Ron Davis originally published a version of this article on his substack, Rondezvous.
When Seattle’s new Council President, Sara Nelson, decided to lay out her agenda in a recent Seattle Times op-ed, the Editorial Board gleefully obliged. In this piece, as elsewhere, Nelson says she wants “good governance.”
But unfortunately, her foray into “good governance” starts with publishing this piece in a paper that pretends to have a real editorial board, rather than a PR team whose primary function is to cut taxes for Seattle Times owner Frank Blethen and his rich buddies.
Transparency and a press that holds politicians accountable are hallmarks of good governance. Getting the newspaper of record to feign neutrality but actually act as Nelson’s communications team is not. Not exactly knocking it out of the park so far.
But Nelson is just getting warmed up.
Wait, Who Is the Ideologue Here?
In the op-ed, she says her plan for good governance means the council can no longer be “ideologically driven.” She cites such ideological driven-ness as the reason “businesses are ceasing operations or leaving town.”
Never mind that employment is up almost 40,000 jobs since 2016, an era in which the council trended progressive. Never mind that the only major area of employment retrenchment in the last three years in Seattle was administrative jobs. These jobs were, according to Gene Balk (an actual reporter with actual integrity!) particularly likely to move outside the city due to remote work. Never mind that our share of tech workers is ever higher and now the highest in the country. Or that Seattle still has the most momentum for tech and other high skill job growth. Never mind that decades of research shows that lower taxes on the rich do not grow the economy and instead only increase inequality. Neither do they drive millionaires to migrate, as local tech billionaire Nick Hanauer recently reminded us. And they have “no detectable impact on startup activity,” according to the Federal Reserve.
An ideologue is someone who ignores evidence in favor of pet theories. So who’s the ideologue here? How is embracing ideology and projecting your weaknesses onto others good governance?
Now, look, we do have business problems, particularly when it comes to downtown retail. But this issue is primarily driven by reduced foot traffic downtown as more residents work in their homes, plus high costs of commercial rent and street crime–not the taxes.
Nelson and her ilk like to pretend that Seattle is the only expensive, tech-heavy central city that has these problems, which is ridiculous. The Seattle City Council isn’t the primary source of those issues–a global pandemic that killed millions and market and structural forces are. We can and should address these–say, with a vacancy tax on empty storefronts to lower prices–but of course Nelson’s commercial real estate bosses won’t allow for that.
Expertise
And in terms of addressing the mayhem on our streets–we have clear evidence about how to do that, too, but Nelson is not interested in that evidence. As an example, when experts testified before council on what actually produces results when it comes to opiate addiction, Nelson put in airpods.
That’s good governance in action?
In a similar vein, Nelson also says she’ll focus on “faster progress on homelessness and public safety,” but she refuses to do what every expert says works related to homelessness and drugs. This recalcitrance includes her unwillingness to support funding for enough affordable housing to actually tackle homelessness. McKinsey, the world’s foremost business consultancy, laid out how to actually do that, but Nelson appears to be wedded to the same kind of magical math that has failed us again and again. In fact, Nelson implies elsewhere that massive cuts are on the horizon.
Special Interests for Me but Not for Thee
In the op-ed, Nelson continues, “Under my leadership, this council won’t externalize our policymaking authority… Instead of catering to special interests, we’ll focus on mission-critical work that’s responsive to our constituents.”
Shortly thereafter, without a hint of irony, she cites a poll from the richest and probably most powerful special interest group in the region, the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.
And mere days later, the lobbyist whose life-partner runs that same Chamber–and who organized and drove much of the PAC fundraising that bought the Seattle election–told the big money donors that buying the election earned them the right to tell the council what to do. Hypocrisy and buying votes are not good governance.
Economic Illiteracy
Last, she mentions “getting our fiscal house in order.” She claims that “we must break our reliance on new revenue (taxes) to pay our bills. That’s an unsustainable fix for the wrong problem. The real problem is spending.” Then she cites the fact that spending has increased faster than inflation and population.
