. You talked about coming from the dais - there's a clip of Deputy Mayor Kevin Schilling, there was a clip of another councilmember - just really disheartening and kind of stomach turning to watch. [00:16:50] Erica Barnett: Unprofessional - I would say - I just I don't know how you can have a reasonable conversation with a councilmember who said - not during this conversation, but previously - that people living on the piece of land that former planning commissioner Charles Schaefer suggested should just go to the bathroom in the dog bags that are provided for dogs. And this was in saying that she didn't want to provide a porta potty for people living unsheltered at the site. It's just heartless, dehumanizing stuff that I think is inappropriate to be coming from the dais of a city council. So it's hard to see where they go from here. And I will also add - I neglected to mention one thing that also happened - is that a lot of other city commissioners and board members resigned in protest of Charles Schaefer's removal from the Planning Commission. It's just really unprecedented stuff over in Burien right now. And yeah, I think they're - their elections are coming up and we'll see. But I think that they're at an impasse right now. [00:17:51] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it does appear that they're at an impasse. And again, sweeping people does not do anything to solve the issue of them not having homes, which is the main problem. And what we saw - yet again, for the third time - is after being swept from a location, they still have nowhere to go, so they move somewhere else. Burien is not big - the area that we're talking about is not big. And this is actually not a big population of people that we're dealing with. This is one of those rare situations that really seems solvable, particularly with the partnership from the county. It really does seem like it's possible to move the unhoused people in Burien into shelter, to work with the people who are there, and to get that done. And they just won't - they just refuse to. I will say that there are three councilmembers in the minority who have been doing the hard work - Cydney Moore, who we will have an upcoming interview with on a Tuesday topical show, but who was also up for censure in that special meeting where they kicked out the planning commissioner, Hugo Garcia and Sarah Moore have been working and trying to get the council to move to take action. But when the majority does not feel that way, you really can't do anything. So we saw this week that one of the few remaining plots of public land where people would be able to go just had some hostile architecture pop up - a bunch of rocks and some campaign signs of a candidate who is very hostile to the homeless - popped up in that strip of dirt. So we'll see what comes next, but it certainly is really sad to watch. Also making news this week is a poll about a local capital gains tax for Seattle. What do Seattle residents prefer? [00:19:36] Erica Barnett: They prefer a capital gains tax, apparently. There are caveats, right? So it's a capital gains tax on the sale of stocks and bonds over $250,000. And according to this poll, which was reported in The Seattle Times, the level of support is over half and less than a third oppose the idea, and then the rest are undecided. But that's pretty darn strong support for a new tax in the City of Seattle. We always hear about tax fatigue, but I think that when you propose a progressive tax - which a capital gains tax is rather than yet another sales tax that makes everything more expensive for everybody - people support it. [00:20:14] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, what are the prospects look like - this being introduced - is this something that may move soon in the City? [00:20:23] Erica Barnett: I'm not sure about the timeline, but I do think that if polling is happening on this, it is because it's something the City Council is talking about. We've discussed the capital gains tax in the past - the State Supreme Court upheld the state's capital gains tax this year, so I think that there is a lot of momentum for it. Alex Pedersen has proposed, recently, a 2% capital gains tax. Of course, he's going to be leaving the council, so I don't know if this is something that can happen this year. But I do think - the City has been desperately looking for progressive revenue sources to fund some of its priorities - facing big budget shortfalls in coming years. We need more funding. And that funding cannot just eternally come from property tax, which is also a regressive tax that renters end up paying as well. So I think that the prospects of this are pretty good. It's the first new progressive revenue proposal that's come about since the JumpStart Tax, which is a tax on big employers. So I think that taxing the rich, taxing big wealthy corporations that don't pay their fair share - I think these are very popular ideas in the City of Seattle. [00:21:35] Crystal Fincher: This is certainly going to be interesting - just because the City is facing a budget shortfall without this - there is talk of needing more revenue or needing to make some significant cuts. So this may be introduced right at the right time for City budget purposes. It'll be interesting to see, especially with someone like Councilmember Pedersen leading the charge for this, to see that this may be workable, to see what kind of coalition comes together around this. But we will keep our eyes on it. Also news this week - that's pretty significant, especially in wonky and hacky circles - is news that Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell is transitioning out of Mayor Harrell's administration. How did you see this? [00:22:20] Erica Barnett: Yeah, wow - it was big news, and it's been rumored for a couple weeks. And how did I see it? I see it as the power struggle within the mayor's office has landed in Tim Burgess's court. So Tim Burgess is the longtime advisor to Bruce Harrell - former city councilmember, works in the mayor's office, and is now going to be the deputy mayor. And he is much more of what I call a law-and-order person. He very much supports what I would call punitive approaches to low-level crimes - things like shoplifting, drug use, etc. And I think