With at least 14 bills in play this legislative session that pertain to AI, the focus on regulating this technology is as strong as it’s ever been. 

Jon Pincus, the founder of Nexus of Privacy, said legislators are grappling with the implications of AI all over the country.

“AI is moving really fast, and no matter what you think of it, it’s really changing things,” Pincus said. “And states are all wrestling with how to regulate it. Like any industry, tech doesn’t want to be regulated at all. There’s a sort of grudging admission that, well, okay, maybe something needs to be done. They’re pushing for things to be as weak as possible. I’m certainly in favor of strong regulations, but there is this real complexity that we don’t want to just kill promising technology.”

Tee Sannon, the the ACLU of Washington’s Technology Policy Program Director, said the ACLU has been advocating for meaningful regulation of AI for some time now. 

“There’s a slew of AI-related bills that we’re seeing introduced, and I think it speaks to the point that we do really need AI regulations,” Sannon told The Urbanist. “And currently this is an unregulated space, and we’re seeing the risks and harms that come from that. But at the same time, we also have to be careful to make sure that those protections are meaningful.”

Washington State could be uniquely positioned to lead in AI regulation. The state is one of the country’s big technical hubs, is the home to the world-class research institution the University of Washington, and has a strong network of tech organizers. For example, in 2023, the legislature passed the landmark “My Health My Data” Act, which the Electronic Frontier Foundation called “one of the strongest consumer data privacy laws in recent years.” Washington was the first state to tackle issues around the gaps in protection of consumer health care data.

“I feel like we’ve arrived at this moment where many, many people are waking up to the fact that an unregulated tech industry has sort of brought us to this place of urgency and crisis in terms of what we’ve allowed to happen with big tech in our lives,” Maya Morales, founder of Washington People’s Privacy, said. “We’re now having this fraught and violent and disruptive kind of world environment, of many people coming to a realization all at once that we are literally creating a tech war against ourselves if we do not step up and regulate.”

Concerns around AI abound, from harms to the environment from increased energy and water usage to power massive data centers to the fear of AI taking away people’s jobs. Because AI is trained on real-world data, the bias contained in that data is baked straight into AI, which can then potentially make decisions that repeat that bias, leading to algorithmic discrimination. AI’s use in various systems has also raised privacy concerns – since AIs tend to collect a huge amount of data as they’re being used – and criticism over a lack of transparency, since people may not know they’re using a system that involves AI or consuming a product (or information) that was created by AI. 

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has staked out a strongly anti-regulation stance. Although their bid to include a 10-year moratorium on states regulating AI was removed from last summer’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” H.R.1, by a vote from the Senate, President Donald Trump issued an executive order in December to “check the most onerous and excessive laws emerging from the States that threaten to stymie innovation.” The order instructs the formation of an AI litigation taskforce to challenge state-level AI laws and threatens to withhold federal broadband funding for states that do not comply.

Morales spoke of the dangers of big tech billionaires and their credo of technofascism, which is furthered by a lack of regulation, to democracy itself. 

“It’s understanding that if you don’t regulate big tech, then you’re looking at this massive sort of techno class divide, where you literally have a ruling high tech class and you have this populace that doesn’t have its needs met,” Morales said. “Many people have been speaking about this on world and national stages, but ultimately, there is really this risk of building this techno future that isn’t even really built for humans.”

Regulating AI in schools

Senate Bill 5956, sponsored by Senator T’wina Nobles (D-28th Legislative District, Tacoma), sets statewide rules for student privacy protections, regulating the use of AI in school discipline and surveillance.

The bill prohibits using automated decision systems and surveillance systems from being the sole basis for disciplinary decisions, using student risk scores, and using biometrics to infer students’ sensitive psychological or personal characteristics. It prohibits school use of facial recognition technologies, which suffer from accuracy issues, especially for people of color. 

The bill also protects student data by setting limitations on when it can be turned over to law enforcement.

Derek Harrison, the executive director of Black Education Strategy Roundtable, testified at the bill’s hearing, telling the story of a student in Maryland last year who was holding a bag of chips that a gun detection system misidentified as a gun. 

“Even here in Washington State, we see that Black students, students with different needs, we see LGBTQIA+ students, students in foster care, are disproportionately impacted by discipline rates,” Harrison testified. “And so, SB 5956 protects student safety and civil rights.” 

The bill directs the Washington State School Directors Association to develop a model policy that addresses human oversight of AI systems and automated decision systems strategies to avoid discrimination and harm to students. The development of such a policy is likely to add a small fiscal note to the bill, which was passed out of committee on January 22.

“Across the country, we are seeing more automated systems used in schools with attempts to keep students safe or to predict student behavior, to assign risk scores, to increase surveillance. Often, these systems are without transparency or context or meaningful human judgment,” Nobles said. “Most importantly, this bill affirms a simple principle that decisions that affect our students’ future must be made by people and not by algorithms.”

AI surveillance pricing for retail goods

House Bill 2481, sponsored by Rep. Mary Fosse, (D-38 LD, Everett), takes on the recent practice of grocery stores and other retailers to enact the widespread practices of surveillance and surge pricing. 

Surveillance pricing is the practice of retailers building up a profile on a customer and then charging what an AI thinks they will pay. Surge pricing is the practice of changing the price of a product due to demand (think of how taking a rideshare home on the night of a popular event costs twice as much, and apply that principle to other goods and services). 

A report from the Federal Trade Commission released last year found that surveillance pricing happens “frequently,” taking into account factors such as location, demographics, cursor movements, and what you left behind in your cart. 

Consumer Reports collaborated with Groundwork Collaborative to conduct an investigative study on Instacart and found the price variation between customers for the same item could range as much as 23%. Instacart has since said it no longer offers the technology that allows this surveillance pricing. 

Derek Kravitz, an investigative reporter and deputy editor at Consumer Reports, testified at the bill’s hearing last week. 

“What we found was not an isolated event in our testing,” Kravtiz said. “Every single shopper using the Instacart app was an unwitting participant in the company’s pricing experiments. None of the volunteers we spoke to had any idea Instacart was running these algorithmic tests. When we told them, they repeatedly referred to the practice as unfair and manipulative.”

The bill would also institute a four-year moratorium on the use of electronic shelf labels in retail stores that are 15,000 square feet or larger. These labels aid companies in collecting data about their customers and allow for instantaneous price changes.

Lobbyists from the Washington Food Industry Association and the Northwest Grocery Retail Association oppose the bill. UFCW 3000 is in support. 

“The need for state action is especially clear in this case,” Pincus testified. “As an earlier panelist said, food is not a luxury. Purchases of food are necessary for survival. Treating violations as an unfair, deceptive business practice under the Consumer Protection Act is appropriate.”

This bill is scheduled for executive session on Wednesday. An amendment is expected.

The risk of AI chatbots

One of Governor Bob Ferguson’s legislative priorities this session is Senate Bill 5984 (and companion bill House Bill 2225). Sponsored by Senator Lisa Wellman (D-41st LD, Mercer Island), SB 5984 makes an attempt to regulate AI companion chatbots, and specifically the way minors interact with them. 

“AI holds the promise of amazing benefits, but with numerous instances of damage to humans and a number of child suicides with AI involvement, we feel we need to step in and put industry on notice that it is not okay to put out a product that has so many possibilities for significant damage,” Wellman said at the bill’s hearing. “Their software, the playground we’re talking about, these chatbots, it’s their responsibility that the children have a safe environment to operate in.”

The bill requires an AI chatbot that seems human to give reminders that it is not human at the beginning of a session, at least every three hours, and whenever a new session is initiated. Chatbot operators would be required to have a protocol for detecting and addressing suicidal ideation and expressions of self-harm, including giving referrals to crisis hotlines and other mental health resources if such behavior is detected. 

In addition, if the operator knows the chatbot is engaging with a minor, then the chatbot is not allowed to generate sexually explicit content or engage in emotionally manipulative techniques.

Attorney Laura Marquez Garrett specializes in representing children and families harmed by tech products. 

“This is not just one or two apps. This is AI chat bots as an unregulated product type, and these are design-based harms,” Garrett testified. “That is why we see sexual abuse harms with some AI products and not others. We see suicide encouragement with some AI products and not others. […] We shouldn’t need a law to stop these kinds of design-based harms, but the AI industry has made clear that we do.”

Pincus from Nexus of Privacy would like to see the current version of the bill improved, including adding privacy protections and extending the ban on emotionally manipulative techniques to everyone, not just kids. He’d also like to see the manipulative techniques be expanded to include a chatbot using first person language (referring to itself as “I”), which reaffirms the impression that the chatbot is a person.

Sannon doesn’t think this bill takes the right approach to the harms caused by chatbots.

“We’re all concerned about children’s safety online, and I think there are a number of other solutions that we can explore, like device-based protections,” Sannon said. “Sometimes I think the gap ends up being focusing on minors to protect them, but when there are certain protections that just seem good, maybe we just apply them to everyone.” 

Right now this bill doesn’t include explicit age verification, but if this were added, such a policy would bring with it a lot of privacy concerns as well as potential harms to marginalized groups. 

Companion bill House Bill 2225 just passed through the House executive committee on Friday, but as a substitute version that made several changes, including prohibiting a chatbot from mimicking romantic partnership with minors and requiring notifications that it isn’t human every hour instead of every three hours.

An amendment was introduced that would have removed the bill’s private right of action, but it failed.

A slew of AI bills

The bills discussed above only represent a few of the issues around AI currently being tackled by the legislature. Other bills being considered include regulating AI use in therapy, AI use in health insurance authorization, transparency around AI training data, allowing collective bargaining around use of AI, and regulating high-risk AI systems that make impactful decisions in areas such as housing, employment, and health care. 

But with a short session and a tight purse, lawmakers are likely to be constrained in what they can accomplish this year. Lawmakers may be tempted to weaken the bills to get them over the finish line.

The tech industry is lobbying to remove the private right of action from each bill, as we’ve already seen illustrated in the House chatbot bill. Such changes will both reduce the public’s ability to access accountability from the harmful behavior of tech companies and potentially increase the price tag of bills that will then rely solely on the Attorney General’s office for enforcement. 

Another temptation will be to add a “right to cure” to some of the bills, giving tech companies time to address issues after they’ve arisen. This right to cure also raises the costs for the Attorney General, and advocates say it’s a way for companies to avoid accountability.

Still, as attitudes around AI shift, both legislators and the public seem more inclined to push harder around efforts to regulate AI.

“We’re seeing AI in every single space,” Morales said. “There is this decision and this crossroads that we’re at as people and as local and state governments, where many of us are realizing, and it’s clear our legislators are realizing, we’ve actually got to stand up and be a little more decisive about the future that we really want to build for ourselves, and we cannot really allow [Elon] Musk and a few gazillionaires to make those decisions for us.”

