"Do Nothing" Seattle City Council?

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Seattle Nice. The June 23rd edition, it's the day after Solstice did either of you, Erica C Barnett or Sandeep Kaushik go to or participate in the Fremont Solstice Parade this year? I did not. I was in the mountains.

[00:00:28] I was having my own Solstice celebration in the Cascades. Fremont has a parade, David. Who knew? Today we're going to be talking about the city council and whether or not the city council has accomplished very much in the 174 days since they took office this year on January 21st.

[00:00:54] I'm imagining some form of disagreement between Erica and Sandeep about this, but first I just want to address Erica's recent post about our last episode saying that both Sandeep and

[00:01:04] I agree that NPR got two left wing and I just want to for the record say that it wasn't my argument. It's interesting that you're bringing this on me. You can preview it before we start recording, David. That is not what I argued.

[00:01:17] Secondly, I agree with you that both sides of them can sometimes be problematic, but not always. I just wanted to throw that out there just to correct the record. You guys can write on your own social media whatever you want. I don't have one.

[00:01:30] I don't have a massive platform, so I'm just going to correct the record here. But first question to you, Erica. You've been digging into some of the data about what this council has done compared to previous councils. So we're breaking some data, some breaking reporting news.

[00:01:44] How do we describe this? This is fantastic. Yeah. Calling it data is maybe a little bit generous, but I did spend some time knowing. We were going to talk about this last night comparing this council, which I would say has not passed any substantive legislation yet.

[00:02:00] They've talked about legislation to undo things that the past council did, but they haven't passed anything substantive. There is a sense and I share it that this council hasn't done a lot. So I went back and looked at the last council that was elected in a similar election

[00:02:17] pre-COVID. So I'm not looking at the 2019 election because those folks came in and immediately everything was COVID starting in March. So in 2016, the first council elected under districts came in. And so you had Lisa Herbold. You had Sawaat being re-elected but to a district.

[00:02:38] You had Rob Johnson, Deborah Juarez, Mike O'Brien coming in. So I'm just going to rattle off some of them because there's actually quite a lot. There was a law that prohibited landlords from raising rent when they're not compliant with rental housing laws.

[00:02:52] That was proposed in April, past in June. There is a ban on conversion therapy. That was in July. So I'm going to go a little bit into July. This gives the council a month or so to prove me wrong. But there's a lot of banning conversion therapy.

[00:03:06] There was the first in time policy that we've talked about on here which says you have to rent to the first qualified candidate if you're a landlord. Secure scheduling was introduced in August. There's a lot of stuff during the summer.

[00:03:16] There was also some legislation making it easier for weed store owners to open that passed in January, but that was generated by the mayor. So that doesn't count quite as much. But there's a lot of stuff in the works by this point.

[00:03:30] And I am not really aware of anything that the council has discussed publicly that is in the works are about to be proposed. So I think it's fair to say that past councils have been more active than this one.

[00:03:43] Santeep Koushik, in 1948, President Truman nicknamed the 80th Congress the Do Nothing Congress. Is this the Do Nothing Council? No, or certainly not yet. Look, we're less than six months in to a council where we have six of the nine council members are new.

[00:04:03] Remember that the first month or so of the new council coming in in January, I think it was in February, was taken up with the appointment of the nine council member, right? I'm sorry. Immediate fact check. They didn't take a month doing that. Come on now.

[00:04:19] Of course they did. They went when did the when did Tommy? It's not about the timing. It's not all they were. They had all those fricking. They had the forums. They had all the all the applications.

[00:04:30] You would not be this generous with any other appointment that they've done in the past. I don't think Abel Pacheco's appointment, for example, which is a recent appointment, took up an entire month during which that council could do nothing else.

[00:04:43] I just don't think that's historically accurate to say that, oh, it takes an entire council's 100 percent of their time for an entire month to make one appointment. Like it just hasn't in the past. If I could continue before you interrupted me,

[00:04:58] I would say that much of that first month was consumed around the appointment. That said, as a general sense, I do think like the start's been, kind of bumpy and uneven so far. I think the questions are out there of where is this council going?