Monisha Harrell definitely had a different point of view and approach. She was and is much more oriented towards harm reduction, towards trying to figure out ways for example, drug users to get into recovery as opposed to going to jail. That's an oversimplification, but those are the fault lines within the mayor's office. And I think that the faction that's led by Tim Burgess has obviously won that battle. And I think perhaps because Bruce Harrell is probably more oriented to that point of view than he is to his niece's - Monisha Harrell's - point of view. What do you think? [00:23:26] Crystal Fincher: I think that's largely right. I think, especially at this point in time in the reporting that we've seen, reflects what I've known about Monisha for several years. When she came in - certainly for people who hadn't known about her - it may raise eyebrows to see a mayor appointing his niece. But when you look at Monisha's resume and list of accomplishments, she absolutely earned that position and deserved to be there. And has been behind a lot of statewide policy moving in a progressive direction - in terms of public safety, in terms of some police reforms, and trying to move into a better direction with these issues that we're dealing with right now in how we treat substance use and substance abuse. But she has been behind a lot of policy and isn't always trying to take credit out front, but has been there and has a reputation for being a person of her word. And I can just imagine that that is a complicated position to be in when you have some policy disagreements with your uncle, who is the mayor - you are the deputy mayor, you have some other really big personalities like Tim Burgess in that executive's office. And we see how things did shake out. And I don't think - and I haven't had discussions with Monisha about this, this is no inside information or anything, but just from an outsider perspective - it does seem like there was some significant misalignment. But it's a challenge and it's always a dilemma. And I know lots of people who go in, even if you disagree with the executive there, if you feel that you can make a positive contribution - and to be clear, Monisha wasn't going in saying, I disagree or anything, she's always signaled public alignment with Mayor Harrell - but it's a complicated position to be in. And I know she was probably just trying to do her best and get the job done. But when the ultimate decision is not yours, things can go a different way. And it looks like a lot of things have gone a different way in the City of Seattle. And a lot of things that we're still waiting on - she was on Hacks & Wonks talking about trying to stand up a Department of Public Safety, talking about standing up alternative responses so that you could have the most appropriate responder - that's not always going to be an armed cop responding, but someone, if it's a substance abuse crisis, if it's a mental health crisis - but things just seem to have gone sideways. So we'll see what she does next and where she lands. But I - with no friction or resistance in this mayor's office seemingly - kind of worrisome about the direction of public safety, especially as there is a SPOG contract being negotiated right now. Just wonder what's going to happen from here on out. [00:26:11] Erica Barnett: Yeah, I think - just real quickly - I think that an internal issue with Monisha leaving, within the City itself is, I hear from people in the departments on the second floor, all through City Hall that - the second floor, sorry, being City Council - but also just within the departments that Monisha was somebody that you could really work with, that she would sit down and listen. And listen - which is, and like you said, was a straight shooter, would not BS you, and would - was willing to change her perspective from learning new information. And I'm not sure that Burgess has necessarily shown himself to be that same type of person or personality. And yeah, I think this third department is probably going to still happen, but it may happen in a different way. And I'm not entirely confident that Burgess is going to be someone who changes his mind on beliefs that he has formed very, very firmly over many, many years about public safety. This is the guy that proposed criminalizing "aggressive panhandling" when he was on the City Council. So very, very different perspective from what Monisha brought to it. And just also, I wonder what's going to happen within the City itself when there isn't somebody like Monisha sitting down with folks and listening and saying - Okay, I hear you - and taking that back to the mayor's office. [00:27:38] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I think sometimes people look at the mayor and the people who work for the mayor, and they think everybody is completely in alignment. And they're all just working towards the same goal. And that is frequently not the case. What you see is what the final adjudication is, what the final decision is - but a lot of times there's vehement debate, there's pushback, there's things that are mitigated before it gets out to the public. And you would be surprised sometimes how much difference someone pushing back internally can make in the way things turn out publicly. And I wish things would have gone differently, but here we are. And we will continue to pay attention to what is happening in the mayor's office. Also this week - got more information about what went into the officer fatally running over, basically, Jaahnavi Kandula a few months back. What happened here? [00:28:43] Erica Barnett: Yeah, I had been trying to get this information for several months about what actually happened, particularly how fast this officer was going - and finally had my third or fourth attempt at a record request fulfilled by the SPD, actually pretty quickly, because this case has been referred over to the King County Prosecutor. So what we learned, among other things, is that he was driving 74 miles an hour in a 25 mile an hour zone immediately before he struck her. So he hit the brakes about two-thirds of a second before the impact. And so what we can tell from that is that he was going too fast for her to have possibly gotten out of the way - she did attempt to run, but it was too