The post Washington Legislature Grapples with Slew of Bills Regulating AI first appeared on The Urbanist.

Councilmembers Alexis Mercedes Rinck, Eddie Lin, and Rob Saka voted against the new SPOG contract, citing lack of progress on key police accountability issues. Rinck flagged continued obstacles to deploying civilian crisis responders. 

“The badge earns trust not from its shine, but from the conduct behind it,” Saka said. “The proposed SPOG CBA (collective bargaining agreement) is a bad deal for the City of Seattle. Accountability provisions contained in that contract are too lightweight and do not at all close the gap between what’s set forth and our accountability ordinance, our city values, and the terms and conditions and the final agreed upon contracts. For those reasons, I will be opposing and voting against this deal.” 

Both Saka and Lin referenced personal past experiences with police brutality.

“It’s important to recognize that the grief and the anger and the frustration that led to the nationwide protests in 2020, those are just as real today as they were then,” Lin said. “We have never addressed the root causes, the generational trauma that was inflicted upon our communities. It continues to be inflicted upon too many. And you know, we can’t just sweep it under the rug. We can’t just ignore it or move past it, although many people would like to, because it is a festering wound that will continue to impact our communities, continue to impact our ability to provide true public safety.”

Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth voted in favor of the contract, in spite of saying on the campaign trail in 2023 that she would oppose a SPOG contract that didn’t grant subpoena power to the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) and the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and didn’t remove limitations on how many OPA investigators are allowed to be civilian versus sworn. The new SPOG contract doesn’t achieve either of these goals. 

Councilmembers voted unanimously in favor of the less contentious Seattle Police Management Association’s (SPMA) new contract. Both police guild contracts cover the term from 2024 to the end of 2027. SPOG represents the rank-and-file of the Seattle Police Department (SPD), while SPMA represents SPD’s lieutenants and captains, a much smaller number of employees. 

The mayor’s office takes the lead role in negotiating the contract with SPOG leaders, but the City’s Labor Relations Policy Committee (LRPC) plays a key role in the bargaining process, and consists of five city councilmembers. By design, this composes a majority when it comes time for the council to vote on the contract. Should any of those five councilmembers vote against a contract approved by the LRPC, SPOG could choose to file an unfair labor practice, saying the City didn’t bargain in good faith. 

However, some police accountability and civilian alternative response advocates, tired of waiting for reform that continues to be kicked down the road, believe such an action would be worth the legal risk. Beyond the lack of accountability wins, critics contend the contract’s generous terms will strain the City budget and siphon resources from other programs that contribute to safety and wellbeing. 

The SPOG contract raises the starting base salary of an SPD officer to $118,000, with a pay bump to $126,000 after six months. This base doesn’t include overtime, special event bonuses, or the newly negotiated premiums for language fluency and education. 

The negotiated raises, bonuses, and special incentive pay are not tied to accountability standards. Officers with a colorful misconduct record – or, in the case of backpay, even officers who have been terminated – will receive the same negotiated benefits.

Council’s central staff estimates that the contract will cost the City an additional $131.7 million during its term. Financial planning reserves will cover the additional costs through 2026, leaving $43.6 million in extra 2027 spending unaccounted for. Any net new officer hires in 2027 would also require SPD’s budget to grow. 

Outgoing Mayor Bruce Harrell made the completion of bargaining for this SPOG contract a priority before the end of his first term. Its passage now, however, a few short weeks before he leaves office, means that Mayor-elect Katie Wilson, along with new Councilmember-elect Dionne Foster and City Attorney-elect Erika Evans, won’t have as meaningful a chance to influence police accountability and alternative response, both important issues in Seattle. 

Accountability in the contract

Police accountability didn’t used to be included in police guild contracts, which typically cover wages and working conditions. Moving accountability issues to the bargaining table has drastically reduced their transparency to the public; accountability measures are now enshrined in difficult-to-understand legalese in labor contracts and require confidentiality during the bargaining process, meaning the public doesn’t know what’s happening until a full contract is presented and inevitably framed as a fait accompli. 

In turn, this shift to bargaining away accountability has contributed to reduced public trust in police departments, as well as local government overall. 

Seattle’s landmark accountability ordinance, passed in 2017, was meant to enshrine a basic level of police accountability, a minimum floor that advocates and community groups intended to build upon and improve in subsequent years. While some aspects of the ordinance needed to be bargained with SPMA and SPOG, that bargaining was intended to happen quickly to allow further progress. 

However, a new SPOG contract passed in 2018, negotiated by the office of then-Mayor Jenny Durkan, broke that promise and failed to bargain key aspects of the ordinance, which remain unrealized to this day. As a result, the City has been unable to enact basic police accountability measures, and the conversation has remained essentially frozen for the last several years. 

This inability to make accountability progress was a major inspiration for the movement seeking to divert police funding to other programs, which caught fire in 2020 protests reacting to the killing of George Floyd at the hands of police. The defund movement unsuccessfully pushed to cut SPD funding by 50% in 2020 — instead SPD funding has grown — outpacing growth rates at most other departments. Seeing the continued power of SPOG to block commonsense accountability measures while SPD responded violently to protests against police brutality highlighted the systemic issues with policing and the failure of earlier reform efforts. 

The newly passed SPOG contract continues the status quo, with the accountability ordinance remaining unfulfilled. 

A small gain in the contract that allows longer retention of OPA misconduct files regardless of outcome of the investigation is the result of needing to be in compliance with a state law passed in 2021. The clarification of the 180-day investigation clock modifies a system that some experts have recommended against in its entirety. OPA’s civilian investigators may now assist in serious misconduct cases that might end in termination, but they can’t be the sole lead on such a case. These changes are incremental at best. 

On the other hand, SPD will now be allowed to deal with “less than serious” misconduct cases in house instead of referring them to the OPA, in a move SPD leadership has been requesting for years. While this change could potentially free the OPA to spend more time on serious cases while building the leadership skills of SPD officers, the implementation of the system will be key. Removing the OPA entirely from the system and relying solely on the OIG for any review, as the contract states, could lead to problems, as in-house discipline still needs to be consistent, timely, and fair. 

The City and SPOG will be entering interest arbitration to determine several issues around arbitration used to appeal disciplinary decisions around officer misconduct. That being said, information about the issues being arbitrated provided by Mayor Harrell’s Chief of Staff Andrew Myerberg indicates that while the changes sought by the City would be an improvement, they would still fall short of the 2017 accountability ordinance, which requires disciplinary appeals to go through a public hearing in front of the Public Safety Civil Service Commission (PSCSC).

The interest arbitration process could take several months to complete.

The CARE team

Supporters of the contract have been citing its new provisions for the Community Assisted Response and Engagement (CARE) team that provides alternative civilianized response to behavioral health-related calls that don’t require a police response. The contract makes the CARE team permanent and allows it to expand at will.

The contract also allows the CARE team to be “solo dispatched” directly from 911 without police co-response. However, the contract also imposes so many restrictions on when solo dispatch is possible as to serve as a serious impediment to the team actually being able to do their jobs. 

For example, the CARE team is not allowed to go by themselves to help anyone in a private residence or business, a car, or a homeless encampment. They also aren’t allowed to respond alone if there is any chance a crime has taken place such as public drug use or possession or if expected drug paraphernalia is present, which includes aluminum foil. 

All these restrictions prevent the independence of Seattle’s 911 dispatch to determine which responder should go to which calls. CARE Chief Amy Barden has repeatedly explained that dispatch independence is required to make 911 call response times faster. 

Earlier this year, the City championed a bill at the Washington State Legislature, sponsored by Rep. Shaun Scott (D-43, Seattle) that would have provided the right for the City to establish an alternative response team that wouldn’t need to be bargained with law enforcement personnel. SPD’s Dan Nelson, who at the time was an assistant chief, testified before the House committee. 

“Alternative responses to non-criminal 911 calls is crucial for ensuring that individuals in crisis receive the most appropriate care while allowing law enforcement to focus on serious public safety concerns,” Nelson said at the hearing. “We have proven that the rank and file appreciate the service, and they leverage the service.” 

In early March, SPOG’s President Mike Solan released an episode of the police guild’s podcast that featured doctored photos of Mayor Bruce Harrell, Scott, and Nelson dressed in colorful clown wigs, condemning the bill in question.

Several months later, in mid-September, a post on SPOG’s X social media account announced Nelson’s demotion from assistant chief to captain with the caption FAFO (eff around and find out). The post appeared to take credit for Nelson’s demotion as a retaliatory response after he supported the bill that would ensure the smooth operation of alternative response. 

Options moving forward

In addition to continuing to push important accountability issues into interest arbitration, many elected officials have highlighted the importance of a state-level fix that would remove police accountability issues from the collective bargaining process entirely. 

A bill that would have achieved that goal was introduced in the state legislature in 2021 and again in 2022. However, it faced stiff opposition from organized labor, who worried that even narrowly targeted changes to collective bargaining could represent a slippery slope for labor rights in the state.

“Our system is fundamentally broken,” Saka said. “Our state law keeps it broken. It is past time to address this root cause. Washington’s system is built to produce weak oversight. State law prevents cities like ours from unilaterally strengthening police disciplinary rules. That means anything and everything tied to misconduct must be specifically negotiated, bargained for, and agreed to by both parties. Under current state law, even police misconduct matters are considered routine or standard, quote unquote, terms […] and conditions of employment.”

Saka went on to explain why police misconduct in particular shouldn’t be considered standard or similar to other collective bargaining rights.

 “Police officers carry the state’s authority to use deadly force… Nothing about this solemn authority is routine or standard,” Saka said. “This authority to use force and potentially take a life requires a stronger set of oversight, not oversight designed to collapse during negotiations. The legislature must act. The legislature must change this law now so discipline and misconduct rules cannot be bargained away. Without that change, Seattle will continue to face contracts that undermine our values. Lives are literally dependent on it.”

Barring a state law change, another possible recourse is to change the City Charter mandating the existence of SPD so it can be disbanded, as was done in 2012 in Camden, New Jersey. In Camden, the city opted to build a new department from scratch. 

During his Seattle City Attorney campaign earlier this year, Rory O’Sullivan suggested something similar: that Seattle move to disband its police department and instead contract its policing services from the King County Sheriff’s Office.

“The point that I was trying to make during the campaign was […] that SPOG has created a whole bunch of roadblocks, and, I believe in a number of instances, hasn’t really negotiated in good faith,” O’Sullivan told The Urbanist. “And so the City should be prepared to keep all options on the table. And one of those options is marshaling a charter initiative to change the charter to allow the City to contract with the county as a bargaining piece to hopefully give the City a better opportunity to hold SPOG accountable.”

Aside from the two larger possibilities outlined above, Wilson will have to get creative in finding ways to move police accountability and alternative response forward during her first term. Since the new contract runs until the end of 2027, SPOG will have the option of stalling and working without a contract for two years in an attempt to avoid having to bargain with Wilson, should she fail to win a second term. 

