Photographer Michael van Baker of TheSunBreak captured this excellent shot at the inauguration of Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn for the Neighborlog network. His full photo gallery is here.

During his election campaign, Mike McGinn talked a lot about transparency. On his first regular day of business as the city's new mayor, he released salary information for all of his new hires along with an organizational flow chart.

Four people, including deputy mayors Phil Fujii and Darryl Smith, are at the top for pay among the new hires, at $125,000 apiece. (Fujii is receiving nearly $14,000 "in supplemental compensation in lieu of retirement contributions / suspension of current city retirement benefits," a press release said.)

McGinn also said he is freezing the pay of some 950 senior-level employees, who had been scheduled to receive a 2 percent pay raise on Wednesday. His executive order also reduces the number of furlough days they will take this year from 10 to seven. While the city announcement indicated fewer days will reduce the savings from the furloughs, the net effect of the two moves is to save 4.7 percent on their salaries as opposed to an expected 3.8 percent.

McGinn's announcement also said...

On Seattle City Council 2009: A Year in Review, host C.R. Douglas asked the Councilmembers what their biggest concern was about the coming year.

Council President Richard Conlin said:

“My fear would be if we wind up getting ourselves distracted, caught up in lesser priorities. Maybe getting ourselves into fights over things like say the viaduct tunnel again—now that we have made a decision. That would be what could distract ourselves from the really important and exciting work.”

 

  Mayoral candidate Joe Mallahan had called for her head, and Mike McGinn in July said he didn't foresee keeping her on.  Today, the woman in charge of last December's flubbed snow storm response, Seattle Department of Transportation Director Grace Crunican, did as they apparently wished--she announced her resignation.

  She said she planned to start her own consulting company once her replacement has been picked and the transition is complete.

  “After eight years as the director of transportation, it is time for me to pass the reins to a new leader,” Crunican said in a press release that describes her accomplishments. “It’s been a great run for me and the entire SDOT team. I move on with a real sense of pride about our accomplishments on so many important transportation issues.”

 She made the announcement just days before McGinn takes over as Seattle mayor. He released a brief, three-sentence statement:

  This morning I received Grace Crunican’s letter of resignation.  I...

   Greg Nickels admits he’s made mistakes. But looking back over the highs and lows of his eight years as Seattle mayor, he says he has no regrets about pushing for the tunnel, even though “I paid a political price for it.” He feels the city escaped financial harm by pulling the plug on the monorail. And when asked about his legacy, he immediately mentioned light rail.

  “I have admitted to making mistakes as mayor. And I have made many of them. Some of them have been on the front page of the paper, and some of them nobody but me probably knows about,” said Nickels, speaking Wednesday night on his final appearance on the monthly, hour-long, call-in "Ask the Mayor" show on Seattle Channel  (watch it online here). Nickels leaves office on New Year’s Day.

  He declined to give himself a report-card-style grade, like the B he gave the city last year for its flubbed snowstorm response.  He quipped that among his mistakes, “one of them was perhaps...

Seattle City Council's budget committee today is considering a increase in rates for its power utility, Seattle City Light.

Some rate increase is all but assured for next year, seattlepi.com's Chris Grygiel reported today, but the question is how much.

More details from Seattle City Light here.

Demonstrators are expected to show up this morning outside Seattle City Hall to rally in support of a new commission on disabilities.

The rally at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday was organized by a coalition of groups pushing the city council to establish the commission.  A number of individuals are expected to testify as a public comment period begins this morning before the City Council's budget committee which is preparing to vote on a proposal.

Among organizations that have endorsed the proposed new Disabilities Commission are the Alliance of People with Disabilities, the Governor's Committee on disAbility Issues and Employment, Lighthouse for the Blind, the Northwest chapter of the Paralyzed Veterans of America, and the Washington State Independent Living Council.

"The coalition that is working to establish a Seattle Disabilities Commission believes that without one, city departments and policies will continue to ignore or misunderstand the concerns of people with disabilities," according to a news release...

Continuing the last-minute exchange of shots between Seattle mayoral candidates, T-Mobile executive Joe Mallahan unveiled a new TV ad that will run until Tuesday's deadline for voting in the primaries.

In the latest attack, Mallahan excerpts a portion of Nickels ad, in which the mayor acknowledges having made mistakes.

Mallahan's ads continue by highlighting problems during the Nickels adminstration, particularly in the transportation department.

Mallahan and Nickels are competing with environmentalist Mike McGin and a host of others for two spots in the general elections.

The last few days of the campaign have grown increasingly negative with Nickels unveiling an online only ad questioning McGinn's stancce opposing a tunnel to replace the Viaduct. In a particularly strong online ad, Nickels rolled out a number of comments portraying Mallahan as not been familiar with city issues Labor unions have begun automated calls attacking the labor record of Mallahan's employer. And now we hace Mallahan's ad attacking...

Interesting presentation at the Seattle City Council briefings meeting Monday morning from David Kennedy, professor of Anthropology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.