[00:05:16] What is the substantive agenda? What are the kind of big ticket items that they want to do? The biggest thing they've launched is the revision of the delivery earning standard. I would say at this point, well, it's certainly incomplete, right?

[00:05:33] The ordinance, the revised ordinance that's been proposed has not been passed yet. The fate of that is a little unclear. I should, for disclosure purposes, say I'm directly working on that since I consult for DoorDash. That's sort of hanging out there with an inconclusive result.

[00:05:51] I think there's other stuff percolating behind the scenes, fairly big ticket stuff, but we haven't seen that surface yet. So I think it's too soon to tell. And I will say that speaking of that big ticket stuff and speaking of the repeal

[00:06:04] of the minimum wage for gig workers, you can call those substantive... It's not a repeal. Yeah, I would characterize it. I'm just like you would call it just a minor little provision to people's pay.

[00:06:16] I would call it a repeal of the minimum wage that was established during the payout legislation. So anyway, that is a reversal of a previous council policy. So is that substantive? Well, I guess it's rolling stuff back that other councils accomplished,

[00:06:32] but I don't think that is a substantive positive in the sense of passing a new law, whether you consider it good or bad. They're not proposing that. But some of the legislation that is in the works that I've heard about

[00:06:46] involves things like repealing some of the renter protections that have been on the books. Again, a reversal of the previous council. Imposing a new law that would essentially call to stay out of drug area law

[00:07:00] where people wouldn't be allowed to be in certain areas if they have drug convictions or actually not even drug convictions, but are accused of drug related crimes. That is a reversal of current policy. There's talk about bringing back the prostitution loitering law,

[00:07:15] which would be a reversal of current policy. So unless there's stuff that's substantive that they are wanting to do in a positive direction that I'm not mentioning, Sandeep, I'm just not aware of anything percolating in the next month that is going to at all match that 2016 council,

[00:07:32] which had five new members. So unless you want to preview something that the council is doing that is substantive and not just a reversal. And if you do, I'd love to hear it. So first of all, I think your definition of substantive is going to, bullshit.

[00:07:50] Everything you mentioned seems pretty substantive to me. These are high profile issues and significant changes of potential changes in direction and policy. What I'm defining substantive as is something other than just saying no to a policy that has been adopted and undoing it.

[00:08:04] Well, well, first of all, all of these things are more than just saying no to previous policies. Yeah, every single thing you mentioned, I would argue is fairly substantive. Now, to your other point, is this a positive proactive agenda, kind of forward looking agenda?

[00:08:21] I think that criticism has some merit to it. So far, what this new council has been focused on is a look back at the many of the policies established by the previous council and an attempt to assess whether they're working

[00:08:37] as intended or delivering the results that this council feels like they need to be. And so I do think there's a criticism there that you are leveling that has some merit to it. Is that enough to be saying, hey, we're going to go back and kind of

[00:08:53] take a look at all the stuff that happened over the last few years and say some of this stuff went way too far, which is a view that I'm quite sympathetic to.

[00:09:00] Some of that stuff did go way too far and some of it does need to be revisited. But you're right that that's probably not enough to constitute the kind of proactive forward looking agenda that ideally if you're a council,

[00:09:14] you want to be pushing forward if you want to get sort of and hold public support. Let me ask a couple questions. One, so the city of Seattle's budgets increased around 30% of the last five years,

[00:09:26] mostly according to the reports I read due to inflation and wage hikes essentially. But now the city's got about a whatever it is, $250 million budget deficit. So we're not seeing new spending initiatives coming out.

[00:09:43] Is it related in some ways to the fact that there's just less money to play with right now? But secondly, what about the Herald administration? We've talked a lot about it and kind of the Herald administration's role in all of this

[00:09:54] in relation to the council. So I realize it's kind of a two-parter here, but how much of this is connected to how much money there is in the bank to spend on new initiatives and how

[00:10:05] much is it connected to what you might call a lack of initiative coming out of the mayor's office? I mean, is that a way to think about this at all?