Chief Barden of CARE already has a lot of ideas of how to deploy her team of alternative responders. While she’s hoping SPD will be willing to refer appropriate 911 calls to the CARE team, she’s also setting up arrangements with the King County Jail and local hospitals to be able to receive direct CARE response. The CARE team could also potentially be dispatched through 988, which isn’t a body of work SPOG can attempt to claim. 

Plus, the CARE team can continue its proactive patrols in areas where crisis calls are common.

In addition, Wilson can find ways to encourage better accountability directly through SPD and the accountability agencies, focusing on issues that don’t have to be bargained. For example, SPD’s promotion process could be reformed, requiring consultation with a candidate’s supervisor and review of their misconduct record instead of relying solely on test scores. The department’s backgrounding process that resulted in the disastrous hire of former Officer Kevin Dave could potentially be reviewed and changed.

Wilson could encourage more enthusiastic support for the CARE team from current SPD Chief Shon Barnes, whose services she just announced she will be retaining. Wilson will have the opportunity to decide who should serve as the director of the OPA, as the current director Bonnie Glenn only serves until the end of 2026. 

In a written interview with The Urbanist last month, Wilson underlined her commitment to transparency, which has often been lacking around issues related to SPD. 

“I want people to see a city government that’s transparent about what we’re doing, what’s working, and what challenges we’re facing,” Wilson said. “That’s how we rebuild trust so we can make real progress.”

However, undoing the damage from another SPOG contract that falls short will be an uphill battle, and it could take a long time. Harrell signed the new contract on Thursday, three weeks before his term ends.

The post Seattle Approves Controversial Police Guild Contract, Three Councilmembers Dissent first appeared on The Urbanist.

In the coming days, the Seattle City Council should do what it has failed to do for eight years: vote to reject a proposed police labor contract that continues to undercut police accountability. The proposal is a bad deal negotiated by a lame duck mayor, giving police a big pay raise while allowing them to continue to block accountability and hinder the City’s civilian crisis responders. 

Councilmembers will claim, and mostly exaggerate, potential legal consequences for voting no, ignoring the certain legal consequences of voting yes: tens of millions of dollars of court settlements to those harmed by unaccountable police.

At an October 22 press conference, Mayor Harrell presented the terms of a proposed new union contract with the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG), which represents rank-and-file SPD officers (officers, detectives, and sergeants). Harrell claimed that the proposed contract “significantly strengthens police accountability meeting key elements of the 2017 Accountability Ordinance.” This is false.

This proposed two-year contract includes terms that continue to undermine foundational elements of the 2017 legislation. This contract rolls back existing accountability measures, such as now proposing that the Seattle Police Department self-investigate what they determine to be minor complaints.

Over eight years after passing the 2017 legislation the Seattle City Council still appears to only be able to aspire to outdated accountability measures that they then vote against, as they did in voting for the 2018 and 2024 SPOG contracts. The 2017 legislation was a half-a-loaf compromise, yet we are still failing to salvage all of those few slices.

Below, I elaborate on the major concerns that make this proposed contract unacceptable, even for people who believe in the most modest of accountability measures. I am focusing on the most significant issues impacting police accountability and ignoring other major issues like the continuing restrictions on who the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) can subpoena in an investigation, continuing problems with calculating investigation timelines, pay rates, SPD monopolizing traffic control during major events, a decades-long call to reform the corrupt off-duty employment practices (still governed by 33-year-old agreements), and so on.

Issues of police accountability – as opposed to police reform, training, or policy – are most crucial after a federal consent decree ends. In the nearly three decades of federal consent decrees on policing there is a pattern of police returning to former bad practices at the end of federal oversight. 

“The influence of a consent decree may gradually build up over time before lapsing post-treatment,” researchers John L. Worrall and Zachary A. Powell wrote in 2019.

Contract would undercut accountability for many years into the future

Sustaining whatever modest gains in police behavior that have been made in Seattle will require strong accountability measures. As important as these half-measures were in 2017, they are far more important now.

The Seattle City Council voting on a police contract of major importance just days before a new mayor, a new city council member, and a new city attorney take office is undemocratic and cynical. Given that police contracts take years to negotiate – with old contracts remaining in force until a new one is agreed upon – approving this contract would unfairly saddle newly elected Mayor Katie Wilson with restrictions she very likely won’t be able to change while in office.

In fact, passing this contract will give SPOG strong incentive to never negotiate with Mayor Wilson. SPOG is likely calculating that it’s better to delay and work the last two years of Wilson’s first term on a lapsed contract hoping that another centrist, like Harrell, sweeps into power and offers far more generous terms, including retroactive pay covering the years worked under an expired contract. When it comes to police contract negotiations, the incentives the City has created are counterproductive and continually undercut accountability.

Make your voice heard at City Council

To weigh in, email all nine city councilmembers at council@seattle.gov. Call or email them at their individual lines of contact as well. Attend and testify at the Seattle City Council meeting on Tuesday December 9th at 2:00pm, or call in with public comment. And, if they do not vote then, show up again on December 16th at 2:00pm. 

Here are some tips for making public comment. Demand that they reject the proposed SPOG contract or, at the very least, delay any vote until after our new citywide councilmember, city attorney, and mayor have taken office in January.

The four foundational accountability elements the contract undermines

The four foundational elements of the 2017 legislation were:

• Moving away from having SPD officers investigate themselves when it comes to complaints or misconduct,
• Setting a clear and reasonable standard of evidence to be used in investigations into officer violations of training or policy,
• When officers appeal disciplinary decisions, having a process that did not continue the history of favoring officers, reopening investigations, and reducing discipline due to a history of leniency in police discipline, and
• Requiring the OPA to categorize and potentially investigate all complaints.

These elements are critical — even if inadequate and outdated — to the operation of any police accountability system that was to function better than what had preceded it.

In all four of these areas, the proposed contract rejects the 2017 legislation. The failures of this contract are not hidden: proposed contract “Appendix E” (starting on page 91) is labeled on the bottom of the pages “Effective through December 31, 2023,” indicating that this is from the contract finalized in 2024, whose terms are now simply folded in to the new 2025 contract. The newly proposed contract makes no significant advances over prior SPOG contracts from 2018 (except for the 2024 contract allowing two additional civilian investigators at OPA while still prohibiting those investigators from leading most, if not all, serious investigations).

Who investigates police abuse

A major advance in the 2017 legislation was that, after more than a century of police investigating police, there would be the possibility of only civilians investigating police.

Section 3.29.140(C) of the 2017 police accountability ordinance states (emphasis added): “Within 12 months of the effective date of the ordinance introduced as Council Bill 118969, intake and investigator personnel shall be entirely civilian or a mix of civilian and sworn, in whatever staffing configuration best provides for continuity, flexibility, leadership opportunity, and specialized expertise, and supports public trust in the complaint-handling process.”

The 2017 legislation established that the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) director could create an exclusively civilian body of investigators to investigate complaints against police officers. Eight years later this provision of the law remains blocked. The newly proposed SPOG contract restricts the number of civilian investigators to a maximum of four (out of around a dozen total investigators) and prevents them from independently leading an investigation that could result in substantiating serious allegations (potentially almost all investigations; see “Appendix D,” pages 89-90).

Not appreciated here is the fact that the non-civillian investigators in the OPA are exclusively SPD sergeants, who serve as regular SPD officers before spending one to three years in OPA and then returning to their regular duties at SPD. How is it remotely possible for such an investigator to hold another officer accountable when months later they may be again serving alongside them?

This failure to implement civilianization of OPA investigators in the new contract is egregious given that the last head of OPA, Gino Betts, repeatedly stated his desire to have 100% civilian investigators. Even more egregious: the state of Washington in 2021, in creating the Washington State Office of Independent Investigations, had long ago adopted a model of only having civilian investigators investigating all cases they take up. How is state legislation so far ahead of Seattle’s?

The standard of evidence for officer discipline

The 2017 legislation established a preponderance of evidence standard (meaning anything above 50% or “more likely than not”) for upholding a complaint and discipline. This was a major advance for accountability.

The proposed contract changes this standard radically to an ambiguous “elevated standard of review,” nebulously higher than a simple preponderance, but something short of “beyond reasonable doubt.” This is clearly outlined in Section 3.1 of the proposed contract (page 9) which states that “an elevated standard of review (i.e. – more than preponderance of the evidence)” will be used “for termination cases where the alleged offense is stigmatizing to a law enforcement officer.” Since many violations, including material dishonesty, is stigmatizing, and an investigation into a trivial violation could subsequently reveal material dishonesty, almost any investigation can fall into this category.

How officers appeal potential discipline

The 2017 legislation (under 3.29.420 A(7)(a)) required that all officers who appeal a disciplinary decision must do so through a hearing, open to the public, in front of the newly formed City of Seattle Public Safety Civil Service Commission (PSCSC).

The proposed contract, page 102, allows officers to go through the current and extremely flawed process of independent arbitration, a process which is closed to the public and uses standards of review that advantage the officer. For example, as noted above, an arbitrator would make decisions based on an ambiguous and highly subjective evidentiary standard, would be allowed to examine the case “de-novo” (in essence reinvestigate a closed investigation), and consider new evidence and witnesses that the officer failed to disclose earlier.

The rationale in 2017 for the exclusive PSCSC appeals process was that a person employed by and living in Seattle would make decisions rooted in the values and expectations of the local community. Arbitrators, who are selected from a broad geographic area without ties to Seattle, would, as a matter of historical precedent, make decisions based on a history of what would happen to an average officer who engaged in a similar violation in other cities. In essence, arbitrators virtually guarantee that the long history of badly behaving police facing only trivial sanctions would be perpetuated. 

A perfect example of this happening in Seattle involves the case of SPD officer Adley Shepherd, where an arbitrator (in this case it was a mediator who served as a tiebreaker in an older appeals process) overturned the police chief’s termination of Shepherd and instead meted out a trivial 15-day suspension. For the arbitrator, a cop unnecessarily punching a woman in the eye, hard enough to break the eye socket, wasn’t that serious.

Mayor Harrell claims that the proposed contract makes one very narrow gain in the arbitration process: that if an arbitrator determines a violation occurred and that there should be discipline, that the arbitrator should give “deference” to the discipline imposed by the police chief. This is a trivial fix, whose efficacy depends on “deference,” to an extremely biased system.

It should be noted that while a police officer gets numerous attempts to reverse or appeal discipline decisions, the complainant gets exactly none when their complaint is rejected or fails to be upheld (there was a companion ordinance in 2017, still ignored over eight years later, that mandated the investigation into and possible development of a complainant appeals system).