late. As I said, the investigation is now to some extent in the King County Prosecutor's office. SPD, of course, is doing - did its own internal investigation and has to decide whether to fire this guy and that could result in a whole series of appeals. So we'll see what happens with that. But one issue that's probably going to come up is this question of whether he had his siren on as he was approaching. I don't know that it would have made a difference, because he was already speeding when he was a block away. But in terms of policy, you're supposed to exercise due care. And part of that is having lights and sirens on. And the report says that he was chirping his siren sporadically as he went through intersections approaching the site of the collision. And that is, to my understanding, not the policy when you're doing emergency driving. And in any case, I don't know that SPD is going to find that it's - or the King County Prosecutor is going to find that it's appropriate to be going 75 in a 25 mile an hour zone, even when you are supposedly doing emergency driving to get to an emergency, which is also questionable for reasons that I've reported. [00:30:34] Crystal Fincher: Extremely questionable - just why that officer, and the policy of officers is to respond to overdose calls in the first place. I think it was just an unfortunate situation all the way around. It's not going to shock me, like so many times it doesn't shock me, if they come up with a finding that the officer didn't do anything punishable. But how we don't sit back and question every single element of this and understand that we can do better and we deserve better - if this doesn't spur that, I don't know what will. [00:31:07] Erica Barnett: I wouldn't be surprised to see them make an example of this guy and suggest that this is a one bad apple situation, but we'll see. [00:31:14] Crystal Fincher: We will see. And before we conclude today - I didn't put this in the list that we were going to talk about. But I want to talk about yet more examples this week - and I don't know why this happens so much with you - of your reporting being copied, plagiarized - [00:31:31] Erica Barnett: oh Lord. [00:31:32] Crystal Fincher: - without, and being uncredited. Why is it so hard for people to credit you? [00:31:38] Erica Barnett: I don't think it's a me problem - honestly. [00:31:41] Crystal Fincher: It is so not a you problem. [00:31:43] Erica Barnett: Well, no, no, no - what I mean is I think it's a small publication problem. But yeah, I do a lot of original reporting - last week I broke a bunch of stories and one of them was plagiarized by Ari Hoffman at The Post Millennial, which is a right wing site. And he just took my language, changed it slightly, took out - this was about the judge who ruled that police, essentially, can't enforce the graffiti law for the time being. And without going into the details of that story - he just lifted it and took out some of the language that was perhaps not flattering to SPD and used all my same links, including a link to a very obscure site that somebody sent me on Twitter to the ruling, like a public site where you can actually see the ruling without having to pay. So blatant plagiarism. And I am in touch with attorneys and will be taking action on that. But then King 5, quite infuriatingly, took this story that we were just talking about - which I have been reporting on for months and I've been the only reporter in town who has continued to pay attention to the story of this officer who ran down a pedestrian and written about it multiple times, filed request after request to get this information, finally got it, read this 99-page report thoroughly before reporting on it. And then, six hours later, King 5 miraculously has all the information that was in my story - on a story that they have never paid any attention to since it happened in January. So it was an extremely clear cut case of using my reporting. And that's fine if you say this was reported by PubliCola, which a lot of other outlets who reported on this did, including KIRO, Seattle Times. It's just a basic thing - you can report something, but say who did it first - because this was an exclusive. But they didn't do that. I don't know why. I think it's because it's easier to do it to a small outlet. I don't think they would do this to The Seattle Times because they have a battalion of attorneys and I don't, so it's easy to get away with. And I asked them repeatedly to just give me a credit and they have ignored all of my requests. [00:33:56] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and that's not cool. And they should credit you. [00:33:59] Erica Barnett: It's not cool. [00:34:00] Crystal Fincher: And that should be a regular thing, whether it's an independent outlet or a behemoth like The Seattle Times. But I just wanted to talk about that, say we saw that - and people need to do better. [00:34:13] Erica Barnett: I appreciate that. [00:34:14] Crystal Fincher: But also hopefully there's a small little bit of satisfaction - silver lining there - that your reporting is solid, and it's good, and you're asking the right questions, and digging in the right places, and uncovering information that is useful to us all. And I appreciate that. [00:34:31] Erica Barnett: Well, thank you - the thing is, just quickly to plug - King 5 would not have had this story if I hadn't reported it, which means that if PubliCola wasn't around, the story would not have existed or it would have been reported much later and in a different way and with a different focus. And so I think that it might be easy to say King 5 - we got it from King 5, who cares? But King 5 and all these other outlets were not paying close attention to this the way that we were. [00:34:58] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, June 23rd, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today is Seattle political reporter and editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett. You can find Erica on Twitter @ericacbarnett and on PubliCola.com. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. And 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, please leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and the 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.

