Six Months In: Grading Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson

[00:00:10] Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Seattle Nice, the only podcast that tells you what's really happening in Seattle politics. I'm David Hyde. Seattle's part in the World Cup is over. The sockeye salmon are returning. And this week, Erica C. Barnett of Publicola sat down with Mayor Katie Wilson for an interview at around, I think this is the six month mark, Erica, in the new Wilson administration, right?

[00:00:33] More or less, you know. I use that as kind of my purported news peg. But yeah, I mean, I think it's a good time for a self evaluation and just an evaluation in general. Good check in time, but there's a lot to this interview. Sandeep Kaushik, are you happy to be able to now just drive your gas guzzling car back to Pioneer Square? Things are back to normal now that the World Cup is over?

[00:00:58] I am happy that I can drive my gas guzzling car back to Pioneer Square. That is good. I do miss the excitement and energy that infected and took over the square, which is actually, to be fair, still going on.

[00:01:12] I mean, I was just there yesterday and they still have the big screen up in Accidental Park and people are watching games and there's like still a lot of people around. It's not quite what it was when, you know, while we were having games, actual games here, but it's still quite energized down there.

[00:01:28] Yeah, well, I bring it up because in her interview with Erica, they talk about the World Cup and the mayor kind of touts the success that the city had. And Erica asks her about, you know, whether or not she wants to carry forward any lessons from that, including this great pedestrian experiment, which was super cool for anybody who missed it. I was also down there.

[00:01:49] But another related topic in some ways, Erica, that you bring up is sweeps. And I thought her answer was super interesting to that. I mean, you say something like, I don't think you came in wanting to be the sweeps mayor, but in some ways you are. So here's Katie Wilson talking about that.

[00:02:09] I mean, I think we're trying to strike a balance here where the situation we are trying to get to is one where we have shelter, we have housing, we're able to resolve encampments by getting people into that shelter and housing. And that is what opening up these new shelters is going to allow us to do at a much larger scale.

[00:02:28] And it is important. And I, you know, said this during the campaign that we are maintaining, you know, especially high priority public spaces for their intended uses, whether that's a park or a sidewalk. And and I think I mean, there's there's kind of like that answer. And then there's also a political answer of doing this in a way that builds political will.

[00:02:49] Now, my my question, you know, my sort of skepticism about that is, you know, if every space is a high priority space, I mean, which it seems to be judging by the pace of sweeps. We're not seeing a lot of change there. So what's the difference between her and Bruce Harrell? And I think she didn't really have an answer to that part of the question.

[00:03:10] You know, I mean, she's talked about keeping sidewalks clear and, you know, for their intended use, which I mean, really could have been something that came out of Bruce Harrell's mouth and was. So I think people who wanted her to slow down sweeps or stop sweeps, you know, are obviously pretty disappointed in her.

[00:03:30] The other point she made, which I agree with, is you do have to keep truly high priority public spaces clear and also not allow giant encampments that are dangerous like we saw during the pandemic to develop. And so that is that is clearly happening. But I think a lot more is still happening, too.

[00:03:49] It seems like, Sandy, like the mayor is turning out to be aspiring to be a truly pragmatic progressive on this stuff, as opposed to some of what we saw in the last council, which would I you could maybe call more business Democrat. You know, her saying basically, if we want to have the political will to actually get everybody shelter, we have to worry about a backlash is one of the things that she says to Erica. But what did you think of her answer?

[00:04:16] You know, I think the mayor is trying to chart a new pathway for the left in Seattle on things like encampments. She I think she believes that the the previous position of the left on these things, which is, you know, just the kind of bumper sticker, stop the sweeps kind of stuff, doesn't work. Probably doesn't work as a matter of public policy. But I think she knows it doesn't work politically.

[00:04:43] She's seen sort of what happened when the left pushed those positions. And during the pandemic, we did stop encampment cleanups and it provoked a public backlash that led to, you know, Bruce Harrell's election and other, you know, other folks getting elected, the left losing in council races and so on.

[00:05:00] And so she's trying to figure out a way forward that is true to her foundational kind of values, but also addresses the issues, you know, the failures. Right. That happened in the kind of more bumper sticker kind of stop the sweep policy. Right. So what she's really, you know, she says.

