PubliCola on Hacks and Wonks

Mayoral Polling, Council Vacancy, Graffiti Crackdown, and More!

By Erica C. Barnett

I had the pleasure of guesting on Crystal Fincher's Hacks and Wonks podcast this week, where we talked about the city's relentless focus on graffiti (because there are simply no other issues that need addressing), the appointment process for the city council's most recent vacancy, a recent poll that attempts to paint mayoral candidate Katie Wilson as a "loud," "angry" radical with no core convictions, and more.

Two of these stories are ultimately about the cynicism of local politics. The council appointment process, which used to involve a real debate among council members about which applicant was best for the position—with sometimes surprising results—has now become a pantomime of transparency, with one or, at most, two frontrunners chosen in advance.

Although mainstream media outlets routinely start their stories about council vacancies by saying something like, "You could be the next city council member," that simply isn't true. You, in fact, can't be the next city councilmember, unless you have relationships with a majority of the council and they are predisposed to support you.

Moving on, we also discussed Republican City Attorney Ann Davison's successful effort to get a bill allowing new civil fines for graffiti to move forward. (It passed committee this week, with amendments from Rob Saka making it harsher and more sweeping).

As we also discuss on a forthcoming episode of Seattle Nice, the basis for council members' claim that prolific graffiti taggers are "well-heeled" white men in their 30s with "careers" consists of data from two sources. First, the five-year average of graffiti referrals to the city attorney's office shows that of the average 43 people with misdemeanor graffiti referrals every year, 85 percent (36) are men and 79 percent (34) are white.

The claim that taggers are well-off comes from an even smaller source—17 people who were prosecuted by the King County Prosecutor's office on felony graffiti charges. Of those 17, a majority were not indigent and eventually were able to pay restitution. But not qualifying as indigent and being "well-heeled" are two very different things. A single person making more that $19,562 a year has to pay for their own attorney—a level that hardly justifies the assumption that taggers are middle-class, based on a sample so small it's closer to anecdote than statistic.