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Week in Review: March 31, 2023 - with Erica Barnett

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 31, 2023 33:52

On today's Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Seattle political reporter and the editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett! Crystal and Erica discuss the City of Seattle's first-in-the-nation legislation to provide paid sick and safe leave for gig workers, Mayor Bruce Harrell's $970 million housing levy proposal, a story about the lack of progress building tiny homes leads to a discussion about the difference in responsibilities between the city council and the mayor - who bears the responsibility to implement programs and policy that has been funded. Then they discuss the recently discovered $280,000 contract given to a Harrell associate to seemingly spin the narrative that his preferred Sound Transit station proposal is community led, and a political tactic used by monied interests that exploits language and concerns voiced by marginalized communities to influence policy. Erica and Crystal also cover the Department of Justice moving to end the consent decree with the Seattle Police Department and the Seattle City Council candidate facing accusations of non-payment from former staff and volunteers. 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 Megan Burbank and the State of Reproductive Healthcare in Washington from Hacks & Wonks Seattle passes first-in-the-nation paid sick leave for gig workers by Josh Cohen from Crosscut Mayor Harrell Unveils $970 Million Housing Levy Proposal by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist Andrew Lewis announced a fundraising plan to double Seattle's tiny houses. So, where are they? by Anna Patrick from The Seattle Times City Paid Consultant Tim Ceis $280,000 to "Encourage Agreement" and Build "Community Consensus" for Harrell's Light Rail Route by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola Sound Transit Board Adopts Major Last-Minute Changes to 2016 Light Rail Plan, Skipping Chinatown and First Hill by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola Sound Transit Board Backs Last-Minute Proposal to Skip Chinatown and Midtown Stations by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist City Asks Judge to End Consent Decree; Outstanding Issues Include Protest Response and Accountability by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola Matthew Mitnick's Campaign Meltdown by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger 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 get the podcast - the full versions of our podcast - on 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 welcomed reporter Megan Burbank to talk about the status of reproductive health care in our state after last year's Dobbs decision removed guarantees for abortion access on the national level. 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: Seattle political reporter, editor of PubliCola, co-host of the Seattle Nice podcast, and author of Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery, Erica Barnett. Hello. [00:01:12] Erica Barnett: Hello - it's great to be here. [00:01:13] Crystal Fincher: Great to have you back. We have some good news this week, interesting news this week - we will start off for a big deal for gig workers - paid sick and safe leave is now available. What's going on here? [00:01:30] Erica Barnett: As you said, the gig workers for the bigger companies - DoorDash, Uber, et cetera - are going to have access to the same paid sick and safe leave benefits that full-time employees have, provided by their employers. So there's a new law that was signed into - a new local law - that was signed this week. And yeah, so this is part of the process of slowly acknowledging that gig workers are, in fact, workers and employees of the companies that employ them, and not just people doing this for a hobby or as a extra source of work. These are jobs, and they are jobs that require now the same benefits that every other kind of job requires. [00:02:14] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and this is taking place during a years-long debate, conversation, fight for gig workers rights from a lot of people who have recognized that - hey, the work that these people are doing looks a lot like the work of employees and not of independent contractors. They're being told where to go when, how to do things - fitting in a pretty specific box of behavior with a lot less latitude than a lot of people think of when they think of independent contractors or independent business owners. And the bottom line is because of this, whether or not it even meets the legal test of an employee - functionally, this is how it works. And so the impacts on people's families and in our society are the same as employees. So if someone gets sick, it can be incredibly economically disruptive to that family and to our community to not have any leave available. So this definitely seems like a positive thing for workers, and for the community, and just helping to make sure there's a solid safety net in place. This is a big bell - all of these safety net items that keep coming and unfortunately going in a lot of situations - but this was a gratifying thing to see that I think is going to help a number of people. [00:03:37] Erica Barnett: Yeah, and I think it's also part of the - just the reckoning from the pandemic that is, I think, slowly being whittled away at as people are being required to come back to offices, unnecessarily in a lot of cases. I think during the pandemic, we really started to wrestle with this idea of hustle culture - this idea that nobody needs any time off, and your work is your life, and it should be the only thing you care about. That is, I hope, over - at least for the time being. And we're trying in this state, at least, to figure out ways to put those kind of somewhat new values into practice by doing at least the minimum, which I think this particular law - it's great, but allowing people to have time off when they're sick should be a floor and not a ceiling. [00:04:30] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and your point about many of the pandemic-era protections and safety net enhancements being whittled away is absolutely true. We're about to head into a time next week where mask mandates, even for transit, health care situations - the few remaining situations where they were necessary - are no longer being mandated. Although we are getting some news about some local health care systems that are still looking as if they're going to be continuing those, so we will stay tuned. Certainly housing is top of mind for a lot of people now. City of Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell has proposed an enhancement to the Housing Levy. What is