These claims evince a sophomoric understanding of the way governments function, and her failure to learn this during her years working for the council amount to economic malpractice. All labor- and land-intensive industries–both public and private–have higher cost inflation than the average inflation rate because you can’t automate people (at least not yet, anyway) and the amount of land can’t increase.
As a result, government economists generally agree that measuring revenue as a percentage of the economy is the better way to measure whether spending is sustainable. To illustrate this point, imagine getting a big raise or a new job, and then over a few years your income doubles but you buy a new house and your kids start daycare and your spending increases 70%. Let’s say you have a financial planner who says, “Your spending increase is financially unsustainable.” You ask why he thinks so, and he says, “The number of people in your family didn’t go up 70%. Inflation isn’t up 70%. So you can’t afford it.” He’s your financial planner, remember, so he knows how much your income has gone up. If that happened, you’d fire him for being financially illiterate. (Watch out, though—he might run for office.)
And guess what, folks? According to Dick Conway, one of the leading local empirical economists (that’s an economist that measures stuff), spending as a share of our economy has gone down in Washington and in Seattle over the last ten years! Usually, when economies get richer they choose to be more generous. We got richer, and we chose to be a touch less generous.
But Sara Nelson won’t be happy until we resurrect tea party economics and the ghost of former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan has hacked apart basic services for all the undeserving poor.
So, just in her op-ed about good governance, we’ve got conflicts of interest, crony favoritism, disdain for expertise, dishonesty, and basic economic and policy illiteracy.
And it’s still January. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride!
Regarding administrative jobs, you got that wrong. Those jobs didn’t go remote. They disappeared.
Gene Balk: “The census data shows the number of Seattle residents working in office and administrative support positions dropped by around 9,600, the biggest decrease of any job category. It’s also not too surprising when you consider how the rise in remote work during the pandemic left many offices empty.”
Ron’s interpretation: “These jobs were, according to Gene Balk (an actual reporter with actual integrity!) particularly likely to move outside the city due to remote work.”
A politician claiming to be non-ideological is one of the oldest tricks in the book. It’s not a surprise she was bullshitting it’s a surprise anyone bought it to begin with
Thank God Ron Davis never got elected.
We have had 10 years of the “progressive” experiment.
The results were terrible: skyrocketing homelessness, crime, human trafficking, failing public school, record murders, record overdoses–despite government spending that grew faster than inflation.
Voters were very clear: we wanted common-sense liberal Democrats running Seattle.
Ron, if you want a future in virtue-signaling worthlessness, Portland is still run by “progressives”. They will find your misguided failed rhetoric appealing. You might consider a move.
Morales, Sawant, Herbold, Ron Davis, thankfully, are relics of the past. Slowly fading in the rear view mirror.
Seattle is glad to have common sense liberal Democrats back in charge.
But, Ron, Seattle has moved on.
Anyone with eyes can see the miserable disaster that the opiate “experts” and McKinsey consultants wrought. As much as Davis may have contempt for the voters, they made their assessment on the ideology of his “experts” resoundingly clear.
@2: Nelson’s opponent was Oliver, who ran on a “defund” platform. No amount of activist or Council Member advocacy for “defund” ever produced significant support for it amongst actual Seattle voters, so Oliver lost.
After years of outright anti-police ideology from the Council, voters wanted more police and less ideology.
This has to be one of the all time ironic paragraphs ever published in TS. Ron criticizes Nelson for using The Seattle Times because they are a partisan news outlet (“fake news I guess”) while using TS to publish his piece. THE STRANGER!!! I mean over the last few years no media source has done more to sow propaganda and publish outright misinformation then this publication. Shit, its the reason many posters here comment, myself included. We became so fed up with the sheer amount of disinformation coming from this “paper” we felt a need to correct the record. Then he says the press needs to hold politicians accountable. When has TS ever done that? Ron, you disqualified your entire editorial in one paragraph. Thanks for the laugh though.
“But unfortunately, her foray into “good governance” starts with publishing this piece in a paper that pretends to have a real editorial board, rather than a PR team whose primary function is to cut taxes for Seattle Times owner Frank Blethen and his rich buddies.
