The Most Common Reason for Past City Council Recusals: Owning Rental Property

As the city council considers rolling back ethics rules, we look at the reasons past councilmembers have decided to sit out votes that would benefit or harm them.

By Erica C. Barnett

As the city council considers eliminating the requirement that council members recuse themselves from matters in which they have a financial interest—a change that would, at the very least, eliminate pressure for landlords Maritza Rivera and Mark Solomon to sit out an upcoming vote to roll back laws that help tenants avoid eviction—we took a look back at the other times city council members have recused themselves in the past.

Currently, the city's ethics code requires all city employees, including city council members, to recuse themselves from taking action on anything that would present a financial conflict. (The code also requires employees to disclose other potential conflicts to the head of the city's Ethics and Elections Commission).

As we've reported, it has been extremely rare for city council members to recuse themselves because of financial conflicts in the past; looking through a list of past "disqualifications" maintained by the City clerk, we found nine potential examples of such recusals between 2001 and 2025. (The numbers are not exact because, in some cases, the disclosure form explaining the reasons for the recusal was not available online).

In addition to those recusals, there were dozens of examples in which council members sat out votes because they had a direct interest (such as when a council member was getting an appointment and didn't want to vote for himself or herself) or when the interest was direct but not financial, such as several instances in which then-councilmember Bruce Harrell sat out votes that would benefit the University of Washington because his wife Joanne was on the school's Board of Trustees.

What's interesting about the council's past financial conflicts—and is directly relevant to the timing of the proposal to loosen the city's ethical standards for council members—is that most of them involved legislation that would benefit or harm council members directly because of property they owned, including rental properties.

If the ethics changes, sponsored by Councilmember Cathy Moore, pass quickly, Solomon and Rivera will be under no official obligation to abstain on legislation Moore plans to introduce in the next few weeks that would alter the city's landlord-tenant rules.

According to multiple sources familiar with internal deliberations on the plan, Moore's bill would eliminate the winter and school-year eviction moratoria, raise the minimum fee for late rent from $10 to $50, and repeal a law requiring landlords to allow renters to add new roommates to their lease without asking permission first.

Landlords and property owners on the city council haven't always recused themselves from voting for (or against) their own interests. But they also have done so, with some regularity. In 2013 and 2018, for example, then-councilmember Sally Bagshaw sat out votes establishing new taxes for property owners near the waterfront and downtown, respectively, citing the fact that she lives in the area and would have to pay both taxes (which were approved).

Harrell and former councilmember Mike O'Brien recused themselves from multiple votes on the Rental Registration and Inspection Ordinance (RRIO), which requires landlords to register their rentals with the city and allow regular inspections, because they were both landlords at the time (according to campaign finance reports, Harrell no longer owns any rental property.)

Jan Drago, who lived in Pioneer Square, also recused herself from legislation that allowed more density in her neighborhood. (This was in the era before district elections, which pretty much sent that sort of recusal out the window.)

And Jean Godden and Tom Rasmussen recused themselves from voting on a deal with Triad Development that was supposed to build a 650,000-square-foot office and residential tower in the hole in the ground across from City Hall (stop by that block sometime if you want to know how that project went), although public records and media coverage from the time don't indicate why (and I don't remember.)

And, of course, Tanya Woo (very reluctantly) recused herself from a vote on legislation that would have lowered the minimum wage for "gig" delivery workers, because she and her husband own a restaurant. Woo's family also owns an apartment building that provides affordable housing under a tax-credit program.

In those cases, council members' recusals didn't affect the vote. But they could in the case of Moore's rental housing legislation, which faces stiff opposition from tenant advocates (add tenants themselves). If the new law was in place now, Rivera and Solomon (who own a single rental apartment each and earn between $0 and $29,999 a year from rental income, according to their campaign finance reports), would only have to disclose their conflicts, rather than determining with Ethics and Elections whether they're conflicted out. Without their votes, the legislation would face a tougher path to passage.

The city also keeps records of city officials' conflict-of-inflict disclosures, which include everything from personal or family relationships (as when Harrell appointed his niece, Monisha Harrell, as senior deputy mayor) to business ownership (Council President Sara Nelson disclosed her ownership stake in Fremont Brewing, but did not recuse herself, during a vote on the city's maritime-industrial land use policy.)

Most of these documents are straightforward descriptions of a potential appearance of conflict. One, though, is the exact opposite: A defensive letter from Rob Saka, who added $1.5 million to last year's budget to turf the field where his kids play, and Saka coaches, Little League.

Saka began his "disclosure" by noting that he was only making it because he recently "became aware of certain criticism from a member of the public that there was an alleged appearance of a conflict of interest" in his budget add.

Saka goes on to cite "numerous calls for more turf playfields from members of the public" and an "extensive consultation process" that just happened to conclude that the field where Saka coaches his kids was the best candidate for a new turf field. Also last year, Saka set aside $2 million to remove a road divider that prevented drivers from making a left turn across a double yellow line into the preschool his kids attended, which he compared to Trump's border wall.