[00:10:14] I mean, I don't want to, in asking that part of the question, I'm not implying that that's the case. I'm just curious about it. Yeah, you're asking the question. I think you're asking two very good questions. First of all, I do think

[00:10:29] circumstances are different now and we're in a belt tightening mode, which we haven't had since the McGinn era, right? Dating back to 2009 where you have a really significant budget

[00:10:44] hole that needs to be filled. And if there isn't new money to play with, that makes it hard to do new things. Now I do think the current council has sort of played into that problem by kind of

[00:10:55] putting up markers down saying, and the mayor said this too, no new taxes, we're going to address the entirety of the budget deficit without resorting to kind of new revenues.

[00:11:07] And I do think maybe you want to resolve the budget deficit that way, but if you want to have a proactive agenda, I think there probably are some targeted areas of new spending that it would probably

[00:11:18] behoove the council to look at. Like there's some substantive things we could do on fentanyl or homelessness or stuff that might cost some money, but it'd be worth investing in even at a time of significant budget. Well, the council doesn't do the budget in January through

[00:11:34] June, which is where we are. So the first six months, the council is not working on the budget, which is partly why of all the examples that I gave, and there's some in 2020 as well

[00:11:45] that did pass before COVID. None of those are budget. They're all policy. And so I'm not really talking about what is the council spending on because that's something that comes in the budget process that starts in September. I'm talking the council can't just say we're going to

[00:11:57] spend on homelessness in June. That's not within their power legally, unless they want to do like a supplemental budget. But yeah, they're not going to initiate a new program in the middle

[00:12:07] of the year. So what they can do is policy. And so all the examples that I gave were policy examples. And the council can do a lot of those policy initiatives without spending any

[00:12:16] money, things like rent or protections that have been done in the past. Those are policy. They're not like we're going to spend a bunch of new money giving it to renters. So I don't think that's a good excuse. And frankly, I don't think you can say, oh,

[00:12:28] the council just doesn't have any money to play with. Well, they never do at this point. So I just don't think that's a real argument in their favor. Well, I'm semi agreeing with you that I think they could be using this time, say,

[00:12:44] for instance, to put forward some strategies or some plans or saying, hey, we want to put a marker down going into the budget process that we want to, I'm just going to throw out ideas. These

[00:12:56] are just ideas that I would suggest or we're thinking about. Is there some kind of replacement for the fiasco of the previous community court that has been unwound that might be more effective

[00:13:10] as a therapeutic court, as a diversion, as a mechanism to help people who are at have addiction or other underlying issues? Maybe that's the kind of thing we ought to be looking at. Is there stuff we could be doing around? Anyway, there are some of these things you

[00:13:22] could be laying out now as strategies that aren't as far as I can tell happening. So, Eric, I'm sort of agreeing with you that by the time you get in the budget process. But I'm saying there's lots of other stuff they can do that is not budget related.

[00:13:34] I mean, even in 2020 before March and the first two months, they passed, I'm going to start with one that I know you hate, the foreign influence corporations ban. That is that. Oh yeah. I do hate that. Which fine, but that was substantive.

[00:13:48] But they also passed legislation that expanded the city's, expanded basically where tiny house villages can go and expanded the potential number to 40. They did that in February, then COVID hit. So, I mean, there's stuff that the council does that is not related

[00:14:03] to let's plan for the budget, let's do the budget, let's pass the budget, let's add to the budget. And this council is not doing those things. I mean, the most substantive thing I could find so far

[00:14:13] was a bill that just came out from Ann Davison that would, from the city attorney that would add a $500 fine for street racing, which is going to do nothing to stop street racing, of course, but it's sort of a gesture to say we don't like street racing.

[00:14:30] That is kind of the extent of it. I mean, there are probably other small things like that that have happened that have not been even worth anybody covering but substantive, sort of forward-looking

[00:14:43] original legislation. I'm just not seeing it. And I think we should talk a little bit about why we think that is since we both kind of agree on the basics. So yeah, so I did want you to address the question about the mayor's office,

[00:14:56] but then also this kind of narrative we had when this new council took office, which was this is a super, super green council and it was going to take them a much longer time to get up

[00:15:06] to speed than previous councils. There was a lot of concern and sort of warnings about what that would mean this year. How much is that potentially a factor here? As well as the way I put it

[00:15:18] was accusations that there's kind of been a lack of leadership coming out of the mayor's office. What about those two things? Yeah, well, I don't think the mayor leads the council. Ideally, the two should be in sort of a creative tension with each other, not necessarily.