Transparency and a press that holds politicians accountable are hallmarks of good governance. Getting the newspaper of record to feign neutrality but actually act as Nelson’s communications team is not. Not exactly knocking it out of the park so far.”
Well, when your standard seems to be Trotsky, then I guess everyone to the right is “Tea Party” or “conservative”.
Boston MA and Seattle WA, both prosperous, tech-heavy cities of roughly 750K population.
Boston’s city budget $4.2 B
Seattle’s $7.8 B- which begs the question, why such a difference?
Ugh, please use proper em dashes.
@9, Boston also has more Police coverage per capita than Seattle with less money?????.
Republishing someone’s substack is pretty pathetic.
@11 Boston has over twice as many police officers (slightly over 2000) than Seattle (937 in the most recent count I can find).
Anyone who isn’t ’progressive’ is a republican.
Political parties are social constructs and therefor exist on a spectrum.
This kind of binary thinking causes harm.
@9 Utilities. $2b of the Seattle budget
@5 “voters wanted more police and less ideology” Do you even hear yourself?
@11 Boston police pay starts at $47k, SPD starts at $83k. Found some wasteful city spending and I didn’t even have to wait for the audit!
@15: Yes, I wrote that line: “After years of outright anti-police ideology from the Council, voters wanted more police and less ideology.”
You’re free to cite Seattle’s recent elections results to show how my statement is not true.
@16: Boom! And that’s starting salary. How many Boston cops are pulling in over $200k each year? Probably a lot fewer than in Seattle.
Please don’t tell me we’re in for these rants from every defeated proggo. That’s a lot of content to ignore.
@16/18 As far as I can tell, Boston spends about twice as much as Seattle on police officer overtime. It’s hard to find recent reporting on the highest earners, but it seems like both cites have close to the the same number of officers earning at or above $200k, with a slight edge to Seattle.
@18 that’s such a bullshit stat. Those officers only earn that much because of overtime which in large part is driven by the fact they are understaffed or by the various protests going on around town that require a larger police presence thereby requiring more resources. If you look at SFD they have firefighters earning big bucks as well due to OT. If you want less officers earning $200K than you need to hire more so OT is not needed.
For Ron Davis, “Good Governance” means ignoring the will of the people. Branding it as something that it isn’t does not help your cause. Your “Faux” outrage can go suck it and is the other side of the “extremist coin” which MAGA dominates.
@16 is correct. WE FOUND SOME FAT TO CUT, SARA!
Exactly what tax on Frank Blethen is Nelson proposing to cut, and how much will it save him? I highly doubt that the city council will (or could) make any meaningful change in his tax burden.
The Stranger should change their “Seattle’s Only Newspaper” phrase to “Almost as Funny as The Onion”.
@25- if only the Stranger’s writers had a sense of humor or any humility.
@25: “Almost as Funny as The Onion” Good one. Totally agree.
You left unsafe bus stops, rampant shoplifting, and open air drug markets off the list of challenges facing retail downtown. I could go on but you get the picture.
@17 not untrue just really stupid
@29: Whereas, “untrue yet sounds intelligent,” is the very definition of excellent political lying.
If you’re feeling this much heartburn over every little dig at recent and obvious ‘Progressive’ failures, then you have a very long and bitter road ahead of you.
@30 can’t believe I have to spell this out for you but being pro-police is itself an ideological stance. You appear, like many in Seattle, to be the classic smartest-in-every-room liberal who believes their enlightened centrism to be above “ideology” which is only trafficked in by the unwashed masses of Republicans and progressives. Thus like the rest of your ilk you’re too smugly self assured to realize how absurd a statement “voters wanted more police and less ideology” is.
@31, I’m interpreting the use of “ideology” here to be talk and no action, yes?
@21 You’re dumb.