[00:05:24] This is why she's putting so much emphasis on the shelter initiative and getting all of this new shelter and services stood up. I mean, I think if you talk to the folks about what happened in Pioneer Square and they run up to the World Cup, I've talked to Lisa Dugard, a PDA about it and the others who are involved. Well, they will tell you that was a real success. Right. For that for that neighborhood, they were able to get people who were, you know, homeless in Pioneer Square into a better, safer place, you know, in some kind of shelter situation with some connection to services.

[00:05:55] And that's what the mayor is wanting to expand, you know, and do more of it now. There's no money in the budget for it, to be clear. I mean, she's she's wanting to expand it, but it is that is like a budget question. And we talked about the budget and we'll talk about that a little more later, too. Yeah. I mean, this is a question I don't think she wants to slow down.

[00:06:14] In fact, I think she needs to accelerate if she wants to hit her goal of getting to a thousand new shelter beds in place by the end of the year, though I thought she was a little squishy on whether we're actually going to get there in our interview with you, Erica. But I but I but I do think that's still a top priority for her. Right. It's getting these new villages, et cetera, open so that there are places to move people to.

[00:06:38] Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, as I kind of interjected there, I think it's going to be a really big budget battle, not just for shelter, but for, you know, the PDA style approach, which is very expensive. I mean, typically what we do with funding for the lead program and also funding for, you know, just care style sheltering programs that popped up during the pandemic is we move it around instead of adding more funding.

[00:07:02] And so when you're moving stuff around to 12th and Jackson or to Pioneer Square, I mean, a lot of times, I mean, if you just have the same services going to a priority area. So, you know, Katie Wilson's going to have a lot of challenges, this budget cycle. She has one hundred seventy five million dollar deficit that was left there for her by her predecessor, Bruce Harrell, who funded a bunch of stuff temporarily with one time funds. And so there's going to be a tremendous amount of budget pressure.

[00:07:28] So and then on top of that, I mean, she's asked all departments to come up with five to ten percent cuts, including the police department. But there is going to be tremendous pressure not to cut the police or rather cut the police's expansion pace by people on the council who are to the right of her, people in the media who are to the right of her.

[00:07:51] Police department is hiring at an incredible pace right now, which is entirely predictable because new officers, you know, just coming out of high school can make, you know, one hundred twenty six thousand dollars a year after six months. That is incredibly appealing his job. So, you know, we have more cops than we can pay for. We're going to have more cops applying than we can pay for.

[00:08:14] And so the question is, do we slow the pace of hiring or do we keep hiring at the same pace as Chief Barnes has said he wants to do and plans to do? And that means expanding the police budget rather than contracting it. And so are we going to see another year where police are sacrosanct and everything else gets cut? OK, let's hear from Katie Wilson.

[00:08:36] We have not directed SPD to slow hiring at this point, and we are working with them very closely with the aim of making sure that they remain within their budget for this year. And for next year, will there be budget cuts? We have asked all departments, including SPD, to model cuts. And again, we're kind of in that deliberative budget process. So there are many things, many variables.

[00:09:00] But but we we have asked all departments to model cuts with the anticipate anticipating that all departments will need to take some kind of cut. Hey, Seattle nice listeners. Seattle politics got you low. We'll get high with Uncle Ike's. Pissed at the mayor? Relax with a dollar joint. Pop a tire in a pothole.

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[00:09:58] Sounded to me like the police budget is going to have to take a cut along with everything else based on the budget deficit they're currently facing if there are cuts. But I'm not sure. Sandeep, what do you think? I've talked to a couple of people close to the mayor in the last couple of weeks. First of all, I think a lot of their how they're going to attack the budget is still in flux. Right. And and just for the benefit of our our listeners. Right. The process here is that the mayor does her budget speech.

[00:10:27] It'll be third week of September, right around the 20th of September is typically when the budget speech happens. That kicks off the budget process where the council then takes what the mayor transmits the budget and then spends really until about Thanksgiving, kind of going through that and making their adjustments before they pass the final budget. And that and budget kind of takes over the entire city government process. That's pretty much all they do between the third week of September and when they get it done right before Thanksgiving.

[00:10:57] So we're going to see, you know, the mayor is going to have to put forward, you know, it's relatively soon that we're going to see the mayor's proposed budget. But I still think they're trying to figure out key pieces of it. What are they going to do in terms of progressive taxation? How much of this is going to be new revenue as opposed to taxes? What I'm hearing is that they probably will bring forward some progressive new progressive tax revenue. Not clear what that's going to be.

