The Seattle City Council faced accusations of undermining democratic participation from public commenters after a chaotic meeting on Tuesday, wherein they limited public comment on an already rushed jail contract and also decided to suppress the peoples’ vote on a grassroots initiative to fund the City’s social housing development authority. 

During the meeting, Council President Sara Nelson struggled to take control of disruptive public commenters after cutting their time before the dias. She ended up clearing council chambers, and then she and her colleagues retreated to their offices to vote on agenda items remotely. They ultimately voted 8-1 to approve a new contract with the South Correctional Entity (SCORE) in Des Moines as part of an effort to jail more low-level, nonviolent offenders. They also voted 7-1 to delay action on I-137, which will push the social housing funding initiative to a low-turnout February special election. 

“They don’t want to hear from people who are actually affected by their decisions, they want to listen to their wealthy, corporate donors,” said Rachel Kay, a public commenter shooed from council chambers by two police officers. “They resort to the carceral state, in the form of police, to suppress democracy.”

A Switcheroo on Social Housing 

According to the meeting’s agenda, the city council planned to vote to put I-137 on the November ballot ahead of a 4:30 pm deadline imposed by King County Elections (KCE). If the council blew that deadline, then the measure would get pushed to the February special election next year. A November election, particularly in a presidential election year, sees higher turnout than a special election in an odd year. For example, 87% of voters in King County returned a ballot in the 2020 presidential election, but only 34% of voters returned a ballot in the February 2023 special election. A showing in November’s more representative general election would give the measure its best shot at passage, whereas a showing in a special election dominated by older, whiter, and wealthier high-propensity voters would not. 

To make sure the council complied with KCE’s deadline, at the Monday council briefing Nelson announced a plan to limit Tuesday’s public comment period to an hour. Her decision upset some of the regular public commenters who wanted to weigh in that day on the council’s decision to pay the SCORE jail $2 million per year for 20 beds to incarcerate low-level, nonviolent offenders. After all, that contract only saw a brief and controversial stakeholdering process before the mayor rushed it to the top of the council’s agenda, and last week’s Public Safety Committee meeting on the legislation left lingering questions about how it might increase the City’s looming budget deficit. 

All but two constituents spent their hour-long public comment period urging the council to abandon the jail contract, to put I-137 on the ballot in November, to nix new legislation targeting sex workers, and to keep their hands off the minimum wage. 

Nelson appeared to congratulate herself for allowing constituents to speak for 20 minutes longer than she planned to, but, as it would turn out, she really could have let them go longer. 

After the public comment period, Council Member Bob Kettle moved to remove the procedural vote to put I-137 on the ballot, citing some unspecified legal concerns raised by the city clerk. The council then voted 7-1 to delay action to a future meeting, which pushes the initiative vote to February. Council Member Cathy Moore abstained on that vote, and Tammy Morales, the only progressive on the council, voted no. During remarks, Morales argued that not taking the procedural vote on the measure would create grounds for recalling council members. 

Proponents speculated that the council delayed the vote so members could introduce their own alternative at a later date. In recent weeks, the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce commissioned a survey to test support for an alternative that would fund the social housing developer with the housing levy rather than with a new payroll tax on employers who pay anyone over $1 million. In response to that speculation, Morales said groups seeking alternatives to the initiative should go out and collect the signatures themselves. 

After the vote, Tiffani McCoy, who runs the campaign behind I-137, interrupted the meeting to say that the council should reopen the public comment period, since they no longer intended to meet the 4:30 pm deadline.  

The chamber then erupted with chants, name-calling, and accusations of undermining democracy. Nelson called a ten-minute recess. Council Members Moore, Joy Hollingsworth, Maritza Rivera, and Rob Saka followed Nelson out of the chambers. Council Members Tanya Woo and Dan Strauss followed shortly thereafter. Kettle spoke briefly with McCoy before he left. She asked why he did not bring up his legal concerns at the council briefing. He said she made a “fair point” but asked that she talk with him in his office at a later time. Only Morales stayed seated and listened to constituents during the recess. 

After ten minutes, the council returned to chambers to resume the meeting. As Nelson started to speak, one public commenter shouted, “You turned your back on us. We turn our backs on you.” Many public commenters stood and turned to face away from council. 

The disruption continued, and Nelson called a second ten-minute recess. The council then returned with police officers. At that point, Nelson claimed she limited the public comment period to leave time for the council to beat KCE’s 4:30 deadline for the initiative vote in the advent of the failure of Kettle’s motion to delay that vote. That reasoning sounds a little bullshitty because seven council members voted “yes” on the delay without comment or argument. 

Unsurprisingly, Nelson’s revelation did not cool tensions in the room. The public commenters continued to speak over the council, so Nelson ordered police officers to clear council chambers as she and her colleagues withdrew to their offices to vote on the SCORE contract remotely. The cops obliged without arresting the council’s political opponents, as Moore infamously called on them to do in a heated meeting earlier this year. 

Expanding the Carceral State

Hunkered down in his office, Kettle once again introduced the SCORE bill to the council. He acknowledged that many people died while incarcerated at that jail in the last year, including another death last week, bringing the total up to seven since 2023, the Seattle Times reports. He then minimized those deaths, saying we must understand the context behind them–a context he failed to lay out. 

He did, however, say that his desire to spend tax dollars to ship people 15 miles away to serve brief jail sentences emerged from his desire to protect the revenue losses for businesses dealing with misdemeanor property crime downtown, before lamenting the recent closure of a Starbucks on First Avenue and Pike Street. 

Strauss introduced a milquetoast amendment requiring the mayor’s office to provide a report on the many operational issues related to the SCORE jail. The amendment demanded no specific fix for those operational issues, and it didn’t require the mayor to find a funding source for the contract before entering into the agreement, so it was basically meaningless. Since it was meaningless, the council passed it, with Morales first attempting to abstain but then ultimately voting no. 

When Morales spoke on the full bill, she warned of potential cost overruns, decried the lack of a funding source to pay for the $2 million price tag, and reminded her colleagues that the City’s budget crisis has continued to worsen, with an expected $260 million shortfall next year. Considering that those same colleagues had run on a platform of “good governance” and “fiscal responsibility,” she critiqued them for their haste. But her calls for the council to provide a check on executive mismanagement went ignored.