[00:15:31] Let me restate that question then by saying if we had a much more activist mayor, would we be seeing more out of this council or is it kind of like no, this is up to the council? Yeah,

[00:15:40] I think if we had a more activist mayor, we would see more maybe not more out of the council. I don't think that the fundamental problems that we're seeing with this council would change, but I do think that they would be passing more mayoral legislation because they

[00:15:54] are generally very friendly to the mayor and his initiatives. Yeah, I think if the mayor was sending down legislation, they would be passing more legislation, they might be amending it in ways

[00:16:04] that were more in line with their own values, which I think in some ways are more conservative than the mayors on some issues. But you're right. We're not seeing, and I did not do the

[00:16:13] research on this because I didn't prep for it, but we're not seeing in general a super activist mayor saying these are the positive initiatives that I want to send down that will change policy in the city. I mean, it's a lot of kind of small bore stuff.

[00:16:29] And I think at the same time, I mean, the fact that this council is, I mean, I would say not even just very green but very unprepared. When you get elected, it's in November and you have

[00:16:40] time throughout the campaign and then in that time before you take office to just learn about what your committee does and to learn about the city departments that you're going to deal with and just to kind of educate yourself and go to council meetings and talk to people.

[00:16:55] And I'm not saying they didn't talk to people, but I have heard stories about comments that some of the new council members have made that suggest to me that some of them came in not fully understanding the difference in the role of the executive versus the council branch,

[00:17:12] the legislative branch. And I mean, they are still to this day. I stopped sort of laughing about this and making fun of it because it just got tedious on publicola. They're still getting briefings about what various departments do. And it's like, come on, man,

[00:17:27] it's a summer solstice. Why are you still finding out what departments do? There have been new council members throughout history who come in without... I mean, I was just talking about Michael Bryan as one of the new council members in 2016

[00:17:42] and get up to speed. It feels like more quickly than this council has. And these are six different people, so it's not equally true across all of them, but it is a problem widely observed, let's say. So coming back to David's question about the mayor's...

[00:18:02] I mean, I think it's a good question. And I do think there hasn't been a lot of... Let me back up a second and put it this way. I think when the elections happened

[00:18:14] last November, that was really seen in many ways as a huge win for the mayor. The candidates that the mayor himself had endorsed got elected. And the questions that we had as this new

[00:18:28] council was coming to places, what is the mayor's agenda? How is he going to spend the political capital that he has accrued by racking up these wins to push forward whatever his priorities

[00:18:43] are? And I think so far we're still waiting to see that. We haven't seen... When legislation originates, it either originates out of the mayor's office or it originates within the council, and then there's a process of conversation and negotiation and calibration that happens.

[00:19:00] But if one side of that dynamic, the mayor's office is sort of standing back largely and not engaging with this, as we've said, green new council to say, hey, here's what we'd like to

[00:19:13] pursue. Here are the policy changes we want to do. Then that I do think contributes in a significant way to the lack of action so far in the first six months of the year, five and

[00:19:24] whatever change months of the year. Now, again, it's early and we'll see what happens. There are other things. The other point I will make about this is there was also this assumption in January

[00:19:37] that we had this kind of monolithic new council where all the council members were exactly the same kind of shade of blue and they were all in lockstep and alignment. And one thing we're

[00:19:50] seeing as these council members start to figure out, get their feet under them and figure out kind of where they stand on stuff as newbies, that we're seeing some differences and tensions and even to some extent some proto-factions emerging on this council, which I think also is contributing

[00:20:09] to the challenges they're having about cobbling together majorities around significant policy shifts. Yeah. I mean, I think I don't know that anybody, I mean, maybe people thought that they were a monolith that were all sort of lockstep

[00:20:22] on every issue. But there is also just a question of like, are they capable of acting as a group? I want to pose a question to you, Cindy. What do you think about, I mean, the council president,