[00:11:25] Is it muni cap gains are going to turn the dials on jumpstart? Is it something we haven't seen yet? I'm not sure what they've decided. But I'm also hearing that they don't think that they can if in one hundred and seventy five million dollar budget deficit situation, they think maybe maximally they could get to something like, you know, 60 or 70 million dollars of new revenue. And and probably not even that much, in which case it is going to be a mostly cuts budget. Right. Is what they're expecting.

[00:11:54] And I think what we should expect to see from them in that context. And just really quickly on the police piece of it. And in that context, what I'm told is that, yeah, everything's going to get cut here. But when it comes to the police department in particular, they're looking for cuts primarily that don't affect headcount of officers. Right. They think there are other places in the police budget. Oh, I know. I know. They can get. Yeah.

[00:12:23] OK, well, we're here. We're here to run. You are. I'm sure you have many. Surveillance cameras. Oh, there you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which are very expensive. And that real time crime center is very expensive and very effective. And I don't think the real time crime center is on the top. Well, you can't just say very effective without actually producing data. And I think saying, oh, you know, look, look, we use some video from this source as opposed to the camera that's set up across the street by a convenience store.

[00:12:52] That proves that we need to spend millions and millions of dollars on this huge real time crime center. I mean, the evidence that it is effective is, I would say, slim. But, you know, I mean, there's there's there's always going to be the argument that because something was used to solve a crime, the crime could have been solved no other way. I don't know how cops solved crimes before they had surveillance cameras on all of us. But somehow, you know, they they managed to solve not many of them, but some of them.

[00:13:21] Well, they they probably weren't making one hundred twenty six thousand dollars plus a year after six months, whereas a camera doesn't make as much. I mean, it's it's automation is something that happens in other industries, too. And that's it's part of it. Right. It's a lot cheaper to have a camera than to have a cop. Whatever work, whatever the debate is about the work that they can actually do. And you have a big staff there. Right. So it's not just a camera. It's still cheaper to have cameras, I think. But like, let me ask you about this, Erica. Chief Barnes. They're not replacing cops with cameras.

[00:13:47] Just to be totally clear, there's you're setting up a dichotomy that does not exist. No, no, no. What I'm saying is it's cheaper to it is cheaper to police with cameras than it is with humans. Then you said how did you raise the question? I want to get into a debate about it, but you raise the question. You said, how did we police before cameras? I said we did it with humans and humans are more expensive than cameras. That's all I said. Doesn't seem really debatable. I mean, I do. I think it's super debatable. I mean, they have they have a giant, you know, a giant technical center set up with people staffing it.

[00:14:17] We haven't cut the number of cops because there are cameras. I mean, that's just not true what you're saying. I mean, in a in a world of pure theory, in a world of pure theory. It was true in a limited sense in response in response to you saying, what did we do before cameras? I said cameras are cheaper than that's not. That's all I said. In a world of pure theory, that's true. Look it up. Look it up. But it's not true at SPD. I actually think the truth in the real world matters more than pure theory. But OK, people can people can look up the police budget over years.

[00:14:46] Do your own research, folks. Go to Google. Chief Barnes, the future of Chief Barnes. I did want to ask you about that. Don't believe the reporter who reports on this. You can believe whoever you want. So Chief Barnes, let me ask about the future of Chief Barnes because you asked he's a fan of surveillance cameras and other things. And you asked Katie Wilson about his future. Yeah, I asked if she plans to fire him. This was kind of a spicy interview. But that was one of my questions. We didn't have a lot of time. So I asked her pretty much point blank, you know, are you planning to keep him?

[00:15:15] He's been around for, you know, for for for her term so far. So more than six months. And she said yes. Well, for actually first what she said was, I'm not going to give you an answer. And she laughed. And then she said, yes, we're retaining Chief Barnes. Obviously, SPD is a complicated department with a complicated history. And I also don't think that, like, you know, leadership change changes that. Right.

[00:15:43] So, like, there's really deep work that needs to happen within the department. And I'm confident that through a partnership with Chief Barnes, we can make some progress. In a way that I, you know, I don't know. Like, I don't want to do a, you know, a body language read of Katie Wilson or psychological profile. But, like, I don't know. I mean, I'm still I'm still kind of skeptical. I think there are there's a lot of sort of pressure to keep Chief Barnes coming from certain parts of her administration.

