Major Staff Shakeup Marks Sara Nelson's First Week as Council President

The decision reportedly came as a shock.

By Erica C. Barnett

Incoming City Council President Sara Nelson, a two-year council member who ascended to her new role one week ago, has wasted no time shaking things up on the city council, reportedly firing popular council central staff director Esther Handy and replacing her with Ben Noble, a 23-year City Hall veteran who was central staff director from 2006 to 2013. Nelson announced the change to council staffers in an email sent late Monday afternoon.

The decision reportedly came as a shock to central staffers. Handy is widely credited with stabilizing the office, which drafts and analyzes legislation for all nine council members, after a rocky few years under her predecessor, Kirsten Arestad, and is popular with her staff. Prior to taking the job at central staff, she was a longtime legislative aide for former council member Mike O'Brien, who won election in 2009 during the same progressive wave that led to Mike McGinn's single term as mayor.

Noble, who was appointed by then-council president Nick Licata (at the time, the most left-leaning council member by a mile), is widely known his old-school commitment to neutrality.

There has been some speculation that Nelson—who declined, through a spokesperson, to respond to questions on Tuesday—fired Handy to signal a political shift in a more centrist direction (after leaving O'Brien's office in 2016, Handy worked for two progressive groups, Washington Progress Alliance and Puget Sound Sage). And that may be true.  But Noble, who was appointed by then-council president Nick Licata (at the time, the most left-leaning council member by a mile), is widely known his old-school commitment to neutrality, which is one reason he has survived at the city for 23 years under a wide range of mayoral administrations and council members.

Noble's current position, as head of the Office of Economic and Revenue Forecast, will likely be filled by forecasting and research economist Jan Duras, one of three staff at the office. The OERF itself has only existed since 2021, after former councilmember Teresa Mosqueda led the push for a new forecasting office independent from the mayor's budgeting office in 2020; Noble, who was head of the budget office under former mayor Ed Murray as well as Jenny Durkan, left that position to lead the new office.

Few of the people currently on central staff have worked with Noble, who left the second floor of City Hall in 2013, but Nelson did, as a council aide to Richard Conlin from 2002 to 2013. But fears of a wider shakeup have more to do with Nelson than Noble anyway; as council president, she doesn't have the authority to hire and fire central staffers directly, but she will be Noble's boss, and the tone she sets with staffers could play a role in future departures. Central staffers unionized in 2019, and the city clerk's office joined them last year.

One issue in the clerks' unionization drive was the city's mandatory return-to-the-office policies, which require city employees to come in to their offices downtown two days a week regardless of their job duties, how far away they live, or whether they can do their jobs from home. Nelson, joining Mayor Bruce Harrell, has frequently said city workers need to be in the office physically, and has set the expectation that council members themselves should meet in person, rather than in their previous hybrid format.

On Tuesday, Nelson indicated one other way her council presidency may differ from that of her predecessor, Debora Juarez; for the second time this week, she told frequent public commenter Alex Tsimerman, who routinely begins his comments by "sieg Heil"ing the council and calling them Nazis, that if he kept making disruptive comments, the council would cut off his mic and remove him from the room.