On Hacks and Wonks, We Discussed Ferguson's Tax Aversion, Seattle's Performative Anti-"Defund" Pledge, and Cathy Moore's Funding Directive

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By Erica C. Barnett

I went on Crystal Nicole Fincher's Hacks and Wonks podcast this week to discuss recent state and local news, including Governor Bob Ferguson's steadfast refusal to consider wealth taxes on the very richest Washingtonians to help close a $1 billion budget hole; the Seattle City Council's recent performative vote denouncing the very existence of never-realized proposals, in 2020, to fund alternatives to police; and Councilmember Cathy Moore's recent decision to halt a competitive bidding process and direct the city to give $1 million to a group called The More We Love to expand its Renton "receiving center" for women escaping the sex trade.

I don't mean to be alarmist or overstate the impact of Moore's move, which I covered at length late last month. The result of Moore's directive (which the mayor's office agreed to; the Human Services Department is an executive department and it wouldn't have happened if they didn't), in the most literal sense, is that a group of Seattle-based organizations that work with commercially exploited sex workers on Aurora Ave. N. will not be able to move forward with the plans they were making to use the money most effectively, and it will go to an untested nonprofit best known for wresting a homeless outreach contract from REACH in Burien instead.

But there's something undemocratic about a single official, elected by an 8,600-vote margin in 2023 to represent one of seven City Council districts, deciding that work the city had been directing to help underfunded Seattle nonprofits apply for city funds was no longer necessary, because—according to Moore's emails to HSD officials—she visited The More We Love's Renton shelter and found it impressive. There's also something unseemly about the executive branch agreeing, with few or no questions asked, to halt a competitive bidding process—for funds designed to help some of the most vulnerable people in the city—just because a legislator said so.

All this stuff is technically legal. But at a time when the separation of powers is a joke at the federal level, it's disturbing to see a legislator discarding the work of organizations that had been going through a competitive that they believed could lead to an expansion of their work, just because she decided she liked one specific group best. These are our tax dollars, and while $1 million isn't much in the scheme of the city's budget (especially compared to, say, the half-a-billion dollars we spend on the never-defunded police department), we should have some confidence that they aren't being spent on a whim.