[00:16:10] But Barnes has one of the things I asked about was just the kind of cavalcade of anti-LGBTQ stuff that has come out about some of the people that work for Barnes. You know, the raid on Denny Blaine Beach, the comments about we're not here for the gays from his, you know, chief of staff and just some other unsavory shit.

[00:16:32] But, you know, hiring the anti-trans cop who called a bunch of protesters cockroaches after he tried to run them over on the sidewalk. I mean, to be the, you know, the head of the East Precinct over the gay lieutenant who had been the acting captain of the East Precinct. He is now suing for anti-LGBTQ bias as are other police officers. So, I don't know. Seems like that should be a big deal in Seattle.

[00:17:00] But Wilson kind of, you know, elided that question and basically said, you know, yeah, that's a concern, but we're keeping him. And I read a for now into that, but maybe I'm maybe I'm reading too deep. You read a what into it? A for now into it. We're keeping him for now. But I might be reading too deeply into that.

[00:17:19] What I heard when I was listening to it and reading the response was, here's a progressive mayor who's trying to forge a good relationship with the cops like a Michelle Wu in Boston who's a serious progressive but actually managed to get both the police union's endorsement and some major concessions that our previous mayor wasn't able to get. So that it just seems like she's trying to figure out how to strike that balance as a progressive mayor. But Sandeep, what do you think?

[00:17:49] Well, I think that as we've said and talked about in previous episodes, there is there is a divide within her office. And there's a divide, I think, within, you know, to some extent within her base of support over all sorts of things. Right. And but one of them is, I think, how hard to go on various sort of policing initiatives. Right.

[00:18:16] There's there's the new initiative she announced about Little Saigon a few weeks ago that we've talked about a bit, but that she sort of made a big announcement about and then hasn't said a whole lot about it since, even though it's ongoing. And I think that's indicative of the fact that there's a fair amount of conflict over stuff like that internally in the mayor's office. There are some abolitionist voices that are in her ear, as well as some folks saying, hey, we need to kind of have a more traditional approach to policing.

[00:18:46] And so that's a I think a internal divide within the mayor's mind, though. I will I will say this, though, what she told Erica here that she's retaining Sean Barnes as police chief is probably the biggest single bit of news to come out of this interview that Erica did. Like, I do think there have been rumors swirling and stuff like that, that Barnes might be his head might be on the chopping block and that it doesn't seem to be the case, as I understand. Erica's saying it may well be the case. We just don't know it yet.

[00:19:14] I've heard from other just really quickly. I've heard from others in her orbit that that they intend to retain Sean. David, I want to go back to your comment about getting the support of the cops. I don't think the cops are big fans of Sean Barnes. So I don't know that retaining the police chief is going to get the support of the cops or certainly not of Spog, the police union. I received a copy that Barnes has been putting photos of himself up on Facebook, sort of posing around Seattle.

[00:19:44] And I received a copy of a meme that is going around or rather an AI generated version of that image showing Barnes as a clown. That's something that cops are circulating. Now, what does that mean? I don't know. There's a lot of cops. I'm sure some of them like Barnes. But I don't think that this is an attempt by Katie Wilson to try to get the support of the police union or of cops in general. Interesting. Interesting. I would add in on that, you know, I mean, Barnes has strong support within Seattle's black community.

[00:20:11] And I think that's probably a factor in her consideration. But the other things that she said in the interview with Erica is that she very much thinks SPD culturally is a work in progress. And she knows the issues that Erica raised here about some of the stuff with bad behavior from various cops. She said she's very keenly aware of that.

[00:20:35] And I think the general decision, what's driving her general decision here about maintaining Barnes is that she thinks to this point that he is committed to making the kinds of cultural changes that she wants to see happen in SPD. And while that's happening, she's not going to be making a change there. That's my sense.

[00:20:58] Yeah, I mean, I don't I will say again, just kind of being in the room and this is me reading between the lines and I could be wrong. But I took her meaning to be more that, you know, she said that obviously SPD is a complicated department with a complicated history and I don't think leadership changes that.

[00:21:17] I think that that is sort of an acknowledgement that it kind of doesn't matter who the police chief is in a lot of ways because SPD has a fucked up culture and it's misogynistic. It's anti LGBTQ. It's just not it's not a welcoming culture for women, as we've seen by the fact that they consistently can't hire more than, you know, around 10 percent women. And so in that sense, like who's at the top doesn't change the culture.