Who gets to investigate complaints

The 2017 legislation required the OPA to potentially investigate all complaints, even complaints that arose within the SPD. The new contract mandates that many of these complaints can now be dealt with internally by the SPD, undercutting transparency and accountability. This hands more power to control investigations and discipline back to the police.

On page 16 of the proposed contract it states that “less than serious misconduct” complaints submitted to OPA will not be investigated by OPA but will instead be forwarded to SPD for internal investigation and decisions around discipline. Similarly, if the SPD receives a “less than serious misconduct” complaint from the community or from other officers, the SPD gets to determine how it is to be dealt with, without involving OPA.

Given the continuing failure of the OPA over more than eight years to properly classify complaints (e.g., the continuing problem of complaints not being investigated because they were classified as “contacts”) and the failure of the OIG to properly audit OPA’s work (see here and here), this change is a disaster.

Consider the 2014 case of William Wingate, two years into the federal consent decree, which resulted in a federal jury finding that the SPD officer engaged in racial discrimination and awarded $325,000 to Wingate. A crucial finding, resulting from outside investigations, was that SPD intentionally failed to report or consider this case as one of racial discrimination (SPD officers would falsely claim that no one made a discrimination or bias complaint). 

The newly proposed SPOG contract returns Seattle to the days when the SPD gets to decide when and if an incident is serious and what they think the violations might be. This allows officers to bury claims of racial discrimination and misconduct – in order to maintain community trust – by simply ignoring or pretending to have misunderstood those complaints.

SPD retains control over how CARE responders are dispatched

The proposed contract still maintains tight restrictions on the types of incidents that the newly created Seattle Community Assisted Response & Engagement (CARE) can respond to without SPD officers (called solo dispatch) and gives SPD far too much discretion in determining if a particular call meets the SPD requirements for CARE’s solo dispatch or involvement.

Appendix I (pages 107-110) of the newly proposed SPOG contract outlines the conditions for Seattle’s new CARE department to solo dispatch to a behavioral or mental health crisis. Note the date of this appendix indicates that this is taken verbatim from the prior 2024 SPOG contract.

The only advance from previous SPOG agreements is that there are now no limits on the staffing for CARE. However, the restrictions as to when CARE can solo dispatch and the complete authority that SPD officers have in making a decision to allow solo dispatch, negates much of CARE’s utility. These failures are well documented by Erica Barnett and Amy Sundberg.

Conclusion

Seattle’s 2017 police reform legislation was a floor – maybe more accurately a basement – when compared to police accountability systems developed in Newark, New Jersey, Nashville, Tennessee, and other cities. There has been a failure in public understanding that federal consent decrees on policing only impose constitutional standards, not community standards or just standards. At their best, they are only a floor.

There is a common type of police killing referred to as “lawful but awful,” that is, police killings that are perfectly constitutional but are criminal, unjust, or unheard of in other countries. Neither the federal consent decree or the 2017 legislation addressed the problem of lawful but awful killings, nor did they  prevent the widespread abuses of protesters in 2020.

Similarly, SPD officers continue to kill people who only had a knife or no weapon in their hand, oftentimes experiencing a serious mental health crisis, as happened most recently in March this year.

As antiquated and inadequate as Seattle’s 2017 legislation is, to leave parts of that unimplemented for the foreseeable future is unconscionable. You will hear questionable claims from the current mayor and council members about “binding arbitration” and “unfair labor practices.” Don’t be fooled.

You will be told that some unresolved issues will still be bargained over during the term of the new contract, a process called “binding arbitration,” where a labor arbitrator listens to the city and SPOG and then decides what is fair. It is absurd to allow fundamental issues of public safety and police accountability to be decided by a random arbitrator.

Additionally, the public has not seen actual agreements that lay out precisely what issues and parameters will be subject to binding arbitration, except for a City Council staff memo that claims this will happen on only two issues related directly to accountability (the discipline appeals process and who can be subpoenaed, see items 4 and 5 on page 4 of the memo). Without documents from SPOG indicating precisely what the issues and parameters are, that both sides have agreed to submit to binding arbitration, this cannot be evaluated or taken seriously.

You will also be told that if the council fails to vote for the proposed contract that SPOG will launch an unfair labor practice (ULP). That happens frequently in labor relations and is not something to fear. In fact, after the people of Seattle have waited patiently for over eight years, walking away from an unacceptable SPOG contract and facing a hypothetical ULP would be a relief and offer some glimmer of hope.

When council members vote on the proposed contract, on December 9th or 16th, it should be a vote for hope and not a vote based on imagined fear or endless failed promises for the future. It should be a vote that ends the repeated cycle of the City acceding to SPOG’s demands while SPOG blocks the most moderate of accountability measures.

The post Op-Ed: Seattle Council Must Reject Harrell’s Police Guild Contract, Demand Accountability first appeared on The Urbanist.

Houston-based MV Transportation contracts with public transit agencies around the US, including King County Metro’s Access paratransit service. The company also operates private shuttles, and has managed shuttle operations for major Puget Sound employers like Amazon and Microsoft.

Under the potential contract, MV would be responsible for providing start-up services on Stride starting next year, including testing the agency’s new battery-electric buses, which are expected to start arriving within the first quarter of 2026. Because the Bothell bus base from which those buses will operate is still under construction, the contract includes $5.7 million in funding for MV to set up a temporary storage and maintenance facility.

While Metro operators are represented by Amalgamated Transit Union Local 587, MV Transportation’s drivers are unionized under Teamsters Local 117. The Teamsters have recently been active pushing for higher wages and benefits. In late 2024, members voted to approve a strike against MV, but it appears a deal was struck before the strike occurred.

MV would also take over operations on all of the ST Express bus routes operating out Snohomish County, work that is currently handled by a subcontractor of local transit agency Community Transit.

To operate its Link light rail services and King County ST Express bus service, Sound Transit has traditionally contracted with King County Metro, rather than a private sector operator. Metro recently grappled with a labor shortage that hindered its ability to reliably provide service and boost frequencies, but a new three-year labor contract with a 17% raise approved in 2023 has helped stabilize the agency’s workforce.

“Under this new operating model, wherein the [contracted service provider] will run our Operations Control Center, schedule vehicle and operator shifts, drive and maintain the busses and dispatch service, Sound Transit will retain ownership of all fleet facilities and systems and manage the contractor’s work,” Lucien Bruno, Sound Transit’s Deputy Program Executive for BRT Operations, told the rider experience and operations committee. “During phase one, we will essentially be relying on the contracted service provider as consultants and leveraging their experience to perform critical startup activities to keep the program on schedule and ensure reliable operations.”

The highway-oriented Stride lines are set to operate 17 hours per day, running every 10 minutes during peak hours and 15 minutes off-peak. While those frequencies may draw riders at times of peak highway congestion, they likely won’t provide the same time of enticement to all-day users, especially given the fact that riders will spend their time waiting next to a noisy highway — sometimes directly in the median, as in the case of stations like NE 85th Street in Kirkland.

Sound Transit is on track to open two Stride lines in 2028: the S1 line between Burien and Bellevue, and the S3 line between Shoreline and Bothell. When those lines open, MV will begin operating them, along with ST Express bus service on other routes. In 2029, the third and final line between Lynnwood and Bellevue will open as the S2 line. According to the contract, MV will operate 164,000 annual platform hours for Stride and 80,500 annual platform hours for ST Express, with the ability for Sound Transit to tweak those service levels by 15% without having to renegotiate the contract. The contract terminates in 2032, with an option for three additional one-year options.

The contract will also allow ST to contract with MV to provide special bus services as needed, including planned shuttle service during the FIFA Men’s World Cup in June of 2026, and bus bridge service in the event of light rail disruptions.

Like the Sound Transit 3 light rail extensions, the Stride lines have been subject to both significant cost overruns and delays. The BRT projects were intended to be some of the quickest projects to implement following voter approval of the entire ST3 package in 2016, originally pledged to open in 2024.

However, many of the planned roadway upgrades associated with the Stride projects are either currently underway or headed toward construction now, delaying the openings. Since they’re closer to fruition, the Stride projects haven’t been a major part of the so-called “Enterprise Initiative” work intended to allow the agency to grapple with a $30 to $40 billion budget shortfall through 2046.

As new lines open, operations costs like the MV contract will ultimately take up a larger and larger share of Sound Transit’s expense sheet. The agency is framing the move toward a private operator as a major step forward.

“As we look ahead, our focus is on building long-term operational capacity, setting the foundation for a successful and sustainable launch of the Stride service. The service delivery operations team is genuinely excited about what’s coming,” Benjamin Marx, Sound Transit’s Acting Executive Director of Service Delivery Operation, said Thursday. “We’re already thinking beyond just opening day, preparing for people, processes and systems we’ll need to deliver safe, reliable and high quality service from day one. We’re also taking this opportunity to strengthen the agency’s overall operational expertise, building our internal capacity and direct oversight, leveraging the knowledge we gain from our other service lines.”

The post Sound Transit Selects Private Bus Operator for Stride BRT Network first appeared on The Urbanist.

The new contract will once again significantly increase officer wages and bonuses while removing a few of the onerous restrictions that have been hampering the Community Assisted Response and Engagement (CARE) department — while adding other new obstacles. Coupled with the retroactive police contract Harrell negotiated in 2024, the new contract would represent a 42% raise over five years.

“We’ve reached a groundbreaking agreement with the rank and file police officers that fundamentally transforms how we deliver public safety in our city,” Harrell announced at a press event to celebrate the new contract. 

However, as with the SPOG contract passed last year, accountability improvements have once again been given short shrift, with few tangible gains to show in return for concessions granted to SPOG at the bargaining table. 

Perhaps most notably, the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) will no longer be handling cases of “less than serious” misconduct. Instead, these cases will be referred to an officer’s chain of command for one of two possible levels of investigation. The more serious level of investigation could result in discipline no more serious than a letter of reprimand, while the informal level of investigation won’t result in any discipline. 

A succession of SPD chiefs, including Adrian Diaz, Sue Rahr, and current Chief Shon Barnes, have been asking for this change, saying it will result in increased leadership within the force. It is unclear this shift would increase accountability in practice.

For example, DivestSPD wrote that these “less than serious” cases of misconduct would include driving violations such as driving excessively fast in response to 911 calls, the situation in which SPD Officer Kevin Dave struck and killed Jaahnavi Kandula with his patrol car. Unless driving violations could be proven to be intentional or reckless, they wouldn’t fall under serious violations to be investigated by the OPA. 

Another example of misconduct that might no longer go to the OPA is timecard “mistakes.” Logging extreme levels of overtime hours has allowed some SPD officers to double their base salary or more. For example, SPD paid Ron Morgan Willis $414,543 in 2019 after he claimed to have averaged about 80 hours per week for the year. That salary was possible even before Harrell era police pay raises.