he proposing and what will this do? [00:05:18] Erica Barnett: Yeah, the new Housing Levy proposal would triple the size - and that's in real terms - the actual tax that people will be paying on their property. The previous Housing Levy - which passed in 2016 and is expiring now - that levy was $290 million. This would raise $970 million, which is obviously a significant bump. Interestingly, because the cost of everything has risen so much quicker than in the past and inflation has been so bad - and the cost of construction and the availability of labor and all the reasons that housing has become more expensive - well, building housing is also a lot more expensive. So as a result, one sort of dampening feature of this levy - or disappointing - is that it's not going to build that much more housing than the previous levy, despite it being tripled now. Now, that's not an argument not to do it. If we did levy the size of the previous levy, we would be building - we would be dramatically going back on reducing the amount of housing we were building. So it may be necessary to increase it this much, but it's not going to triple the size of housing or the amount of housing that's being built. [00:06:28] Crystal Fincher: So given that the money is tripling but the amount of housing isn't, what accounts for the difference - is it that housing costs have also experienced inflation, construction costs have experienced inflation? What accounts for so much of that extra money not providing housing? [00:06:48] Erica Barnett: Yeah, the main reason is that construction costs have simply increased, as has the cost of land. And that's everything from material, steel, concrete, to labor, to just - everything involved with building an apartment building now is more expensive. I think that raises a question that the Housing Levy does not attempt to answer - and we could go down a rabbit hole on who is supporting the Housing Levy and why - but the Housing Levy is not primarily an acquisition levy, and maybe it should shift more in that direction. It's much, much cheaper to - as the example of the Low Income Housing Institute during the pandemic has really shown - it's much cheaper to buy housing that already exists and convert it into low-income housing or start renting it to low-income people than it is to build new housing from the ground. And so I think this is a very - we're using the same old methods that we have always used and building housing instead of acquiring housing. And there are good reasons to want to build more affordable housing and add more density and all this stuff, but it also is quite expensive. And I think that there should be perhaps more creativity in play than just saying - Well, it's three times as expensive, so we're going to triple it. It doesn't necessarily solve the problem if, in seven years, we're coming back with a $3 billion levy. [00:08:10] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that is part of the tension in all of our conversations about housing that we're having policy-wise at different levels - it's what will actually make enough of a dent in the problem in the medium-term to long-term? If we keep this incrementalist approach, it feels like we are just setting ourselves up for increased expenses, increased costs. And there needs to be a massive investment that will result in more affordable housing units, whether that's a combination of affordable on the market - which is not affordable for many people now - subsidized housing, public housing, whatever that is. We need more of it now, and I think a lot of people are concerned that what we're doing is going to do exactly what you say - kick the can down the road and set ourselves up for - are we going to need a tripling of the next levy? And I think sometimes we're a little bit hesitant on the left to have some conversations about - are we getting the value for our dollar that we need to here? Is this actually going to meaningfully address the problem? Again, absolutely not saying that we shouldn't pass this Housing Levy. We definitely need more housing. It needs to be a multifaceted, all-hands-on-deck approach. And this may be the best that can be done right now, but I think we do need to ask - is this the best that we can do, or how do we need to supplement this, and what's going on? In one of those things for - how do we supplement this, what other strategies can we use to help make housing more affordable for more people - Andrew Lewis, certainly in trying to address the homelessness problem has really launched into tiny homes as an option that can meaningfully address moving people off of the street, out of encampments into a place that could help them stabilize and launch into more permanent affordable housing. But we saw a story this week asking where those tiny homes are - what has happened and where are we at right now? [00:10:29] Erica Barnett: Andrew Lewis promised, I believe - and I'm not looking at the story right now, I'm just going from memory - I think it was 800 tiny homes over a certain period. And promise is - that's the word that The Seattle Times used. I think this was like a goal, and it's a goal that really depends on the - on both funding through the City budget, which has to be approved by both the City Council and the mayor, and it also depends on the mayor's willingness to actually invest those funds and actually direct funding toward that purpose. And I think this gets lost a lot of times when people are criticizing the City Council for inaction and blaming the City Council for things - it's up to the mayor. And under Mayor Jenny Durkan, there were a whole lot of things that didn't happen. She just decided that they weren't her priorities, and so the council would allocate money and the mayor would not spend it - and I think we're seeing that to a certain extent here. I also think the Regional Homelessness Authority has been quite hostile to the notion of spending money on tiny homes. Their five-year plan that came out recently, or at least the draft, had no money at all for tiny homes. Now, they've changed that a little bit in the plan that they're probably going to finally adopt next month - but there is a lot of pushback against tiny homes as a form of shelter. And it's the type of shelter that people who are being swept from encampments most often say that they want, and so I think it is certainly worth a short-term investment at least. But right now we're not quite living up to what the City Council and Andrew Lewis have proposed. [00:12:04] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And your point about just whose responsibility is this is well taken. And I think in a number of areas - and frankly, in some of the local media coverage that we see of this - it really doesn't come through who is responsible for what. What does a city council do? What