Can't they just take it out of her pension?

It’s great the council wants to have public officials finically liable for their shitty decisions. Looking forward to seeing the debt they have accumulated with all their knee jerk, ill conceived out legislation as well.

The headline references "$50,000 in falsely promised hiring bonuses."

But the first paragraph mentions "$220,000 worth of bonuses."

Does anyone have a good understanding of the amount in controversy here? Owing to the fact Hannah wrote this, I suspect neither of these figures is accurate.

@3, @4, @5: Seattle's city budget is in the billions, so 50 grand (or 220 grand) is chump change. Let's start with $3M:

"Despite months of work and $3 million from the city's budget, the project's goals are still pretty amorphous, and the presentation researchers gave to the council on Monday didn't do much to answer questions reporters raised earlier this month.

[...]

"It remains unclear what the research project's expenses are and what the city's $3 million is paying for. So far, the researchers released a preliminary report in November. They'll release another preliminary report on December 21, and the final research report will come in February. In between reports, the researchers will communicate weekly with Councilmember Tammy Morales."

(https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/12/15/53851324/the-3-million-black-brilliance-research-project-is-still-vague)

I'm sure CM Morales will be very much on board with holding elected officials personally responsible for ill-advised expenditures of public funds.

@10: chill dear

How does the council feel about their abject failure to stand-up an alternative to the work that we heft onto the police department?
OOOOOOOOF.

@5, @10: Assuming the figures are accurate, the article confuses them because only $50,000 of the $220,000 is going to the SPD officers, but that $50k is what the Stranger wants to complain about, because it's going to the cops. The balance of the money, $170k, goes to the "fourteen 911 dispatchers". Doing the math, we see that both the dispatchers as a group are getting more money than the cops, and each dispatcher gets more money (on average) than each cop gets, but the Stranger wants to defund the police, not give them bonuses. So the Stranger's account highlights the money paid to the cops, instead of most of the money, about which there is no question. Hence the confusion.

Equally annoying, to the Stranger at least, is former Mayor Durkan yet again running rings around the Stranger's favorite Council Members. Even after she's gone, she defeats them so repeatedly, and so easily, it makes the Stranger's Council endorsements look even more buffoonish.

Topping it all off, the Stranger endorsed defund candidates in last November's election, and those candidates lost in massive citywide landslides. Thus, Mayor Harrell and ex-Mayor Durkan are following the lead of actual voters in real elections, and that's a method of governance the Stranger hates most of all. But there's nothing they can do about it except complain, and uneasily admit more of the same might be coming: "For one, with re-election on the horizon for the district council seats, it would not be wise to make an enemy of the Mayor who just won in a landslide. For two, the power dynamics have shifted away from the progressives somewhat after losing González’s citywide seat to Councilmember Sara Nelson, who votes with the council’s conservative bloc."

This city council isn't forced to do anything.... until now.

The city council has been supremely arrogant in their "flavor of the week" legislative and pandering to the latest politically correct wind.

The city council sew the winds of our current problems and now they will reap the whirl wind.

Who sat by and allowed the destruction of downtown?
Who neutered the police force?
Who send in social workers to solve crime problems?
Who voted to waste millions on ineffectual homeless programs?
Who drove large and small businesses out of Seattle with openly hostile legislation and edicts.

Well, golly that was the city council. We have all seen the stunning effects of these policies... vagrants, homeless drug addicts, murder, a downtown wasteland and a crime riddled city.

No, it was the previous and current mayors.

@15 Thanks, much appreciated. Great explanation and analysis.

@10 You seem a bit too tightly wound for the Slog comment section.

@17: You're going to have to lie a lot harder than that. The Defunderpants Gnomes were all on the Council, not in the Mayor's Office. (Until the voters caught on to the Council, that is.)

I strongly suggest you recall your above statement before a court smacks it down for you, and tell us a tale of Saint Sawant vs. that devilish Jenny.