Having police investigate themselves for less serious offenses will increase the potential for conflicts of interest, which is something accountability advocates have been trying to reduce for years. It might also reduce public transparency regarding misconduct that may be classified as minor but is still of public concern. 

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) will be able to audit these new internal processes, adding another body of work right when the agency is poised to take over more work due to the City’s exit from the consent decree.

Hefty price tag

Should the city council pass the SPOG contract, SPOG members will receive another significant raise. In 2021, a new SPD officer made $81,000. Under this new contract, a new officer will now make a base salary of $118,000, which will rise to $126,000 if the recruit lasts six months. 

Last year’s contract raised member wages by a compounded 24%, covering 2021-2023. The total raise for SPOG members over the last five years will be 42%. 

SPOG members will receive an additional 2.7% raise for 2026 and a 3-4% raise for 2027. 

But that’s not all. SPOG members retain their 2% monthly pay bonus if they are required to wear body worn cameras on duty, a bonus that the Seattle Police Management Association (SPMA) already phased out at the beginning of 2023. And officers will now receive new education “premiums” should they have a Bachelor’s degree (4% premium), an Associate’s degree in various related fields (1.5% premium), or be able to demonstrate fluency in a language besides English (1.5% premium). 

SPOG members also retain the special events bonus they won in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that originally allowed the CARE team to begin its dual dispatch pilot. The amount is going up from $225 per special event shift to $250 at the beginning of 2026. 

The City has also agreed to contribute to SPOG’s Benefit Trust, which provides medical care for retirees. The City will pay a $1000 per employee contribution to begin, as well as $100 per month per employee going forward. 

While not covered in this contract, SPD recruits still receive a $7,500 hiring bonus, while lateral transfers can receive up to $50,000. 

CARE alternative response remains hamstrung

With money allocated in his proposed budget to double the size of the current CARE team, Harrell signalled success in negotiations with SPOG to finally allow the CARE team to do their jobs unhampered. However, that promise is not fully realized in the actual contract.

The contract does allow CARE responders to be dispatched by themselves in certain circumstances. It doesn’t list specific call types, instead giving allowable scenarios, a change CARE Chief Amy Barden told The Urbanist she is pleased to see. The three included scenarios are a third-party report of someone having a behavioral health crisis, a request from an adult for food, shelter, or transportation, and a third-party report of someone who needs to be checked on for safety reasons, such as sleeping in the extreme cold.

However, while the CARE team has been made permanent and is now allowed to grow at will, the contract puts a number of serious restrictions on calls to which CARE can be solo dispatched without having to first wait for police to come.

Perhaps most limiting is the restriction that CARE can only respond to incidents that are in an “open public location” or “publicly owned building.” They are not allowed to respond by themselves to incidents in privately owned businesses, residences, apartment buildings, cars, or homeless encampments.

“I was adamant that the public private residence thing could not be a stipulation,” Barden told The Urbanist. “It needs to be the same as fire and EMS [emergency medical services].”

The car restriction is also problematic due to the number of people who need assistance who might live in their car or be inside a car in order to keep warm.

The contract also disallows the CARE team from answering calls by themselves when a potential crime has taken place such as public drug use or drug possession or where drug paraphernalia is present.  

“It’s a far cry from the true autonomy that I want to have,” Barden said.

This contract allows law enforcement in Seattle to continue to direct the work of 911, rather than institute a truly independent dispatch that understands the bodies of work of all first responders and can act accordingly. Barden has been insistent that dispatch independence is needed to reduce call response times across the city.  

That independence, along with the promise of faster response, is still sadly lacking. In a salient example, per the contract, SPD sergeants have the power to override dispatch on the question of whether CARE team members are allowed to go to any given call.

SPD Chief Shon Barnes, meanwhile, appeared to misunderstand the model of the current CARE team and the extent to which his department has aided its expansion. 

“I came to Seattle from Madison. We had a fully supported and staffed CARE team with the ability to do so with dispatch,” Barnes said at the press event. “So that’s not anything new to me. We certainly support that.”

However, the Madison program is run through its fire department and is more similar to Seattle’s Health One program than Seattle’s CARE responders. Health One embeds case managers with fire department paramedics to provide alternate response. And throughout Barnes’s tenure at SPD, SPD officers have been undermining the CARE program, with The Seattle Times reporting that CARE leadership has observed “a pattern of subversion.” 

This observation concurs with The Urbanist’s reporting on a sudden and precipitous drop of CARE/SPD co-response in October 2024, right after SPOG members encountered problems with the City’s new payroll system.

Barden had not yet been shown the new SPOG contract before the press event, even though she had been asked to speak. Even so, she spoke of other possibilities for utilizing the CARE team, including a new partnership with the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office for the CARE team to be sent proactively to help people being released from the King County Jail. The CARE team is also developing partnerships with hospitals and might be able to be dispatched through 988 in the future.

“We need to do better, and we need to demand better,” Barden said at the event. “‘That is how it has been done’ is unacceptable. The status quo is unacceptable. The historic pace and process of bureaucracy is unacceptable.”

It seems likely Barden will be making the same pleas to elevate dispatch and use her alternative response team wisely for the next two years, the duration of the new SPOG contract, which runs through the end of 2027. 

Accountability remains ignored

The new contract makes few gains on the accountability front. 

As of the end of the day on Wednesday, the Community Police Commission (CPC), one of the three accountability bodies in Seattle, had not received a copy of the contract to review.

“We hope to see the accountability provisions outlined in the City’s Accountability Ordinance (Ordinance 125315) fully included in this contract, and that SPOG leadership can no longer hold a veto over police accountability,” CPC Executive Director Eci Ameh wrote to The Urbanist. “SPD has long stated its commitment to being a learning organization, accountable to the people it serves. This agreement is a critical opportunity to demonstrate that commitment by learning from communities most impacted by policing and inviting their voices and solutions into this critical process.”

Unfortunately, the new contract does not fully include the accountability provisions in the 2017 Accountability Ordinance.

Chief among Harrell’s touted gains is bringing the 180-day investigation clock into line with the ordinance. However, in the eight years since that ordinance was passed, thinking around the 180-clock has evolved. In December 2023, the federal Court Monitor overseeing Seattle’s consent decree recommended removing the clock altogether, calling it “ultimately an arbitrary deadline that has the potential to allow an officer who has committed serious misconduct to remain as a member of the SPD, even after a sustained finding.” 

One of the most important accountability provisions that the 2017 Accountability Ordinance mandated, but which has never been implemented due to the SPOG contract, is subpoena power for both the OPA and the OIG. This issue was not addressed in the new contract.

The OPA was also meant to be able to hire as many civilian investigators as they deem necessary instead of being capped at four.

The new contract does allow OPA’s four civilian investigators (expanded from two to four in last year’s contract) to assist in misconduct cases that could result in termination, but one of OPA’s SPD officers must still be the lead or co-lead on any such investigations. These officers rotate into their OPA assignments for two to three years, after which time they return to non-accountability-related positions within SPD. 

In a small improvement, OPA files will now be retained for a longer period (10 years) that will no longer be determined by the findings in the cases. Before, an OPA case without sustained findings was deleted after three years.

Most significantly, the City has finally determined to enter into interest arbitration regarding the issue of arbitration used to appeal disciplinary decisions. The City would like to institute a disciplinary review system for SPOG members like they have for SPMA members. The Mayor’s Office Chief of Staff Andrew Myerberg announced that the City and SPOG have “reached an impasse” on this issue. 

“I think it’s really important to note that as part of our bargain, we were not willing to compromise these accountability provisions,” Myerberg said.

The most significant reforms that the City is seeking through interest arbitration are:

• Changing the burden of proof for proving an officer violated policy to be preponderance of evidence, which will make this proof easier;
• Forbidding de novo review and imposing a “no gotcha” rule, which would mean officers couldn’t bring forward new experts and evidence before an arbitrator, and the arbitrator would be limited to the record available to the police chief before the original disciplinary decision was made; 
• An arbitrary and capricious standard required to overturn discipline imposed by the Chief.

The interest arbitration on these issues is scheduled to begin in 2026, and whatever decision the independent arbitrator reaches will be binding for both parties. 

Next steps for the new SPOG contract

The SPOG contract was ratified by SPOG membership this past weekend. All that remains for it to become official is a vote by the city council. 

Currently embroiled in budget season, the city council may opt to wait until after the final 2026 budget is scheduled to be approved on November 21 before taking up the SPOG contract vote. This short delay might mean that the new District 2 councilmember, either Eddie Lin or Adonis Ducksworth, will receive the opportunity to vote on the contract with their new colleagues. 

Usually passage of SPOG contracts by council is considered to be a done deal before the official vote since a majority of councilmembers sit on the Labor Relations Policy Committee, which has already approved the contract. 

Because the contract runs through the end of 2027 and SPOG contracts tend to take a long time to negotiate, it’s possible there won’t be another chance at a new contract during the next mayoral term, whether that position is filled by Harrell or frontrunner Katie Wilson. 

This timing spells good news for SPOG, who would almost certainly prefer to avoid negotiations with a more progressive Wilson, should she end up winning the mayoral race. On the other hand, it is bad news for the CARE team and its boosters, who could face several more years of obstacles before Seattle’s alternative response might be allowed to operate as designed. 

The post Harrell and SPOG Rush Police Contract, Hamstringing Civilian Responders, Accountability Agencies first appeared on The Urbanist.

“AI will be harnessed to accelerate permitting and housing, improve public safety, enhance the responsiveness of services for Seattle residents, and enable more accessible and plain-language interactions to remove barriers,” the plan states.

The plan includes an AI training program for City employees and partnerships with academia, industry, and communities. Its definition of AI is broad, and because of its high level nature, it often lacks specifics.

The City will also be adding a new AI Leadership position to its Information Technology Department (ITD). 

“We are trying to be very intentional about positioning Seattle as a national leader in responsible artificial intelligence implementation, make no mistake about that,” Harrell said at last week’s press event. “We believe it will position us to be not only a strong city in terms of our values, but as a port city, as a maritime city, as a biotech leader, as a high tech leader, really fits into our fabric as a city.”

The City also unveiled its new associated AI Policy, which lays out rules for City employees’ use of AI, including a list of prohibited uses. It requires attribution to an AI tool for generated images, videos, and source code; attribution for text generated by AI is required if it is “used substantively in a final product.” 

The policy says employees must conduct a racial equity toolkit before using AI in a new way, and departments are supposed to work to understand environmental impacts of specific tools prior to procurement. How these rules will work in practice, and whether they will dissuade certain AI use cases, remains unclear.

The Chief Technology Officer, currently Rob Lloyd, is responsible for enforcement of this policy.

Seattle’s many AI pilots

The City has engaged in 42 AI pilots thus far, 24 of which are currently ongoing. 

Of the 18 completed pilots, the majority were designated for “general” use and included AI applications such as Fathom AI, Beautiful.ai, Otter.ai, Hootsuite, AI Calendar, etcetera, that perform basic functions such as transcription, calendar coordination, and content creation and coordination. 

