Note: This episode was recorded Thursday morning, before Barnes's resignation was confirmed.

Hosts Erica C. Barnett, Sandeep Kaushik and David Hyde break down the chaotic 24 hours that preceded Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes's official ouster. Rumors of a forced resignation. A defiant chief and the NAACP and Urban League rallying to his side. The mayor's office went silent for hours. We were recording in the middle of the chaos, when it still wasn't clear how it would end.

Then we shift gears to Council member Eddie Lin's push to eliminate a key path for public appeals in the city's land use process, a fight that came down to a single swing vote from Bob Kettle, and pits housing advocates against neighborhood opponents.

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This week on Seattle Nice, (the only podcast that tells you what's really happening in Seattle politics), we get into three topics:

• Should buying sex on Aurora Avenue be a felony? King County's top prosecutor is pushing state legislation to upgrade paying for sex from a misdemeanor to a felony. But some county public defenders are pushing back. We dig into the numbers and debate whether tougher penalties are the right approach.
• Mayor Katie Wilson loses press secretary. Sage Wilson is out in early August, weeks after communications director Seferiana Day resigned. Is this a sign of friction inside City Hall over issues like sweeps and renters' protections? That's what co-host Erica Barnett thinks.
• Seattle's housing pipeline has nearly dried up. We talk about why housing starts are down, the fallout from the failed MHA fee reform, and whether Council member Eddie Lynn has found a modest path forward to get more construction projects moving again.

Thanks to everyone who is helping Seattle Nice make the jump to video. If you know someone who loves this podcast and hasn't become a member yet, please suggest they contribute too, at: Patreon.com/SeattleNice

Send us a text! Note that we can only respond directly to emails realseattlenice@gmail.com

Thanks to Uncle Ike's pot shop for sponsoring this week's episode! If you want to advertise please contact us at realseattlenice@gmail.com

Support the show

Your support on Patreon helps pay for editing, production, live events and the unique, hard-hitting local journalism and commentary you hear weekly on Seattle Nice.

Welcome to Seattle Nice, the only podcast that tells you what's really happening in Seattle politics. Join Erica C. Barnett (PubliCola), David Hyde, and political consultant Sandeep Kaushik as they break down the latest from City Hall.

In this episode:

• Transit Tax Showdown: Seattle's transit measure is poised to head to the November ballot. We break down the City Council's marathon Thursday meeting, including a failed attempt to "water down" the levy and a "shut up" maneuver that brought the speechifying to a screeching halt.
• Lunchroom Politics: Universal free school lunches or vouchers for low-income families? We dig into the clash between Mayor Katie Wilson's priorities and council members Joy Hollingsworth and Dionne Foster's push for means-tested support.
• The Denny Blaine Ruling: A judge has weighed in on Seattle's nude beach, addressing what counts as "lewd" behavior and what the ruling means for the future of the city's parks.
• Mayoral Travel Diaries: Why did former Mayor Bruce Harrell spend around a quarter of his time in the air, while Mayor Wilson travels far less?

CORRECTION: In this episode Sandeep mentioned that Council President Joy Hollingsworth previously worked at Food Lifeline. That was incorrect: Hollingsworth was previously affiliated with the Northwest Harvest Emergency Feeding Program.

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We're on a mission to bring Seattle Nice to video, since that's where podcasting is headed. But we can't do that without your support. If you value independent, deep-dive coverage of Seattle politics, help us keep local accountability reporting alive, become a supporter-listener-viewer on Patreon.

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Subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts to help other Seattleites find the show.

#SeattlePolitics #SeattleCityCouncil #SeattleNews #SeattleTransit #LocalGovernment

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Thanks to Uncle Ike's pot shop for sponsoring this week's episode! If you want to advertise please contact us at realseattlenice@gmail.com

Support the show

Your support on Patreon helps pay for editing, production, live events and the unique, hard-hitting local journalism and commentary you hear weekly on Seattle Nice.

Six months into her tenure at City Hall and Mayor Katie Wilson has a message for Seattle: things are going great, actually. On this episode of Seattle Nice, hosts Erica C Barnett, David Hyde and Sandeep Kaushik dig into Publicola’s two-parter with the mayor: a "spicy" interview that covers everything from whether she's the next "sweeps" mayor to whether Chief Shon Barnes keeps his job.

Plus, why the council keeps finding out about Wilson's legislation the same way the rest of us do: by reading PubliCola. And what she's doing to fix the tense relationship with the council. Also: a school lunch program got ambushed the same day the mayor bragged about it.

• World Cup hangover / promise. Seattle's role in the World Cup is over and Sandeep is back to driving his gas-guzzler to work at Pioneer Square, but the vibes (and the Occidental Park jumbotron) haven't fully left. Will Wilson pedestrianize more of downtown for good?
• The Pioneer Square playbook. Sandeep makes the case that the PDA-led shelter-and-services push that cleared the neighborhood for the World Cup actually worked, and that Wilson wants to replicate it citywide. One catch: there's no money in the budget for it yet.
• The "Sweeps" Mayor Dilemma: Erica presses Wilson on encampment removals. Wilson's answer boils down to political triage: stop all sweeps and you lose the "political will" to build more shelter.
• $175 million hole. We discuss the deficit and the looming push for new progressive revenue (capital gains? JumpStart again?), and why Wilson admits there's "no silver bullet."
• SPD budget in the crosshairs and Chief Barnes stays, for now. Every department's been told to model budget cuts, including police, even as SPD keeps hiring at a pace the city may not be able to afford (starting pay tops $126K after six months). But will they actually cut officers? In the middle of that squeeze, Wilson confirms she's retaining Chief Shon Barnes.
• The council relationship: still a mess, but improving? Wilson owns some of the dysfunction from the shelter-legislation fight earlier this year, admitting her office was "slow to staff" council relations. There are reportedly efforts now to rebuild those one-on-one relationships, but meetings aren't going great yet.
• Looking Back: How does Wilson’s first six months compare to former Mayor Bruce Harrell?

