In his 10 years on the city council, Peter Steinbrueck has made a
career—a gleeful hobby, really—of holding Mayor Greg
Nickels’s feet to the fire. In a month when most of his colleagues
are canceling committee meetings to go on vacation, Steinbrueck has
scheduled three meetings of his urban planning committee in a row,
racing against the clock to complete or launch a half-dozen major
legislative initiatives that push back against the mayor’s
agenda.
Among them: amending the mayor’s plan to protect industrial lands;
tweaking the mayor’s proposal to let Vulcan expand in South Lake Union;
and requiring the city to determine the greenhouse-gas impact of all
proposed developments. Steinbrueck’s entire committee will be gone in
December, forcing him to draft new members or preside over meetings
alone. “I’m determined to accomplish as much as I possibly can in the
remaining few weeks before I go,” Steinbrueck says somewhat wistfully.
“I’m working against time.”
Steinbrueck has been a frequent, vocal opponent of the mayor’s
agenda and style. Many of his biggest legislative
accomplishments—shifting the debate on the viaduct; killing
the mayor’s proposed strip-club district in Georgetown; opposing
Nickels’s nightlife license; pushing for stricter affordable-housing
requirements in exchange for taller buildings downtown—have cast
Steinbrueck as the mayor’s most vocal opponent. “Peter’s been outspoken
in consistently opposing the mayor,” says council president and
longtime Steinbrueck colleague Nick Licata. “Over time, though, he was
better able to compromise.”
But even now, six weeks before he leaves the council, Steinbrueck
seems eager to take Nickels on. “This mayor has made the work of
the council a lot more difficult,” he says. In 2005, the city’s
Department of Planning and Development, which answers to the mayor,
refused to work on new green-building regulations Steinbrueck wanted.
So Steinbrueck yanked money from their budget, giving the mayor
a long-overdue incentive to take the council seriously. “You learn ways
to be effective … or you languish,” Steinbrueck says. “I’m not one
to sit around and let shit happen to me.” Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis
agrees with Steinbrueck in principle, if not in practice: The council
“will certainly be easier to work with” once Steinbrueck leaves, he
chuckles.
That’s almost undoubtedly true, at least in the short run. However,
the council has gotten smarter about using the tools at its
disposal—imposing budget provisos and freezing
legislation—in the years since Nickels became mayor. Many seem to
think Richard Conlin—who just this year defeated a Nickels
proposal to put a new trash transfer station in Georgetown—may
step up to fill Steinbrueck’s oppositional role.
In the meantime, though, Steinbrueck has three committee meetings to
hold. 