One completed pilot by the Seattle Police Department (SPD) tested CaseGuard for redacting body-worn video for public disclosure. The Seattle Fire Department (SFD) tested the tool Corti to both provide audio analysis of non-emergency calls and for “Public Safety Triaging, Documentation, Quality Improvement & Training.”

Of the 24 ongoing pilots, 11 are being conducted within ITD. Four are currently running within the Seattle Department of Construction & Inspections (SDCI) with the goal of streamlining and speeding up the permitting process. The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) is testing software to identify intersections where engineering improvements can reduce the risk of crashes.

ITD spokesperson Megan Erb told The Urbanist that the Community Assisted Response & Engagement (CARE) department is also looking into using AI tools to analyze call prioritization data, which might help them better dispatch the right resources to the right call. However, this is not yet an active pilot. 

SPD has two new pilots: one is an Amazon Q/Bedrock business chatbot “for general business, ’low-risk’ use cases” and the other is with C3 AI, which ITD says is being used to more easily reference policy information. Erb said C3 AI is not being used as a tool to assist basic criminal investigations at this time. 

“With AI being a new technology, SPD is gradually working on responsible governance for the use of these tools in the future,” Erb told The Urbanist. “As part of this process, the department is testing platforms in limited use cases, such as summarizing survey results to help present information in easier to understand ways.” 

Amazon published a blog post earlier this summer about possible public safety applications of Bedrock, focusing on the tool receiving noise complaint calls and automatically generating incident reports. Other use cases mentioned in the post include reporting of traffic incidents without injuries, abandoned vehicle reporting, and graffiti and vandalism reporting.

ITD did not share any specific current use cases with The Urbanist. 

When asked more about the Amazon AI pilot, Ben Dalgetty, a spokesperson for Mayor Harrell, said SPD is currently in the process of developing policy and technical guardrails for this technology.

“Future uses of this technology may have implications for the identification of complex trends and patterns used to prevent crime but a lot of work needs to be done before SPD is comfortable employing it in this way,” Dalgetty said.

This description sounds dangerously close to AI-fueled predictive policing, which studies have shown can lead to the disproportionate targeting of minority communities. Depending on the data used by the AI tool, this bias can be further exacerbated in a number of ways. 

A number of U.S. Senators sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice at the beginning of 2024, asking for grants funding predictive policing projects to be halted.

“Mounting evidence indicates that predictive policing technologies do not reduce crime. Instead, they worsen the unequal treatment of Americans of color by law enforcement,” the senators wrote. And later, “The continued use of such systems creates a dangerous feedback loop: biased predictions are used to justify disproportionate stops and arrests in minority neighborhoods, which further biases statistics on where crimes are happening.”

Meanwhile, ITD’s recent annual learning conference featured two Oracle executives demonstrating an AI software interface for police case record management. The software involved AI transcription of audio and video files as well as summaries of text. 

“There’s tremendous issues here, especially in the policing context, especially when we’re talking about going from something that’s originally an audio recording,” said Dr. Emily Bender, a linguistics professor at the University of Washington who specializes in computational linguistics. 

Bender explained that AI transcription technology doesn’t work as well when the language used diverges from the “prestige” standard, which can then cause more errors. AI models also have biases in the data on which they’re trained.

“The generative AI system is set up to basically output plausible-looking text based on the immediate input plus all of its pre-training data, and so it is very likely to output additional details that just look plausible in context but bear no resemblance to what happened,” Bender said.

Officers might not be given the time and space to correct transcription and other errors in such an AI system after the fact. Such a system would also harm accountability, as reports it generates could be presented in a court of law as an account from the involved officer, when it didn’t begin as a personal account from the officer about what actually happened.

There has recently been community concern around SPD’s use of generative AI in communicating with the public. PubliCola reported on an Office of Police Accountability (OPA) complaint from an anonymous community member alleging that SPD used AI to generate public-facing materials, including blog posts and a statement from new Chief Shon Barnes. While a well-known AI detection tool found the above examples to have been likely completely or partially written by AI, SPD denied using generative AI in “a substantive way” for communications.

This example shows a weakness in the City’s AI Policy, which is vague about what a substantive use of AI text generation entails. If the SPD communications above really were generated with AI tools, there should have been attribution acknowledging such. As PubliCola reported, the OPA referred the complaint as a “supervisor action,” meaning that there will be no consequences beyond training or coaching. 

Cascade PBS recently reported that in Everett, even after the city adopted an AI policy requiring attribution of AI-generated text, city staff hasn’t always followed the guidelines.

In addition to AI tools sometimes providing incorrect information (sometimes known as “hallucinations”), the use of AI could further erode trust in government, a particular problem for SPD as it seeks to rebuild trust in the community. Some critics have argued AI-generated text has no place in government communications.

“There are no appropriate use cases for synthetic text,” said Bender. “Setting up a system that is just designed to mimic the way people use language can only be harmful.”

Other concerns about City use of AI

The example of cities like Everett call into question the actual implementation of the City’s AI Plan. 

The recent release of OpenAI’s newest chatbot model, ChatGPT-5, which upon launch was unable to draw an accurate map of the United States or create an accurate list of U.S. Presidents, has accelerated criticism of generative AI and raised questions about the future of this technology. 

Even early into its deployment, AI has faced criticism for its environmental impacts. The data centers that power AI require large amounts of freshwater for cooling, and Bloomberg News found that two thirds of data centers built since 2022 are in locations already experiencing water stress. The power needs of data centers are also expected to grow, with McKinsey writing that power needs will be three times higher than current capacity within five years in the United States, increasing reliance on fossil fuels.

Promises that AI can readily replace human work have not necessarily materialized in practice. For example, the Swedish company Klarna began laying off about 700 employees in 2022 in order to replace them with AI, only to decide to rehire human employees this spring. 

Harrell emphasized that the City doesn’t intend to use AI to replace its workers and pledged to keep union leaders in the loop. 

“We work collaboratively with our labor partners,” Harrell said. “And as we look at certain tasks that could possibly be replaced by AI, we always make sure, as we sit with a human-centered approach, we work with our labor partners and make sure that these discussions are open and transparent.”

The AI Plan adds that “[a]s intelligent systems begin to automate routine and/or administrative tasks, job roles will indeed refocus on higher-value, creative, people-facing, and decision-making responsibilities.”

The Urbanist reached out to Protec 17, the union that represents many of the City’s workers. “We have recently been made aware of the City’s AI plan, and are in the process of gathering information and analyzing the impacts to PROTEC17 members,” their Executive Director Karen Estevenin said. “While we are concerned with many aspects around how AI could impact the workforce — including any reduction in positions — we also are interested in exploring smart, safe, and effective uses for AI that could support the work and improve the working conditions of City employees.”

Another issue that could impact City workers is the use of AI leading to deskilling workers. A recent paper in The Lancet found that enterologists who regularly used AI for polyp detection during colonoscopy became deskilled within six months, with the rate of a certain type of polyp detection without AI usage dropping from 28% to 22%. 

Earlier this summer, MIT’s Media Lab found that the use of large language models (LLMs) for essay writing “came at a cognitive cost” and used weaker cognitive engagement compared to people using only their brains or a search engine. 

“If the idea is to do these pilots and evaluate, then the City really ought to be evaluating impacts on deskilling of the workforce and the quality of service that can be offered,” said Bender.

There is also the question of accountability when using AI in the public sector. While both Harrell and the AI Plan are clear as to keeping a human in the loop when using these tools, these workers could potentially be used as moral crumple zones, taking the hit for AI errors. 

“Sometimes the person who is the human in the loop ends up taking the impact when something goes wrong, and they are effectively protecting the larger organization that decided to do the automation,” said Bender.

The push to adopt AI

In spite of the possible perils, Harrell is enthusiastic about incorporating AI into the City of Seattle.

“Artificial intelligence is more than just a buzzword in Seattle – it’s a powerful tool we are harnessing to build a better city for all,” said Harrell. “By using this technology intentionally and responsibly, we are fostering a nation-leading AI economy, creating jobs and opportunities for our residents, while making progress on creating a more innovative, equitable, and efficient future for everyone.”

Last year Harrell was invited to serve on the Office of Homeland Security’s Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Board, whose stated purpose is to develop recommendations for infrastructure stakeholders to leverage AI responsibly and prevent and prepare for AI-related disruptions to critical services. Harrell also serves as the Chair of the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Standing Committee on Technology and Innovation.

During his speech at the State of Downtown event hosted by the Downtown Seattle Association this February, Harrell spoke of his concern around cyber security and AI, while also seeming to praise right-wing technology leaders who funded Trump’s campaign. 

“We know that our current president surrounds himself by some of the smartest innovators around,” Harrell said. “When we drop names like Andreessen or Peter Thiel or David Sacks or Elon Musk, these are smart innovators.” 

Ironically, Musk presents a strong cautionary tale for the use of AI LLMs in government with his work earlier this year at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). In spite of Musk and DOGE’s stated goal of efficiency, The Atlantic found that the U.S. government actually spent more money this February and March than they did in the same months last year. 

Instead, DOGE and its role in facilitating the adoption of LLMs at the federal level have handed unprecedented power to the wealthy tech CEOs who control the contracted models: namely, Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Peter Thiel (Palantir), and Musk (xAI). The AI systems currently in use by the federal government are leading to less accountability, less transparency, and the creation of a vast surveillance state.

In contrast, Harrell is selling Seattle as a leader in responsible AI implementation.

“You see the controls that we’ve put in for our AI policy, and our plan is to say that it has to go through responsible use,” said Lloyd. “There is a security process, there is a privacy consideration. And as we go through that, we are also saying that we will enable AI to make the City of Seattle able to solve civic challenges.”

The AI Plan calls for the creation of a Citywide AI Governance Group that will be responsible for providing input and guidance on the direction of the AI Plan and its priorities. This group will be convened later this fall after the AI Leadership position is filled. 

The Office of Civil Rights did not participate in the development of the AI Plan. However, they will be asked to participate in the governance group, Erb said. 

Bender said it will be important for the City to get specific about what they want to automate, avoid synthetic text machines, and choose use cases in a well-tested and sensible way that provides for clear accountability. 

Meanwhile, with the City facing a structural budget deficit, it could be tempting to use AI tools as a Band-Aid to keep things running. But that strategy is likely to create greater disparities.

“If you think about who has the ability to opt out of poorly provisioned city services, it’s the wealthy,” Bender said. “And everybody else is going to be stuck with what we’re doing collectively. So why don’t we do it well?”

Correction: The original version mistakenly identified Ben Dalgetty as a spokesperson for the City’s IT Department. He is a spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office.

The post Harrell Pledges Seattle Will Be AI Leader, Plan Fuzzy on Details first appeared on The Urbanist.