Read the two-part interview in PubliCola:

Mayor Katie Wilson at Six Months In: "Incredibly Proud of What We're Accomplishing" (Part 1)

Mayor Katie Wilson Says She's "Doing a Reset" on Housing Agenda, "Very Hopeful" About Police Chief (Part 2)

If you appreciate the in-depth, behind-the-scenes coverage of Seattle politics, help us keep the lights on. We're a bare-bones operation trying to expand into video, and we can’t do it without our listeners.

https://www.patreon.com/seattlenice

Send us a text! Note that we can only respond directly to emails realseattlenice@gmail.com

Thanks to Uncle Ike's pot shop for sponsoring this week's episode! If you want to advertise please contact us at realseattlenice@gmail.com

Support the show

Your support on Patreon helps pay for editing, production, live events and the unique, hard-hitting local journalism and commentary you hear weekly on Seattle Nice.

Just as urbanists thought they had a deal to jumpstart stalled housing construction, it fell apart. We unpack the rise and fall of a proposed temporary break on Seattle's Mandatory Housing Affordability program, which taxes new development to fund affordable housing. Those tax dollars have all but dried up as building costs have soared and construction has stalled. Developers and density advocates argued a two-year partial fee pause could revive dozens of stalled projects while costing the city little to no affordable housing revenue.

But after weeks of backroom negotiating, Mayor Katie Wilson pulled the plug, siding with anti-displacement advocates on the left over the pro-development urbanist coalition. We ask what this reveals about Wilson's brand of urbanism, and whether "the Urbanist Mayor" label still fits.

Plus, Seattle and King County announced they're clawing back roughly $160 million in service contracts from the flailing King County Regional Homelessness Authority, effectively gutting the agency's core function. KCRHA was supposed to be the region's big fix for homelessness: one coordinated system instead of a patchwork of city and county programs. But KCRHA never delivered. We break down how years of leadership turnover, a structurally messy governance model, and a scathing forensic audit brought KCRHA to this point, and talk about what comes next.

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We are transitioning to video and need your help to make it happen. If you value this podcast, please support us on Patreon at patreon.com/seattle-nice. Your contribution helps us keep the show free and independent.

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Thanks to Uncle Ike's pot shop for sponsoring this week's episode! If you want to advertise please contact us at realseattlenice@gmail.com

Support the show

Your support on Patreon helps pay for editing, production, live events and the unique, hard-hitting local journalism and commentary you hear weekly on Seattle Nice.

While Seattle celebrates hosting the World Cup, the city's unsheltered count just jumped 21 percent. What explains the increase? Can we trust the numbers? And why are we seeing shelter capacity shrink right when it’s needed most?

Also: Mayor Katie Wilson's "zero-tolerance" push in Little Saigon. Is this the same old policing playbook, or something genuinely new? Can a progressive socialist approach call for more policing? Our co-hosts do not agree.

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Last August, an alarming, high-profile audit of King County’s Department of Community and Human Services’ spending on “high-risk” youth program providers found widespread problems and indications of potential fraud. So now, 10 months later, has DCHS been able to clean up the issues that led to the serious internal control problems the audit surfaced?

New DCHS Director Susan McLaughlin joins Erica and Sandeep (while David is away) to make the case that DCHS is back on track. The agency is now emphasizing “a culture of accountability,” McLaughlin tells us, and is implementing new supports for smaller community-based organizations to document their work. McLaughlin also expresses strong opposition to a recent proposal from King County Councilmember Rod Dembowski that would require the council to directly approve all spending under the county’s Best Starts for Kids program, saying his proposed approach would “have devastating impacts” by bottlenecking DCHS' work.

Going beyond the audit aftermath, McLaughlin tells us that she is confident that DCHS is ready to provide oversight of homelessness services contracts if County Executive Zahilay and Seattle Mayor Wilson decide to claw back those contracts from the troubled King County Regional Homelessness Authority (as they're rumored to be planning), and shares insights about what DCHS learned from the contentious process of siting its new Seattle crisis care clinic on Capitol Hill.

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Thanks to Uncle Ike's pot shop for sponsoring this week's episode! If you want to advertise please contact us at realseattlenice@gmail.com

Support the show

Your support on Patreon helps pay for editing, production, live events and the unique, hard-hitting local journalism and commentary you hear weekly on Seattle Nice.

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Seattle Nice, which takes up Mayor Katie Wilson’s proposal to double the current transit sales tax. It’s a familiar Seattle policy dilemma: how do we pay for the reliable public transit we need without relying on regressive taxes?

Next, we examine the newly passed Housing Opportunities Package (HOP). It’s a massive set of zoning changes and regulatory shifts aimed at kickstarting residential construction across the city. Is the unanimous vote a good sign for the upcoming, high-stakes battle over Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan?

Finally, we’re opening the mailbag to field your questions and comments. If you’ve got a take on transit, thoughts on housing, or just want to tell us we’re getting it wrong, write in at realseattlenice@gmail.com.

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Support the show

Your support on Patreon helps pay for editing, production, live events and the unique, hard-hitting local journalism and commentary you hear weekly on Seattle Nice.