We're all waiting to find out exactly how austere the new WA state budget will be

Apr 25, 2025

Seattle News:

Last week I dived into the recent Seattle Auditor’s Office report on gun violence patterns in Seattle for The Urbanist.

At the public safety committee meeting on April 8, Chief Innovation Officer Andrew Myerberg presented on the search for a new Office of Police Accountability (OPA) director. The search committee consists of Councilmember Bob Kettle, SPD Assistant Chief Tyrone Davis, CPC co-chair Joel Merkel, and Lisa Daugaard, the co-executive director of PDA. The first consideration date for candidates is today, 4/25, interviews of finalists will be all day 5/16, and meetings with stakeholders (the three police accountability bodies and SPD) will be on 5/22.

Mayor Bruce Harrell expects to announce his hiring decision sometime in early June. As with the most recent police chief search, there is no public engagement scheduled around this hiring decision.

There will be a special public safety committee meeting on Tuesday, April 29 to discuss Seattle’s police accountability system, including moving forward with the appointment of Eci Ameh as Executive Director of the Seattle Community Police Commission (CPC).

As has been previously reported by Guy Oron in Real Change, homeless encampment sweeps have escalated a large amount during Harrell’s tenure as mayor. And now The Seattle Times is even reporting on the story, writing, “To hide from the city’s escalating pace of encampment removals, homeless people say they are hiding deeper in the woods, where assaults, overdoses and emergencies can go unnoticed. Some say they’ve given up on setting up a tent altogether, leaving them less visible but more vulnerable to the elements and predators.”

Seattle has also lost 130 shelter spaces since 2022. Existing spaces are full (95%, which accounts for time spent in turnover).

PubliCola reported that there have only been five SOAP orders issued since the law was passed more than seven months ago. Four of the five orders were against men who were indigent (making less than $24,000/year or showing they can’t afford an attorney).

PubliCola also provides important context: “At a time of mass deportations and crackdowns on even legal immigrants, it’s also noteworthy that, according to public defenders, most of the men who get busted for patronizing street sex workers are immigrants. White men have more discreet ways of buying sex, and they’re more likely to be represented by private attorneys, rather than overworked public defenders.”

Meanwhile, in an Urbanist op-ed, Nathan Rouse, who is a candidate for Seattle City Attorney, comes out strong against cash bail for nonviolent misdemeanors. It’s worth reading what he has to say, and he includes many links for those interested in learning more. I’m curious what his opponents think about bail reform and whether this will be an issue on which the candidates differ.

King County/WA State News:

My latest article is out at The Urbanist today, looking at the intersection between what’s going on with the state budget right now and how that will impact King County, with a particular focus on the bill that would have lifted the property tax revenue growth cap and the bill that would allow municipalities to raise the sales tax 0.1% as an additional “public safety” tax.

In a letter delivered today, King County Councilmembers Girmay Zahilay and Rod Dembowski ask Executive Shannon Braddock to propose this new sales tax. Last I heard, neither councilmember had signed the letter to Ferguson asking for him to reconsider his resistance to the property tax cap lift.

It should be an exciting few days in Olympia as this legislative session is slated to end this Sunday, April 27. A few news tidbits in the meantime: the bill to create a permit-to-purchase program for guns has been passed by both chambers and will become law if Ferguson signs it. It looks like the Senate might be creating the wealth tax “test balloon” that Ferguson indicated might be acceptable to him. And Senate Democrats have proposed a 55% cut to abortion access funding in the state, right at a time when medical agencies providing these services are under severe attack from the federal government. The House Democrats have preserved this funding, and we’ll find out soon if they prevail in this matter.

King County’s 2024 Point in Time Count was released this week, saying 16,868 people experienced homelessness on any given night in 2024. This is 26% higher than in 2022. Homelessness continues to disproportionately affect communities of color, including Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic people.

There are more than two people per every shelter space in King County, and in North King County, this number is much worse at 9.6 people per bed. You can read more about it at PubliCola.

Meanwhile, PubliCola also reported that the current state budget cuts funds for former Governor Jay Inslee’s right-of-way program, which resolves encampments on state-owned rights of way through extensive outreach.

National News:

Jeff Asher, a nationally recognized crime data analyst, released an essay announcing that crime is down down down. His own words: “All we can say with certainty is that major crime — as counted by the FBI — almost certainly declined quite a lot in the first quarter of 2025. These would be record levels of decline for most crime types if they held up for the full year.”

I’ll add my usual disclaimer about taking crime data with at least some salt.

Notes from the Emerald City

We're all waiting to find out exactly how austere the new WA state budget will be

Seattle News:

King County/WA State News:

National News:

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