In the middle of a homelessness crisis, when more people are unhoused than ever before, Seattle is still allowing employers to reject qualified job applicants simply because they don’t have a permanent address. That’s discrimination. And it’s keeping people unhoused, unemployed, and excluded from opportunity.

On April 21st, the Spokane City Council passed a first-in-the-nation law that bans this practice. They call it “Ban the Address,” and the idea is as straightforward as it is urgent: no one should be denied a job simply because they are unhoused. It’s time for Seattle to adopt the same legal protection against hiring discrimination — and as your next City Attorney, I’ll fight to make that happen.

Employers who commit this type of discrimination do so in the shadows — it’s not visible because the job applicants who experience it are often vulnerable and lack resources. People living in shelters, sleeping in cars, or staying with friends are trying to get back on their feet. But when an employer sees “no fixed address” on an application, unhoused job applicants are at risk of not getting an interview simply due to their housing status.

As a public defender, I’ve represented people pushed to the margins of our economy and our legal system. I’ve watched people lose opportunities because of things that had nothing to do with their talent or work ethic. I’ve seen people trying to claw their way out of homelessness get pushed right back into it — because our systems are designed to punish poverty, not solve it.

This is where the City Attorney’s Office has power — real power. The City Attorney drafts legislation, advises city departments, and enforces the law. A City Attorney who believes in economic justice can help move policy like this from proposal to reality.

A good job is one of the most powerful tools we have to reduce homelessness. But only if people can access it. We must start removing barriers, not erecting new ones. The Ban the Address law doesn’t ask employers to lower their standards — it asks them to judge people based on their skills and character, not their housing status. And if we’re serious about building a city where everyone belongs, this should be the baseline, not the exception. 

Seattle has the legal framework, the policy momentum, and the moral obligation to lead. Let’s follow Spokane’s lead and adopt this sensible legislation.

The post Op-Ed: Seattle Should Ban Employers from Discriminating Against Unhoused Job Applicants first appeared on The Urbanist.

Burien residents should vote for Measure 1 because it will actually raise pay for low-wage workers, bringing Burien’s minimum wage into alignment with neighboring cities Tukwila, Renton, and Seattle. Leveling wages across South King County will increase local buying power and Burien businesses’ ability to attract talent and customers, helping workers and businesses alike. 

Much like the competing minimum wage proposals considered by voters in Everett on the November ballot, the Burien minimum wage measure will be a choice between a true minimum wage and a policy already passed by the council that penalizes tipped workers. (Labor groups recently beat back a similar tip-penalty proposal in Seattle.) The council’s ordinance has allowed them to claim raising minimum wage as an accomplishment while, in reality, very few workers in Burien will see a meaningful increase in take home pay.

In October 2024, Burien’s council passed Ordinance 855 to grant workers a $4.50 increase over state minimum wage, but did so only for employers with 500 or more full-time employees in King County. The minimum wage at employers with between 20 and 499 full-time employees would increase by $3.50 over the state minimum, and employers with fewer than 20 full-time employees would be completely exempt. 

Ordinance 855 also permits employers to apply tips and employer-provided healthcare costs to the requirements beyond the state minimum wage, meaning employees already receiving $4.50 an hour in tips will not see an increase to their take-home pay. 

Tying the employer tiers to full time employees in King County (rather than nationally) and treating franchises as individual businesses will further diminish impact for workers even at major fast food chains and make it more difficult for employees and employers to understand what wage applies. With several recent high-profile wage theft lawsuits, Burien workers and businesses both deserve a law that’s easy to understand and comply with. 

Further muddying the waters is the city’s communication around the measure, which has already been amended twice before going into effect, (once to increase the originally passed $3 increase and again to correct a material error.) Burien’s city manager has gone so far as to file a complaint to the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) against a citizen simply for giving public comment in favor of the initiative. (The PDC summarily dismissed the claim.) 

The City’s attempts to control the narrative have veered at times into outright obfuscation. Mailers sent by the city to every Burien resident celebrating the approval of what is described as “[The] Nation’s Highest Minimum Wage” make no mention of the tip or health care penalties. The City also paid for a sponsored post touting the wage law in the popular B-Town Blog. The City’s website describing the new wage law makes no mention of these details (they can be found only in a separate FAQ document.) This may leave many workers disappointed if they expect a raise on January 1 when the new law goes into effect. 

In answer to the Burien City Council’s efforts to minimize the benefits to workers, a more comprehensive minimum wage initiative gathered more than the required 4,420 signatures to qualify for the February special election. It’s clear this approach has much more popular support.

We’re endorsing Measure 1 because it removes the tip and healthcare penalty and makes the minimum wage increase apply to all workers (though small and medium- sized employers will have seven-year and three-year phase-in periods.) This will allow more workers to see a bigger increase in their take home pay than the council’s version and the more standardized definition of business size will be easier for both employers and workers to understand and ensure compliance. Vote yes on Measure 1.

The Urbanist Elections Committee consists of Angela Compton, Kacie Masten, Ryan Packer, Maya Ramakrishnan, Hannah Sabio-Howell, Jazmine Smith, Doug Trumm, Kelsey Vanhee, and Anita Yandle.

The post The Urbanist Endorses Burien’s Measure 1 as Real Minimum Wage Boost first appeared on The Urbanist.

From public hearings at the Washington State Supreme Court to King County Council meetings about the 2025 budget, those most intimately involved with our criminal legal system are discussing new caseload standards for public defenders: what they should look like, why they’re important, how much they’ll cost, and who is going to foot the bill.

Across the board, policymakers agree there’s a crisis in public defense, both in King County and statewide. Where they don’t necessarily agree is on what to do about it. 

What does the public defense crisis look like?

We can easily see the public defense crisis when we look at attrition numbers at the King County Department of Public Defense (DPD). 

In a presentation to the King County Council, DPD reported a 19% attrition rate since the beginning of 2023. The agency said 53 lawyers have left, 20 of which were among the department’s most experienced (and, therefore, the hardest to replace). 43.9% of felony cases have been transferred from a departing lawyer during that time. 

Molly Gilbert, the Bargaining Union President of SEIU 925 representing public defenders, began tracking departures in January of 2024. She says that since that time, 38 lawyers have left, including five in September and five in October, and that eight additional attorneys have given notice they’ll be leaving by the end of the year. According to her observations, the exodus appears to be accelerating.

“That means that 83 line attorneys resigned in the past two years, which is 48% of our attorney positions,” Gilbert said. “They have primarily been replaced by attorneys who just received their bar card, many of whom have zero work experience.”  

A DPD spokesperson said Gilbert’s figures exaggerate the attrition rate, which they said their latest tally puts at 26% since 2023, not counting future planned departures. DPD also contends Gilbert’s numbers include some inaccuracies.

The attrition cycle tends to worsen over time because departing attorneys’ incomplete cases transfer over to the remaining attorneys, who have to re-do at least a portion of the work already done on the cases. As more attorneys leave, more cases have to be reassigned, and caseloads become higher and higher. And brand new attorneys, who tend to be easier to hire, cannot take many of these cases due to their complexity.

“The work is incredibly taxing,” Matt Sanders, the interim director of DPD, said. “It’s one of those things where people come to the work because they’re mission-driven, and they really want to advocate and defend the most vulnerable people in our community, and hold police accountable and promote public safety. But the workloads are overwhelming, and that’s why you’re seeing public defenders leaving the profession in droves.”

When asked what we can expect a public defense crisis to look like, Sanders said, “I think a number of things would happen. As an initial matter, police accountability would be undermined because there’s going to be attorneys who aren’t able to thoroughly investigate these situations because the caseloads are unsustainable. There’s going to be people who end up, because we can’t take the cases, sitting in custody without an attorney.

To some extent, the crisis has already arrived, since public defenders are already under-resourced and spread very thin.

“Even under the current situation, we have folks who are in custody for entirely too long and speedy trial is a constitutional right, and it’s undermined,” Sanders said. “I can recount examples of clients, predominantly people of color, who have sat in custody for years only to be acquitted.”

Yakima provides a stark example of what can happen when public defense is no longer adequately available. At the beginning of October, the ACLU of Washington filed a class-action lawsuit against Yakima County and others on behalf of people charged with crimes who didn’t have an attorney assigned to their cases. The lawsuit claims the lack of counsel for defendants constitutes an unlawful restraint, as well as interfering with rights to due process and a speedy trial.

“This is about fairness — everyone deserves and has a right to an attorney, and that’s not happening now for defendants in Yakima County,” David Montes, staff attorney for the ACLU of Washington, said in a press release. “They don’t have an opportunity to ask to be released. They don’t have an opportunity for an attorney to move their case forward. We have protections in place to ensure there isn’t government abuse of power and that people are treated fairly, and right now, those protections don’t exist for a whole class of people in Yakima County.”

In a recent op-ed in The Seattle Times, two judges at the King County Superior Court cite the cautionary tale of Oregon, saying that due to their mismanagement of public defenders, defendants without representation have been released and there are significant delays in resolving cases. And in an op-ed at The Stranger, DPD attorney Austin Field argues that public defenders need lower caseloads in order to be able to protect their clients from improper police and prosecutorial behavior.

Should King County not take corrective action, its ability to provide public defenders to defendants might become similarly compromised.

“It is a priority for me to identify the resources needed to make sure that we don’t have a situation where our criminal legal system kind of grinds to a halt, essentially,” said King County Councilmember Jorge Barón, chair of the Law and Justice committee. “The fact is that right now I have a system that is falling apart, and so we need to fix it.”

New caseload standards for public defenders

The Washington State Bar Association (WSBA) published a new set of caseload standards for public defenders in March. In September of 2023, the Washington Supreme Court had asked them to analyze a landmark new study on national public defense workload and make recommendations for the state’s criminal courts. The study, published in July of 2023, found that public defense workload standards are outdated, not empirically based, and inadequate for providing the constitutionally guaranteed right of counsel. 

“Excessive caseloads violate ethics rules and inevitably cause harm,” the study says. “A  justice system burdened by triage risks unreliability, denying all people who rely on it — victims, witnesses, defendants, and their families and communities — efficient, equal, and accurate justice.”

The WSBA’s new standards make changes in three areas: caseload limits, support staff ratios, and attorney qualifications. In short, the new standards will greatly reduce (by roughly two thirds) the number of cases a public defender is allowed to be assigned at any given time, while also increasing the number of support staff available such as investigators, social workers, and paralegals. They also broaden the definition of experience for public defenders to qualify to take on various levels of felony cases, meaning they will be able to take on more difficult cases more quickly. 

These standards are set to be rolled out in three distinct phases, with the first phase beginning July of 2025 and the last phase beginning July 2027. The mandatory support staff ratios would become effective as of July 2028.