[00:20:35] Sarah Nelson has taken a much more active role than previous council presidents. I mean, traditionally, that's been kind of a ceremonial job. You sort of keep the trains running on time. You make the committee assignments, et cetera, et cetera. But now, I mean, Nelson came in,

[00:20:53] she fired the central staff director, appointed a new one, been noble, has hired, these are just hiring decisions that has hired a new communications director, sort of without the participation or even knowledge in some cases of council members and staff. And sort of

[00:21:11] shepherded, I mean, not to go back to the pay up legislation again, but shepherded that legislation repealing parts of pay up for gig workers. How much of this is on her doorstep as the sort of

[00:21:27] self-appointed mayor of the council? I mean, I do think council president Nelson has taken a more front and center sort of public profile, particularly in the early days of the new

[00:21:40] council. But again, we had a bunch of UBs and I was just saying before it was seen as a big political win for the mayor that this council got elected. It was also seen as a pretty big political win

[00:21:50] for Sarah Nelson, right? She went out on a limb and endorsed some of these candidates. She endorsed Bob Kettle against one of her own incumbent colleagues, right? Andrew Lewis in a move in the election cycle last fall. I'm sorry, Antonia Wu against Tammy Morales, another one of her

[00:22:07] colleagues. She did and Antonia, while she lost a close race, then got appointed to the council, right? So yes, I think she's been a kind of the public face of the new council

[00:22:23] in a lot of ways. But as you say, she doesn't have some kind of like absolute power over her colleagues. And like it's not like what Sarah Nelson says goes, right? It is largely a make

[00:22:42] the trains run on time kind of position. And so as reality has set in, we're seeing kind of differences emerge between council members and they're trying to kind of figure out where

[00:22:52] they stand on some of these hot button issues and how far they want to go on this issue or that whether it's delivery or public safety stuff or homelessness or renters, protections or what have you. I don't think that's surprising, right? It was never going to be

[00:23:09] some kind of like Sarah Nelson is the dictator of the council. Well, of course, and I didn't say that at all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I do think Council President Nelson has been to some extent at least in the early going the

[00:23:22] the sort of face of the new council. And look, she's been the baton war of the Seattle left from the moment she got elected. You guys have been piling on to her attack.

[00:23:33] I would love to see where I'm a taxor Nelson, but okay. Anyway, maybe not you. Okay, maybe not. So I do think that one of the roles that she has taken on and again,

[00:23:46] I did not say she was the dictator of the council, but I think she is a self appointed sort of leader of the council in a way that that has not been the case anymore before. And

[00:23:54] I think that that is partly she's able to do that because these are all newbies. And I think like, for example, with the pay up legislation, I think one reason it's going so

[00:24:04] poorly is because of her shepherding of it. She's been the one out front leading on this. And like, for example, she has met a lot with the businesses and she's met with a group

[00:24:16] that was formed by Uber. That's, you know, a few drivers that say that they don't that they don't want the old minimum wage. They want this lower new one. And she has not met with labor. She hasn't met with working Washington. She hasn't met

[00:24:28] with the drivers that, you know, are saying this is going to hurt us. And like, look, like you she can have her position and she can disagree with them but to not even meet

[00:24:38] with them to not sort of even go through the appearance of an appropriate and standard and proper process. I mean, it looks really bad. It looks really bad. And it's not what is what

[00:24:50] has been done traditionally. And like, and the reason for that is like, you don't just say sort of imperiously, I'm not going to meet with labor because I disagree with them. And that is what it looks like. You keep saying you don't want to talk about it.