does a mayor do? A city council is responsible for allocating funds and for developing the policy for an issue. The mayor is the person who makes it happen. They implement and execute - that's their job. All of the departments in the City report to the mayor - they oversee and direct what happens in that. So really, once the money is made available and they hand it over to the mayor's office - whether or not something happens is really up to the executive - right now, Mayor Bruce Harrell. So I am curious about where this stands, but similar to several other conversations that we're having - whether it's issues related to homelessness or issues related to public safety, like Bruce Harrell's promise to stand up alternative 911 responses so that people can have the most appropriate responder to whatever emergency they're having - which usually is not a armed police officer in a situation that isn't related to illegality, but maybe someone's having a behavioral health crisis or needs some other resources. We need to ask Bruce Harrell where that is - that is the mayor's responsibility. Once the money is allocated, once the city council says - Here is the money, here's what it's for - it's up to you, Bruce Harrell, to make it happen. And so I'm really curious to see if that question gets asked to him and to see what his answer would be, because I think that would be very informative. [00:13:48] Erica Barnett: Just real quickly, I want to correct myself. I said 800, it was 480 that Andrew Lewis proposed. And yeah, and it died because of Jenny Durkan - full stop. She just wouldn't spend the money. And so the length of this article in The Seattle Times is surprising when it could have been one line. [00:14:07] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, Bruce Harrell did take some action that we learned about - related to the Chinatown International District station conversation, debate that we're having about the siting. We learned that there was an effort launched as - what a year ago, I think it was - to actually drum up support for the new Sound Transit station options that were characterized as - Hey, this is a last-minute effort that came from the community because we heard the concerns, and so this is why it's popping up now. Turns out that there's more to the story. What happened? [00:14:47] Erica Barnett: Last week, I'm sure folks are aware, Sound Transit Board adopted a new route through downtown that skips over Chinatown with new stations near the Stadium station and next to the existing Pioneer Square station, and then also eliminates a Midtown station that was going to serve First Hill. What I reported this week is that the mayor, about a year ago, hired consultant Tim Ceis, who has been around forever - since even before I was here in Seattle. He was Deputy Mayor for Greg Nickels, worked for Ron Sims, and has a long career as a political consultant and lobbyist. Now I would say we don't know exactly when or how this new proposal came about - I do not believe that it was last minute, but I also don't know that it was around a year ago. But in any case, Harrell hired this consultant at a cost of $280,000 for one year's worth of work, which is an absolutely astronomical amount for a consultant and lobbyist. And his job essentially was to - as you said, Crystal - to drum up support for the mayor's preferred alternative. And when this became the mayor's preferred alternative is something that I am still reporting on and trying to find out. But this was an option that the mayor, as well as King County Executive Dow Constantine, presented as an organically-arising proposal from the community, and that there was unanimity in the CID community around skipping the CID. And as we saw last week, five thousand some people who signed a petition that was presented to Sound Transit that was against that option, the head of Uwajimaya does not support it, the head of SCIPDA, the main public development authority down there, does not support it. And so there is not unanimity. And I think Tim Ceis' job was in part to present appearance of unanimity where there was none. [00:16:41] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and I think this is a situation - similar to the big homelessness complex conversation - that a lot of people have a hard time reporting on and wrapping their heads around. And I will call it out - especially when it involves communities of color, there seems to be this - whether it's a belief or desire that - coming from the belief that communities of color are a monolith. And we are not. There are various opinions, perspectives. We are as diverse within our communities as everyone else. And so what we're seeing from the community is - absolutely there are concerns, there are different opinions on what the best path forward is - I think they're all worthy of hearing, especially when they come from the community. And we should do that. And that is genuine and authentic. But what we see too often, especially politically - and this is a tactic that we see used often locally and nationally - is that people will piggyback off some of those rumblings in community to push their own agendas and to push their preferred options with the veneer of community support. So there's the term "astroturfed," which is the opposite of grassroots - we're going to try and make this look like it's a grassroots effort, we're going to try and make it look like the community has completely rallied around this new option or alternative. And that is a marketing ploy. That's spin. And I think there are both things going on here. So it is absolutely still important to listen to those concerns from the community, to seriously consider and to implement mitigation strategies - and that has not been done in too many prior projects and situations, and that's a legitimate concern and should be addressed. But I also think that we need to take a serious look at - okay, who are the people that stand to profit and benefit here who are pushing these alternatives that don't seem to fit the characterization that they're trying to sell. There is more to the story. And so it's just one of these situations that just makes me groan because it's messy and it's not straightforward. And it requires people to proceed with a bit of nuance and hold space for different opinions and perspectives while still being wary of people looking to exploit the situation. So it's a continuing thing that we see - is notable to me, as you noted, the size of that contract is gigantic. [00:19:19] Erica Barnett: $20,000/month. [00:19:21] Crystal Fincher: For 20 hours of work - please pay me a $1,000/hour. [00:19:24] Erica Barnett: And let's be real - we don't know, and I've also requested a lot of information about this - but we don't actually know how many hours of work Ceis was doing. The 20 hours was an estimate given