The state Supreme Court sets its own public defense caseload standards, which are legally binding and govern lawyers’ ethical and professional obligations, along with the WSBA. It is in the process of reviewing whether to change those standards to match the ones developed by the WSBA, with the last public hearing on the issue scheduled for November 13. 

The Court has no deadline to make their final decision. But Justice Mary Yu, Chair of the Washington Supreme Court Rules Committee, issued a statement saying, “The Court is aware of the importance of the issue and the concern that all interested parties have about the standards.” 

Until the Court announces their decision, plans to address the public defense crisis in the state will remain uncertain. 

“This is going to be a very significant shift to the way that we do our criminal legal system,” Barón said. “I think the court is appropriately responding to a crisis that we’re seeing. And, you know, fortunately, I will say this is not a Washington State crisis. This is happening across the country.”

The public defense landscape in King County

The King County Code currently looks to the WSBA caseload standards, not the Supreme Court standards, leading to some confusion as the County looks to address the current crisis. 

King County is the first county in the state undergoing a serious effort to implement new standards. In talks about the County’s 2025 budget, the DPD has asked for an additional $6.4 million beyond what County Executive Dow Constantine has included in his budget proposal to help it meet the first phase of the standards. 

However, the King County Council introduced an amendment only providing $1.7 million to hire additional attorneys in 2025, which could stymie DPD’s efforts to comply with the first phase.

There is also speculation as to whether the Supreme Court will adopt the WSBA standards or suggest some sort of compromise. If the latter, it is possible the WSBA would alter its own standards to match those of the Court. Councilmembers could also potentially change the county code to refer to the Supreme Court’s standards instead. 

“[The Supreme Court decision] matters for simply the fact of whether or not it forces our county to actually abide by the standards, because once it’s legally binding, instead of just being their county code, you know that is substantially more force being applied,” said Gilbert.

Barón said he was planning to write to the court suggesting they begin implementing the new standards next year as planned but provide a slower schedule for the full roll-out, allowing two years between each phase instead of one. He cited both the financial difficulties caused by the new standards as well as the challenge of recruiting and training so many attorneys in a three-year period. 

“I think the biggest concern is about the cost,” Barón said. “And that is a reality. This will cost a lot of money, and I think everybody in the community should understand that. But I think it’s a necessary cost. So the legislature is going to have to step up with either giving us avenues to raise revenue for this or give us the money necessary to be able to implement it.”

At a King County budget public safety roundtable last month, a staff member said that according to staff model estimates, the new standards could cost as much as an additional $50 million per year once the implementation is complete.

Gilbert pushed back on delaying the full implementation of the new standards, saying public defenders have already been raising the alarm for some time now. 

“King County is experiencing the worst crisis pretty much in the state, as far as the breadth of attrition that we have, and even If the standards are adopted with the three-year timeline that’s proposed, I don’t think we’re going to see actual relief on the ground for our attorneys for quite a few years,” Gilbert said. “So even though there’s hope on the horizon, we’re not going to be actually feeling the effects of positive change for years afterwards because of the backlog of cases that many of us are carrying.”

The criminal legal system is becoming more expensive

But no one wants to foot the bill to hire all the additional attorneys and support staff that will be required to address the public defense crisis. 

In 2021, Washington State was only paying 3.2% of the cost for public defense services. 37 states fully fund public defense, while another 11 use a mixture of state and county funding. 

“This is a constitutional responsibility,” Barón said. “I think the state should be providing at least half of the support, if not more of that, to share the responsibility.”

Barón acknowledged that the criminal legal system is getting more expensive over time, which is forcing a conversation about how to best use King County’s limited resources. 

“We can raise a lot of taxes and spend a lot of money to be able to meet those costs and continue the number of cases that we have going through the system, or increase them,” Barón said. “Or we can live with a more limited amount of money and then identify other pathways of accountability, but also maybe providing support that might actually be more effective in reducing recidivism through diversion programs.” 

In other words, the public defender crisis could accelerate discussions about broader criminal legal system reforms.

“The idea is not that we do nothing with those cases, but that we find alternatives to a very, very expensive system, a system that, in many low-level cases, doesn’t really lead to the results that we like to see in terms of reducing recidivism and having a change in people’s conduct long term,” Barón said.  

Sanders agrees with the value of diversion. 

“What’s frustrating is that substantial evidence shows that diverting non-violent felony cases away from the traditional carceral system and into alternatives actually is better for the individual and the community because it aims to address the underlying problems, like mental illness, like substance use disorder,” Sanders said. “It actually reduces recidivism, reduces arrest rates, and is more cost effective than what we currently do, which is basically throw these low-level offenders, or these nonviolent offenders into a jail that costs an extraordinary amount of money.”

He said that in addition to utilizing more diversion, the prosecuting attorney’s office could be more efficient in making offers, expediting motions, and encouraging a robust efficient prosecuting unit, all of which would save money. 

A move away from massive criminalization, which received more public support in 2020 as a result of the George Floyd protests, would ultimately save more public dollars by addressing root causes instead of using the ever more expensive criminal legal system. But in order for such a strategy to succeed, Sanders said we’d need to have mental health and substance use disorder infrastructure already in place.

“People have misinterpreted [the move away from criminalization] as a failure,” Sanders said. “When, in fact, we never actually gave it an honest chance at succeeding.”

Correction: We have clarified that the King County Department of Public Defense disputes Molly Gilbert’s statistics and has calcuated their attrition rate to be 26% since 2023. Additionally, due to a transcription mistake, the original version incorrectly quoted DPD’s Matt Sanders as saying “I can recount examples of clients, predominantly people of color, who have sat in custody for four years only to be acquitted.” Sanders has since made clear this was a repeated word — “for, for years” — not the number four.

The post King County Grapples with Public Defender Crisis first appeared on The Urbanist.

Over a decade ago, The Fight for $15 began when fast-food workers went on strike around the region to demand higher wages. Their vision will finally come to pass on January 1, 2025, when the city of Seattle completes its negotiated rollout of one minimum wage that covers all employees, with no subminimums or carveouts for tipped employees. The bargain that the mayor and city council struck with a coalition of workers and business owners ten years ago allowed some smaller businesses extra time to see the benefits of increased consumer demand.

Next year, thanks to cost-of-living adjustments written into the law to help working families deal with rising prices, Seattle’s new minimum wage of $20.76, or approximately $43,000 per year for a full time worker, will finally apply to all workers equally. That minimum wage, the long-awaited result of the Fight for $15, will be among the strongest in the nation.

Seattle’s promise to raise the wage has worked exactly as intended. Recently, anti-poverty organization Oxfam America issued a report finding that Washington State is the fifth best state in the nation for workers. Oxfam measured every state across three metrics, “wages, worker protections, and rights to organize,” and found that Washington state’s strong minimum wage helped our state stand out. So did the fact that Washington voters eliminated the subminimum wage for tipped workers in 1988, and voted twice more to maintain a high minimum wage for all workers. It’s no coincidence that Washington also consistently places among CNBC’s ranking of the top ten states for businesses. After all, when more workers have money to spend in their local communities, everyone prospers.  

We’ve come a long way from those first fast-food strikes, but there’s still a long way to go. Seattle is at the epicenter of a national housing affordability crisis that has done major damage to Americans across the economic spectrum. According to Rentcafe, Seattle’s housing costs are a whopping 112% higher than the rest of the country. The average Seattle rent is $2,275 per month — that’s $27,300 per year, or almost two-thirds the gross income of a full-time minimum wage worker, leaving them severely rent burdened and unable to afford almost anything else.

Low-wage workers are disproportionately harmed by skyrocketing rents and out-of-control house prices. Just as economies grow when everyone can afford to participate, the opposite is also true: When workers can’t afford to live in an economy, that economy enters a negative feedback loop of shrinking consumer demand that hurts everyone. Workers who are falling behind are either going to move to a more affordable city, or they’re going to fall over the precipice and join Seattle’s growing unhoused population. We need to build a lot more housing that people can afford, and we need to do our best to ensure that high housing prices don’t push people out of the economy.

Our leaders are finally beginning to take notice. One of Vice President Kamala Harris’s signature campaign promises is to build three million units of housing by the end of her prospective first presidential term. But this ongoing drought of affordable housing isn’t a problem that can be solved by federal intervention alone — we need a commitment to building housing from the state, county, and city as well.

Local leaders are working to build more housing at every level. State legislators are directing record amounts of money into Washington’s Housing Trust Fund, our single best existing mechanism for funding affordable housing. King County Executive Dow Constantine is working to develop housing in a brand-new “civic campus” that would essentially create a new neighborhood on an underutilized 24.5-acre patch of Seattle’s downtown. And Councilmember Girmay Zahilay’s regional workforce housing proposal is a strong step forward to address the size and scope of the problem.

Until these and other creative solutions are put into action, we need to do our best to ensure that high housing prices don’t push people out of our economy — especially those workers at the bottom of the wage scale. That’s why, at a time when everyone across the state is paying historically high prices for housing, it’s truly bizarre that some members of the Seattle City Council have argued to instead cut worker pay, putting forth two bills that would shrink their paychecks.

One bill would have cut the wages of gig-economy food delivery drivers, and the other would have carved out a permanent tipped subminimum wage — the only one of its kind on the entire west coast — that would see workers at companies with 500 or fewer employees earn roughly $6,000 less per year than their peers at larger businesses. 

Someone should tell the Council that going back on their word and cutting paychecks isn’t just bad economics — it’s hugely unpopular, too. Poll after poll after poll shows that Americans approve of minimum-wage increases by a high margin. Business interests successfully kept the wage low for decades by falsely arguing that when you raise wages, you cut jobs.

But in the 10 years since the Fight for $15 began, Americans have seen the vast and growing body of evidence that proves raising the wage is good for the economy, creating jobs and growing prosperity for everyone. Just last month, University of California Berkeley economists published a study of California’s new $20 minimum wage for workers in the fast-food sector that found the wage “increased average hourly pay by a remarkable 18 percent, and yet it did not reduce employment.” 

It’s not easy for workers earning the minimum wage to get by in Seattle right now. Too many people are holding on by a thread as prices continue to rise. The City Council doesn’t seem to understand that the last thing Seattle families struggling with high housing costs need is a pay cut. Workers fought hard to raise Seattle’s minimum wage, and the bigger paychecks they won are helping them (barely) scrape by in our expensive housing market today. 

The Council should do the job that they campaigned on: making Seattle an affordable and vibrant place to live, work, and visit. They can do that by directing their energy to the construction of more affordable housing, more public transit, and the establishment of mental health initiatives that will help people regain control of their lives. In short, the Council’s goal should be making Seattle more affordable and livable for the vast majority of families and making the economy work for everyone — not just a wealthy few at the top.

The post Op-Ed: Higher Wages Are Needed Part of Seattle’s Housing Affordability Solution first appeared on The Urbanist.