[00:25:03] And then you come back to now I'm going to contradict you on that because I know she has reached out and there's been some dialogue between working Washington and her. I don't know whether they've met but they've certainly been in communication. I think she's told them that

[00:25:15] she anyway, but let's not get bogged down and talking about leadership. You were talking about what is the council effective? And I think the leadership. But I'm about to now come back and say, well, sir, you know, I know that Sarah Nelson had stopped talked to her,

[00:25:29] you know, and I'd rather just not get it, get in this kind of kind of food fight about that. But look, Council President Nelson when she when the new council took took office,

[00:25:41] wrote an op-ed in the Seattle Times, where she kind of laid out sort of her approach to governance. And in that, she said that it was her intent to be more inclusive, right? And talk to a broader

[00:25:56] range of voices. I do think there's certainly criticisms of the previous council about who got audiences. I think to the extent that there was even conversations with the business community with the previous council, they were often pro forma check the box stuff, not good faith engagements

[00:26:14] in dialogue. But Council President Nelson did put a marker down and say she was going to do things differently with this new council. And I think, you know, that that's a standard

[00:26:23] that she should it would be in her interest to adhere to, right? And I do think changing that tone and trying to find common ground across Seattle's quite deep divides is the only way

[00:26:40] at the end of the day that you actually make progress, right? That's been my fundamental theory of governance from the beginning is that you got to figure out how to like,

[00:26:49] you know, on the council, you got to figure out how to count to five, but you got to figure out how to find time. Do you really believe, Sundi? And are you saying on the record that Sarah

[00:26:56] Nelson has worked to find common ground across Seattle's political divides? No, but I'm saying it would be, it would be. Wait, no, or yes, because you just said that she had and you said

[00:27:08] that that's what she said in the in the Seattle Times. I was saying that that's the that's the marker. And do you think she has done that? Council and I was saying, I'm saying you,

[00:27:17] I'm saying we're very early on right now in this and we're six months in. That's not that early. Well, look, and I'm saying it's a two way street. There are a whole bunch of people that

[00:27:28] don't want to have a conversation with Sarah Nelson either and would rather use her as a punching bag and demonize her. She has a city council member. She's a citywide city council member. I'm just asking you, she said she's going to build common ground across divides and you're

[00:27:42] saying that people, you know, are demonizing her and don't want to meet with her. And I guess my point is I don't think some random person on Twitter has anything near the power

[00:27:52] of Sarah Nelson. And part of the job of being an elected official is taking your lumps and taking criticism. And like you've still got to meet with people who criticize you. You've

[00:28:01] still got that's that is what kind of grounded. This is not just saying, I, Sarah Nelson will meet with business, you know, which has been excluded by the last council. It's also I, Sarah Nelson will meet with people and reach out to people that disagree with me

[00:28:13] on the delivery stuff to counter a point you said earlier. I don't want to get in a big debate about delivery because as you said, I am in the middle of, I am directly involved

[00:28:22] in that conversation. But I know that, you know, maybe not as soon as she should have, but I know that council president Nelson has reached out to working Washington and that there has been, you know, an exchange of ideas that maybe working Washington doesn't like

[00:28:36] where Sarah Nelson is ending up on that stuff. But to argue that that she's refused to talk to them or is not engaged with them. As far as I'm aware, she has not met with them. If that

[00:28:48] is incorrect, I don't working Washington email me. I don't know that they've met, but I do know that they have been in. I don't know what that means. I'm not going to go I'm not going to go far

[00:29:02] than that. Yeah, I mean, okay. You know, I don't think Sarah Nelson has been open to the labor side whenever she's been asked about the labor side publicly. She's referred to Dry Forward, which is the Uber group of the Uber organized group of drivers.

[00:29:18] Which by the way, more than just a handful of drivers. Well, anyway, but that's not that's not that's not labor. That's not labor. I mean, it's just not and that's been her go to when

[00:29:27] she's asked about whether you've met with labor. Well, I've met with Drive Up. Dry Forward. Sorry. Drive Up. Pay Forward. Yeah. I mean, Sandeep, you know, one of your big issues with the last council was that

[00:29:41] business didn't have a seat at the table. It sounds like the debate here that is going to be continuing is whether or not labor and progressive groups now have a seat at the table with this new

[00:29:53] council. So let's leave it there for now, but that's it for another edition of Seattle Nice. He's Sandeep Kajik. She is Erica C Barnett. Our fantastic editor is Quinn Waller. I'm David Hyde and you are listeners have been contributing on Patreon. You can continue

[00:30:08] to do so at patreon.com slash Seattle Nice. Yeah, Seattle Nice and everybody. Thank you so much for listening.