to me by the mayor's office and it was a squishy - Oh, it's about 20 hours of work a week. The contract doesn't really stipulate anything and it doesn't have an hourly rate. And for all we know, it was 10 hours, it was five hours, it was - maybe it was 25. I don't know, but - [00:19:52] Crystal Fincher: It's definitely less than - I know the official thing, and you have high reporting standards that you adhere to and I appreciate that. It's one of the things that I appreciate most about your reporting - is that it is solid and backed up. But I know that they weren't spending 20 hours a week on this thing. But even if they were - Look, I would be willing to spend 20 hours a week doing something if you pay me $280,000 a year. I will put that out to anyone - for whatever 20 hours of work that involves, I'm down. But we'll just continue to see how this proceeds. [00:20:26] Erica Barnett: But yeah, and I'm still reporting on it. So I suspect there will be - I'll have follow ups in the midterm future. [00:20:33] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Also this week, we saw that the City of Seattle is pursuing an end to the Seattle Police Department's consent decree with the Department of Justice. What's going on here? [00:20:48] Erica Barnett: Yeah, this week the city attorney and mayor and - the City of Seattle officials - sent a request to Judge James Robart to effectively end the consent decree with a couple of exceptions. So basically, Robart would find the City in substantial compliance with this agreement that has been going on for more than a decade - or the City has been a party to for more than a decade - with the exception of crowd control and accountability. And those are two issues that Judge Robart has brought up in the past as - and finding the City not in complete compliance. But the agreement proposed says - But don't worry, we'll wrap all that up and we'll be done with it by various months in the future, but generally this summer. And be out from under the consent decree entirely by the end of the year. People are confused about the consent decree at all. I totally understand - it's a weird situation that the City has been in for the last 12 years. Essentially, the City was found to be in noncompliance with a whole bunch of things related to constitutional policing - including racially biased policing, including use of force - excessive use of force. And the City keeps coming back in recent years to try to get the judge to lift the decree. And they've gotten very close in the past, but then something always happens and - there's a scandal, there is an egregious instance of police brutality, there are protests involving thousands of people where the police brutalized protesters in response to protests against brutality, and tear gas in the entire neighborhood - this happened in 2020. And so it's been a long, slow process - the City now seems to believe and called themselves "a department completely transformed and unrecognizable from the way it was 10 years ago." [00:22:37] Crystal Fincher: That is a curious characterization, isn't it? [00:22:39] Erica Barnett: City Attorney Ann Davison's memo supporting this was effusive about it, and even more so than the actual memo saying we deserve to be let out from under this. It was - called the department dramatically transformed, a night-and-day contrast, and even described the protest response in 2020 as a temporary lapse and a single one from otherwise completely improved and transformed crowd control policies. I'll say that some of the reasoning they gave for this is there have been protests since then and the police didn't act that way. And the protests - notably - are things like the Women's March, protests against war in Ukraine, things that did not involve criticizing the police and also did not involve racial justice. So I think that's a little bit of an apples to orange because orange is comparison there. [00:23:29] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. This is an interesting effort because there are a lot of people who cheered the establishment of the consent decree because it's somewhat of an acknowledgment that - yes, there has been unconstitutional biased policing and the use of excessive force to the degree that the department is no longer trusted to oversee itself. To fix those problems, it needed federal oversight from the Department of Justice - hence the consent decree that we got into. And certainly this has been a long winding road, as you said. It has been interesting in that the brand of oversight has had both positive and negative elements - I think to all sides they find both positive and negative with that - certainly they are looking for status reports and some accountability attached to that. And the judge associated with this has called out events in protest and it looking like the issues that caused the consent decree to be necessary have not been solved. We've also seen sometimes the judge has had opinions and perspectives on how the City should address reforming the SPD, or reimagining SPD. And the judge made it clear he was not a fan of dramatically changing funding, reducing funding - a number of the things that some people who are more progressive and reform minded would have supported and opposed. And that shaped what's been possible with policy for fear that - hey, if the city council does pass some sweeping overhaul or substantive changes, that those are not going to be allowed and going to be overturned by the judge. So this has been an interesting situation that I think hasn't unfolded exactly as anyone predicted. But it is, I think, a victory lap that is trying to be ran that - I think, as you talked about - is, man, you should urge caution for declaring victory and a mission accomplished statement, because if something else happens, it just makes it look like you are completely out of touch with what is happening in the department and uninterested in taking substantive steps to address it. But we'll see. [00:25:50] Erica Barnett: Yeah, quickly - I think something else has happened, which is the death of Jaahnavi Kandula, who was a pedestrian - a student who was walking in a crosswalk and was hit by a police officer going allegedly to the scene of an overdose. But a lot of details have come out about that make one question that narrative from SPD. But SPD has been really untransparent and has refused to release any details about its investigation of this incident, which happened in January. It is now almost April and there's no body-worn video - there's just no information whatsoever - no video, no narrative, no explanation. And it is interesting that they have been so non-transparent at a time when they are asking for this consent decree to be lifted. So I think, of course, something else is going to happen - it's not a matter of if, but when. But this