[00:21:45] And I think that is I think that, you know, is absolutely true. All right, Erica, you also asked about missteps, missteps that we've talked about on this podcast, some of the tensions that emerged between the mayor's office and individual members of the Seattle City Council and their staff. And how did she reflect on that? How did she how would you characterize her response to that question? Defensive.

[00:22:12] I think she was defensive in response to that question. And in fact, you know, the first thing she said when I asked her to sort of reflect on like what, you know, the most surprising challenges, which I think is a pretty softball question. But she said she hated that question. And then we were talking about we sort of shifted to talking about the tension with the council. And, you know, she said that she didn't hit a wall on the shelter stuff.

[00:22:39] Listeners may recall that she ended up eventually demoting a staff member after there was a huge conflict with the council over the way that she introduced her shelter legislation and insisted that it be, you know, sort of fast tracked without having talked to the council beforehand. And, you know, she said, I'm working on it. And she finally did say, you know, in retrospect, I think we handled that poorly.

[00:23:04] Setting up a new mayoral administration like you're bringing in, you know, 40 some people assembling a new office, figuring out how to organize ourselves. And so we definitely were slow to staff and figure out our council relations. And so that that was a learning process. We definitely made some missteps.

[00:23:25] And in retrospect, should have put a lot more focus on that at the outset and just, you know, what we needed to do in order to build a really good relationship with each council office and make sure that we were moving things in the right way. I mean, some of the shelter thing, I think, was that tension between like we need this stuff to happen. So, like, let's just send it down.

[00:23:44] The urgency of trying to start standing up your shelter and, you know, not having an entirely thorough understanding of like, I'm saying not having an entirely thorough understanding. More just like not having had time to establish our council relations strategy in a really good way. So I think, like, in retrospect, we did that poorly and certainly were learning from that. I mean, you couldn't get any worse in terms of mayor council relations.

[00:24:13] I mean, they had a press conference recently about Aurora where they insisted on holding it in this crazy space outside council chambers instead of like even, you know, on the first floor of City Hall, which is kind of neutral ground. And the mayor spoke like sort of in the middle and some of the council members excoriated her during this press conference that she was at. So there's, you know, the only way to go is up at this point. Yeah.

[00:24:39] And she brought up, you know, the tension between herself kind of having this activist background and just wanting to get shit done when she gets in and then being kind of faced with the reality of the Seattle process and kind of being a little bit naive about that, Sandeep. Yeah. Yeah. I thought that was an interesting answer on her part. Like, you know, I think she was basically admitting that on the outside, she's like, man, I'm going to come in here and I'm just going to kick some shit and we're going to do some stuff.

[00:25:09] And like, I'm going to, you know, there's, and look, she's like got a vision. I want to do a thousand shelter units. I'm going to come here and I'm going to fucking do that. Right. And then she gets in and there's like all these people who, and look, a lot of this process stuff turns out to be like, in reality, you know, in the abstract, it seems like, well, let's just cut through that bullshit and just do stuff. But in reality, it's like, oh my God, it's like this community is coming to me and they have this concern about this thing.

[00:25:38] And there's this other community. And like, am I really going to give them the back of my hand or am I going to have that conversation? And then you get bogged down. And like, so the reality of how you govern, right, is different from what it looks like on the outside. So I thought that was interesting that she said that. I mean, at the beginning part of the interview, I thought the most interesting thing she said, and maybe this is a little bit defensive, but she said she was in, you know, it was your headline.

[00:26:02] And Erica's article announcing the first part of the interview was the mayor saying she's incredibly proud of. Let me pull up the actual quote here. I'm like really proud of the things that we've accomplished in these first six months. And we had a lot of headwinds, right? We came in with really, you know, kind of ice scares, right? And we had to stand up our kind of internally, like our federal response work really fast. We moved, you know, $4 million out to the community.

[00:26:32] You know, we had to immediately figure out the library levy, you know, transmit back to council. We did our FEP levy implementation, got free school meals, which was like not easy. Like I saw how much work in my office went into making that happen. You know, we got Grand Street Station to affordability on sound transit. We've, you know, transmitted a Seattle transit measure package that will expand transit at a time when many jurisdictions around the country are pulling back on public transit.

[00:27:01] When, you know, gas is many dollars a gallon. You know, we're putting painting bus lanes on Denny. We got our rapid shelter expansion work off the ground. We've opened one big new shelter, which has been key to the success of the Piner Square efforts that, you know, PDA and others have led. And we have, you know, a number of additional shelters that are going to be opening up in over the course of the rest of this year. You know, obviously we've had to deal with the KCRHA, everything going on there.