@31, @32: The ‘defund’ stance stated, upon absolutely no evidentiary basis of any kind whatsoever, that cutting funding to the police by an arbitrary amount (literally the first and second smallest positive integers divided by each other, to emphasize the completely simplistic nature of ‘defund’) would produce amazing benefits. That was pure ideology, utterly unconcerned with any facts.
By contrast, the approach discussed here involves actual numbers, metrics, and evaluation of policy against these goals. It’s not a “police good” mirror-image of the “police bad” stance of “defund,” it’s a reality-based policy which can be changed as the conditions and numbers change. The idea that policy should be based upon stated goals, measured against hard data, is of course an ideology, but it’s not an ideology in the same sense that “police bad” is.
Yes, I reduced these differences to a one-sentence slogan, thus losing some nuance in the process; but even so, it was an apt description.
the unhoused primarily vote independent and republican, the majority of convicts are conservatives.
potato will potato.
@34 “By contrast, the approach discussed here involves actual numbers, metrics, and evaluation of policy against these goals. It’s not a “police good” mirror-image of the “police bad” stance of “defund,” it’s a reality-based policy which can be changed as the conditions and numbers change.”
Oh I see. Can you please share with me the “actual numbers, metrics, and evaluation of policy” you’re relying on to come to your non-ideological “police good” stance, and to determine that the “police bad” ideology is not reality-based?
For all the hand-wringing about the general fund and the reality of the hiring freeze, I was greeted this morning by SDOT personnel working on a Saturday installing a flashing crosswalk on S. College Street for users of the “healthy” street.
Austerity, Seattle style.
@36: Look, I understand you don’t want to admit Seattle’s liberal electorate has kicked your candidates and ideas to the curb in multiple elections now. But making yourself sound obtuse just isn’t a good look. The metrics were mentioned up-thread, and as for “police bad! defund!!1!” as a failed ideology, go to Detroit or wherever and ask Nikkita Oliver. That can keep you busy until February, when you will start whining that Seattle’s not perfect yet because the “conservative” Council is a failure.
@38 interesting you mention Detroit because they have about twice as many police per capita than Seattle. How do the two cities’ violent crime rates compare I wonder?
Sara Nelson kind of looks like a female Slade Gordon. Mrs Skeletor.
@43: “…tanya woo is the racist?”
Tanya Woo’s successful advocacy, against King County’s siting a Homeless Megaplex in the CID, really caused shoobop to blow a gasket or three. He exploded in racist fury against Asians:
“…old Asian people are overwhelmingly right wing and just as hateful, bigoted, and reactionary as poor white MAGAs … That block of humans have been dickbags for a long long time.”
(https://www.thestranger.com/slog-pm/2022/10/14/78613869/slog-pm-county-scraps-sodo-shelter-expansion-seattle-retains-city-hall-park-mine-explosion-in-turkey-kills-at-least-22/comments)
Thus, it comes as entirely unsurprising that he’s trying to distract from his miserable performance by calling Woo and her fellow Asian-Americans racist, especially as she nearly unseated the last ‘Progressive’ Council Member, and then got appointed to the Council anyway. Her refusal to keep quiet, and stay in her ‘proper’ place, absolutely enrages him.
“when experts testified before council on what actually produces results when it comes to opiate addiction, Nelson put in AirPods.”
So – that either happened or didn’t. It would be bad form if it did. I tried to verify it – and found this:
https://twitter.com/themobilepauper/status/1666209683647131649
It certainly looks like a picture of her wearing AirPods at a council meeting – but it describes “Sara Nelson is wearing airpods during the public comment on a bill that SHE’S bringing to council.”
OK – not quite the same thing. Maybe she was being rude? Can’t really tell the full context from the photo.
It continues to describe her as “a shameful excuse for a human being” – so now I know not to take any claims seriously without other evidence. Much like this article.
When you start sounding the the alt-right going crazy about Hillary Clinton – it’s clear your real concern is more about losing power more than anything else.
Also – does anyone else get the feeling this was ghost-written by Hannah Krieg? (just toss in an F-bomb or two…)
Ron,
Sour Grapes and white whine.
Respectfully, Ron.2