is an example of something that has been - I'm not going to go so far as to say it's been covered up, but it has certainly been slow walked. And a lot of people are asking a lot of questions about that incident, including myself. I've reported on it extensively and just gotten absolutely nothing from SPD. [00:26:56] Crystal Fincher: You have and your reporting has been critical to people finding out any information for this, so much appreciated. I do want to talk about an event that unfolded this week in the City of Seattle campaign land. One of the 30+ people now running for city council in the City of Seattle made news this week in their campaign - for not paying their workers. I, in this situation, just wanted to say a couple of things to set the record straight. Because there was a story written about this, which is great to bring light to it, but - [00:27:32] Erica Barnett: And we should say it's Matthew Mitnick running - [00:27:33] Crystal Fincher: It is Matthew Mitnick. [00:27:35] Erica Barnett: - running for District 4. [00:27:36] Crystal Fincher: Correct. In Seattle City Council District 4. So there were nine former volunteers or staffers, depending on who you - what version of events happens to be the truth. But who wrote an open letter accusing the campaign, or released a statement accusing the campaign of essentially wage theft, potentially youth labor violations because a number of the people involved were under 18. But there seems to be some conversation or disagreement with a lot of people where evidently a number of people were under the expectation that they were going to be paid, saying that Matthew Mitnick said that he would pay them. They wound up not being paid, and then there were some other accusations about his treatment of staff. But my takeaway from this was a little bit simpler. Even if you only believe what Matthew Mitnick said and you only go off of what there is written evidence for, there is a staffer who was hired - who was agreed to be paid a wage, who has not been paid all of their wages. They were paid once. They have not been paid again, despite continuing, despite doing work after being paid. There is unpaid work currently on the table. Matthew said - Hey, we're raising Democracy Voucher money. As soon as we raise enough, we'll pay you. That's not how things normally work in campaigns. [00:28:54] Erica Barnett: That's what I was going to ask you. So if you're running a - and we should say this is a guy who's running as a socialist. He's a 22-year old student. He moved here pretty recently from Wisconsin, where he also ran for office. And so he's, I would say, a pretty marginal candidate. That's my opinion - you may disagree, Crystal - I don't know. What is the common practice when you are a campaign that's running on a shoestring and you don't have a lot of money? Is it just to not hire people until you have that money? Because that would make sense to me. [00:29:24] Crystal Fincher: That is literally exactly what it is. That is literally exactly what happens in the majority of situations. Now, it's not like there's never been abuse before. But yes, you only hire and buy what you have the money to hire and buy. And that does mean a lot of things go - if you aren't able to raise much money, that means that you aren't able to afford a lot of the things that you probably hope to be able to afford with a campaign. One of the things that people do need to acknowledge is that running for office today requires raising and spending money. I wish it did not require as much money and think that Democracy Vouchers and other reforms that are on the table can help lower the cost of campaigns. I think that there's also a lot of spending on a lot of things, which is cool, but that's not everything. But they do require money. And if you're going to have staff, if you're going to have - if you're running a campaign in the City of Seattle, you need a campaign manager at minimum. You should also have people who are familiar with how to win campaigns - who have done that before, who can help guide through the process, because there are - that is an expertise. There are people who bring that to the table. I'm not going to suggest that someone go to court without a lawyer. I'm not going to suggest that someone run a campaign without other people who have been through that process before to help you through that process. But yeah, you just don't hire them until you have the money to hire them. And also, campaigns run out of money. And when that happens, then you have to wind things down - starting with paying the most vulnerable people first. The people who take haircuts in not getting paid, unfortunately, are - sometimes consultants agree to - hey, we can bill this on debt, you can pay me if you raise enough money and different things like that. But you have explicit overt conversations, you write stuff down, and you pay people who are reliant on that money to pay their rent. And what was cited in the story is that the person who wasn't paid does not have enough money for their rent at this point in time. So there's an impact. And so you do have - you are responsible for managing the people on your campaign, for managing your budget - that absolutely needs to happen. That's how that works. [00:31:38] Erica Barnett: Yeah, and I'm just looking at Mitnick's campaign filings. And again, as I said, I consider him an extremely marginal candidate who was hyped up by The Stranger in particular, in a way that I think was out of proportion to his viability. But at any rate, he has raised less than $5,000. Winning a council campaign is in the tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands for the primary. So yeah, not surprised he can't pay anybody - he hasn't raised any money. And so that is - it's unfortunate that he led campaign staffer on in that way or was overconfident in his own ability to raise money. [00:32:15] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, March 31st, 2023. Hacks & Wonks is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Maurice Jones, Jr. Our insightful co-host today was Seattle political reporter, editor of PubliCola, and co-host of the Seattle Nice podcast, and author of Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery, Erica Barnett. You can find Erica on Twitter @ericacbarnett and on PubliCola.com. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks and you can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, with two i's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks wherever you prefer to 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 shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, please leave a review whenever you can. 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.

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Week in Review: January 27, 2023 - Rich Smith