[00:27:30] We launched all our events are faster. We transmitted our drug fee legislation. And you know what were the most successful World Cup hosted in North America? So what I would say is she spent a lot of time in this interview saying we're making a lot of progress and we're having a lot of success. These first six months have been a success. And she has an argument for that. But I would say on the outside, there's a bunch of people that, you know, maybe more coming from the camp that didn't support her in the election.

[00:27:59] Though I would say on the left, too, that there are a lot of people that are saying these first six months have been kind of bumpy, you know, up and down. Things maybe to be pleased about, but also hasn't really gone perfectly. Right. And but that doesn't seem to be her position on on how the first six months has gone. She seems to have a much more positive and optimistic take on where things are headed.

[00:28:23] Well, in that very paragraph, she talked about how they got free school lunches into the preschool levy implementation plan.

[00:28:33] And it was either literally that I think it was literally later that day that Joy Hollingsworth on city council, who is not a an ally politically of the mayor, announced that she was proposing a plan along with Dionne Foster to basically defund that program and use it for vouchers for meals on weekends and school breaks. So that that that, too, is now very much up in the air. And she listed that as like one of her signature accomplishments.

[00:29:03] Right. And Dionne Foster being ostensibly one of her allies politically. Right. Right. And and what I heard was that the mayor's office felt very blindsided by that amendment coming from them, that there hadn't been, you know, this cuts both ways. Right. I mean, the council's been complaining about the mayor's office not dealing them in and sort of crafting legislation that's going to be sent down or kind of giving them a heads up about stuff.

[00:29:30] Well, this was one where I've heard from the mayor's office saying, whoa, we found out about this at the 11th hour. They cooked this without a conversation with us. You know, what the fuck is up with that? And, you know, that there's a certain amount of, I think, unhappiness around that coming down. It'll be interesting to see how this amendment plays out. I mean, as you say, she clearly has some strong feelings about the details of the policy here around the school lunches stuff.

[00:29:58] You know, and she does see this as a kind of, I think, signature bit of her sort of socialist, you know, democratic socialist agenda to do stuff like this. It's very, you know, Zoran Mamdani-like, right? And it's sort of like we're going to kind of make some of these basic things free for people. And, yeah. So, yeah, I think she's probably got pretty strong feelings about this amendment.

[00:30:26] And that's certainly what I'm hearing from people around her, that she didn't like how this came down. As I remember it, when Bruce Harrell, we should go back to her specific accomplishments. But when Bruce Harrell first started out thinking, when we talked about it on this podcast, like, what has he done in the first six months? It's like there was some dashboards and some plans to reorganize some things and some, you know, rearrangement of the deck chairs. As I remember it, there wasn't a hell of a lot of, like, concrete accomplishments in the first six months.

[00:30:55] Or the first four years. Yeah, well, OK. So I'm just saying, if anything, it's an improvement over the accomplishments of the last administration is my memory of it, would be my guess. I haven't gone back and looked, but that's my sense of it.

[00:31:11] One of the things she pointed out is that although she hasn't hit the shelter goal for this year or for before the World Cup, she has produced a net total of shelter beds that is, you know, many times more than the mayor of the previous mayor, Bruce Harrell, produced in his entire term. Pragmatic progressive. I would push back, David, on your characterization of Bruce's first six months. I actually think his first six months, he did a lot, but I would call it a low-hanging fruit.

[00:31:40] What he did was he ended all of the sort of, you know, left progressive stuff that was put in place during the pandemic era. Like, we, for two years, didn't clear encampments. He actually went in and he cleared. The left progressive stuff. OK, the thing that Jenny Durkan did in response to federal CDC guidance. I just want to just jump in with a fact check, but sorry. Go ahead. Yeah.

[00:32:10] Yeah. How'd that work out for the left? Like the massive encampments and green laying a ballot comment. It wasn't the left. It was literally not the left that did that. I agree. I'm not saying he didn't do anything, but I think there was a lot of like, you know, sort of envisioning and one-seattling and sort of pointing to, you know, what could be done in the future. And we're going to come up with, in the first six months, we're going to come up with a dashboard. I mean, literally, that was a lot of, you know, what they pointed to as accomplishments in those first.

[00:32:39] He resumed encampment cleanups. They, like, started policing again in a more significant way, right? When he came in, then February of 2021, a month into his term, he came in and they had a press conference about public safety. I remember this well. We were talking about how much shootings had skyrocketed in the year before, right? You're just relitigating, like, stuff that happened under Jenny Durkin and in every single U.S. city during the pandemic.

[00:33:03] I'm saying they made some significant changes to what was the extent, extent policy when he came into office. As did every city because the pandemic. And then I will say, as a criticism, I don't think they had a second act. You know, I think they did that. They did a bunch of stuff in the first six months to reset the policies that existed before the pandemic. And then they didn't have any vision for going forward, really. I don't completely disagree with that. Erica, what else can you say about her self-evaluation? I thought it was funny you said. I'm not asking you to give yourself a letter grade, which is, of course, the kind of thing I would do.

[00:33:33] But, you know, her overall self-evaluation. I think that's just a pointless question. Yeah, I know. But I think she's giving herself a B here, if I had to characterize the way she describes it. Did you? I think she's giving herself an A-. You'd say A-. I'm not going to engage with what I consider a stupid question. I mean, like, you know, what is any elected—there's never a good answer to that question. But your question is, like, how does she evaluate herself overall? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:34:02] I mean, I think she remains—you know, I used the word defensive earlier. I think she is defensive of her record. She clearly, like—it was kind of funny because I always have printed out notes that are way too extensive. And she had printed out notes that were way too extensive, which is very funny during the interview, both of us kind of looking at our printouts. And she clearly had a list of stuff she wanted to hit as highlights of her accomplishments, just to kind of remind me.

[00:34:29] And I thought this is, you know, a fair reminder of stuff they've actually gotten done. But I don't know that she has entirely absorbed the really big lessons that she needs to learn from the first six months, one of which is you've got to make nice with the council. The council is not the council of two years ago. I mean, it's inclined a lot of them to be friendly to her politically and to agree with her politically. And yet she somehow came in and just immediately she, her team, whoever, alienated them.

[00:34:57] So I think she's got more work to do there. I think that if she does believe that Chief Barnes or that, you know, SPD is going to reform their culture, I don't think that that is based on any real evidence. And so if she does believe that, I think she needs to be more skeptical, you know. So I think that, you know, there's more lessons that she's going to have to learn to be successful.

[00:35:22] And I'm not sure that she has entirely taken that work on board as opposed to sort of being defensive about what she has done and some of the missteps that, you know, she considers sort of only partially her administration's fault. I mean, she does say to you, like, we did that poorly. She does. That's true. With council relations. Like, that's a pretty frank acknowledgement. I mean, that was an incredible debacle. And she did acknowledge that.

[00:35:50] I just, if I was, well, I mean, I don't even want to say if I was the mayor. I would never be the mayor, right? I'm not the kind of person that could do that job. It's happening. 2020. I'm not the kind of person that can do that job.

[00:36:01] But, I mean, I would be doing everything I could, and maybe she is, to rebuild personal relationships, one-on-one relationships with the council so that you don't have Dionne Foster, you know, your ostensible ideological ally, blindsiding you by co-sponsoring legislation that would undo your signature preschool or your signature school lunch program. Just to name one example. Hmm. Yeah, they clearly have work to do on the council relations front.

[00:36:31] And I continue to, I will say, I am hearing there is, I think, a real effort, not just from the mayor's office, but from the mayor herself, to do exactly what Erica is suggesting, to kind of have more of a personal interaction with individual council members. I have heard from a couple of council members. They've had meetings with the mayor recently about stuff where, I will say, I'm not sure those meetings have gone perfectly, right?

[00:37:00] I mean, there's been, they've had a lot of questions for her about stuff like the budget and where are you going on that? And they haven't, I think, gotten a lot of answers yet. And so I think some of those tensions persist and there's still a perception that they're not being looped in in some partnership kind of way, but are still, you know, but at least there is some direct interaction going on between some of the mayor and some of the council members, which wasn't happening in the early days, right?

[00:37:29] I was hearing that they never heard from her directly. And now they're meeting with her, but they're not quite getting everything they want out of those meetings. I got to say, I'm, I'm, I totally understand what you all are saying. I don't understand nearly as well as Erica does, like, you know, how specific council members or council staff feel like they weren't sort of being respected or whatever it is, you know, or consulted along the way.

[00:37:53] But also like ultimately as just a voter or voters out there, people just want shit to get done. Like, so at the end of the day, I don't give a shit really ultimately about that stuff. And I think everybody needs to grow up and get past the, the, the tough relationship things or whatever it is. So yet what I'm getting at here in my terms of my question is, yes, that is responsibility for the mayor to do that. But doesn't the council also have responsibility because ultimately this is about voters. It's not about them or their feelings, isn't it? Erica? For sure.

[00:38:24] But I mean, you can't just sort of dismiss process questions as boring because that's how everything gets done is through a process. And it's, we have a, you know, we have a legislative branch, we have an executive branch and, you know, it isn't, I mean, I said it's about personal relationships because I think that is like the bedrock of how you start to build working relationships, especially when they've been so damaged.

[00:38:44] But I mean, if the council and mayor can't work together and I, you know, and I've seen councils and mayors over the years that work together fine, even when they didn't, you know, the majority of the council didn't agree with the mayor or vice versa. So that's, that's why I focus on the personal relationships. I mean, yeah, I agree. Like normal people, voters shouldn't give a shit about that stuff. But if the two branches of government aren't talking to each other, then that means that shit doesn't get done. And that's, that's a really big problem. Yeah.

[00:39:12] But it's just as much of a risk for the city council politically at the, at the end of the day. City council has more control in a lot of ways. The media start calling them the do nothing council as we referred to a city council in the past. So, you know, they can also be tarnished with a, with a negative brush if they're, if they're becoming obstructionist. Right. Like. Potentially. Look, I mean, we're going to have seven, you know, the seven district seats are going to be up next year. Right.

[00:39:35] And, and it's going to be interesting to see how those races start to take shape and evolve and play out because you could see a situation where there could be challenges from the left for some of the council members. They, you know, are these council members going to be, will they in some sense run against the mayor or will they, will they have things to tell? I mean, it's, I don't know right now. Right.

[00:40:00] I mean, I think there's real questions about how the council side of this is going to play with the public as we go into election season. After we get, you know, after we get past budget, it's basically like, then they're done for December and then they come back and we're starting the, you know, election. Which Trump's still in office and the, and the electorate in whatever mood that is left leaning potentially. Yeah. I think, I think, I mean, we'll talk about this a lot more obviously, but I, I think that some of these district councilmen. Members could be in trouble.

[00:40:30] Not all of them. There's some that I think are pretty safe, but, but some of the more sort of aggressively, the ones who are very aggressively pro Bruce Harrell's agenda, very aggressively pro police and, and remain very aggressively that way. I think could be in trouble. So I don't know. We'll see. We'll see who runs. It always depends on who runs as well. And we have a, we have a city council race this year, which we will be talking about. But Sante, like to close things out, where do you think we are?

[00:40:59] What's your evaluation of the mayor six months in? I said, she's given herself a B. That's, that's how I read it. And, or maybe, maybe a B plus. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. About the grading part of it. I, you know, I, I, I do think she's, she has a sense that she's accomplished a lot. Right. And I do think she has some cases to make for things that have turned out really well.

[00:41:23] My, and I have been, I think consistently trying to give her credit for thinking big and for trying to do significant, important things. The shelter initiative. I really like to see that move forward at the scale and the pace that she's been saying she's going to do that.

[00:41:42] And, and the little Saigon initiative that we mentioned here, I'd really like to see her make progress on ending or, or seriously improving the situation down there in terms of the open air drug and stolen goods market. Um, you know, I, this MHA, you know, housing affordability holiday that we've been talking about on, on Seattle Nice.

[00:42:07] We talked about last week that, that I think her office is saying is still in play, even though clearly had a big setback that we talked about last week. So what I would say is like jury's still out here, man. There's a lot of markers and, and balls she's put into motion here, but she's hasn't quite, I mean, we're only six months in. And they're all still in progress. She hasn't quite landed them yet. It's hard to tell. Are these things gonna, is she going to deliver just not yet?

[00:42:35] Or are they going to spiral off and not happen? And so I think we're, I, I'm in a kind of wait and see mode to see whether we actually get the results on the ground that she's put the markers down and says she's going to, going to deliver for us. All right. We're going to have to end it there. France is going to end up winning the world cup just in case anybody's been paying attention to that. I'm David Hyde. She's Erica C. Barnett. He's Sandeep Kaushik. And thanks everybody so much for listening.