“There’s a couple of things you can do to dramatically improve issues around serious crime in Seattle,” he said.

“This is off the shelf stuff people have doing this all over the county. It doesn’t take resources. It takes focus and commitment but not money,” he said.

Then he laid out some statistics for cities that have taken an approach he advocates.

In Chicago, homicide in the worst neighborhoods “ended up almost as low as in the best neighborhoods in the city.”

Indianapolis: murders went down by a third city-wide and gun crimes dropped by half.

Portland:  Murders dropped by 36 percent citywide. Reports of shots fired dropped by 49 percent. Youth violence went down by 82 percent.

“This is not hypothetical anymore. This is not an aspiration. You can do this… You can start this now and have things under control by the end...

Kate Joncas, president of the Downtown Seattle Association, is looking at the city’s plans to turn Bell Street into a parklike boulevard with wider sidewalks, lots of trees, natural landscaping and swales – vegetation in the right of way that collects and cleans rainwater.

She said at the DSA’s annual meeting Tuesday morning that she would like to see a similar thing happen on the Pike-Pine corridor downtown. And Joncas said she has had preliminary discussions with the city about it.

The financing has to be worked out. Nickels is asking the City Council to spend $2.5 million of Seattle’s parks and open space levy on the project.

And although the Bell Street project calls for widening sidewalks by removing a lane of traffic and parking, Joncas says that’s probably not possible for a street heavily used by buses.

However, she said: “Bell Street is a very innovative idea. It’s hard to acquire enough land to build a traditional square-block park. One of the things...

Mayor Greg Nickels and City Councilmen  Richard Conlin and Tim Burgess announced Tuesday a proposal to encourage job growth by repealing the so-called head tax on Seattle businesses.

But in an election year, the proposal soon became politicized as campaigns turned on Nickels.

The annual tax of $25 per employee, known as the “employee hours tax,” was imposed in 2006 as part of a package to provide additional funding for transportation projects. The repeal would be effective Jan. 1, Nickels said in a statement.

Nickels spokesman Alex Fryer said higher-than-expected revenue from parking is expected to offset enough of the $4.7 million cost of elminating the tax to keep “Bridging the Gap” funds for transportation at around the same level next year.

But he acknowledged that eliminating the tax will mean the city will have about $5 million less for transportation improvements than it otherwise would have had.

Though the move was proposed by the council weeks ago, it has implications for the mayoral...

As Josh Feit from Publicola pointed out this morning, a prominant neighborhood activist was one of the mayor's supporters when Nickels launched his re-election campaign four years ago.

The activist was Mike McGinn, who's now running against Nickels. So we asked him what he liked about Nickels four years ago.

"I preferred him in 2001 to Sidran and in 2005 to Al Runte and supported him in those races.  I appreciated his stance on global warming, his support for transit, and his willingness to work on more walkable and sustainable neighborhoods," he said by email.

But he said, "the delivery does not match the rhetoric. He made a number of policy decisions that contradicted his goals, which I publicly disagreed with (e.g., tunnel, RTID, parks levy), and I also saw city government becoming increasing disconnected from working effectively with neighborhoods."

He pointed to his website for more details:

 McGinn Challenges Nickels’ Record on the Environment http://mcginnformayor.com/2009/04/michael-...

Mayor Greg Nickels held his official kickoff this morning at the Westin Hotel downtown.

Four-hundred fifty people showed up for the standard ballroom breakfast (the campaign raised about $50,000, campaign staffers say), which was impressive for a mayor with such lousy approval ratings and reelect numbers. 

Judging from Nickels’ speech (which was more confident, laid-back, and compelling than I’ve seen him in months), Team Nickels is positioning the mayor as the progressive in the race.

Nickels started by reminding everyone about his first run in 2001, when he defeated “the more conservative” former Seattle City Attorney Mark Sidran by “not backing off my progressive agenda,” which Nickels defined as pushing light rail. 

(It’s funny to note that Sidran has since cheered Mayor Nickels, saying Nickels has adopted Sidran’s agenda. Nickels’ crackdown on nightlife definitely lends credence to that idea. Sidran told me today: “Substantively, there’s not very much difference between Nickels and Sidran.” Sidran...

A state audit of Seattle found a number of concerns and determined that the city should improve its internal control of purchasing procedures.

Most seriously, the auditors used the word “concealment” over the purchase of water pipes for $186,945 in late 2007

However,  assistant audit manager Don Potapenko said the bill was split up into $30,000 chunks in March 2008 to avoid raising red flags. It was split into the smaller transactions “to conceal noncompliance with purchase documentation requirements and to avoid detection b the existing internal controls.“  The $30,000 is the limit at which purchases would have to go through the contracting and approval process.

Potapenko told the City Council during this morning’s briefings session the concealment didn’t appear be done for personal gain.  The motivation, he said, appeared to be that “this is a big amount. Someone is going to ask me whether we need it.”

That would have taken more time and Potapenko...

The city's ethics commission has found no evidence that Mayor Greg Nickels asked for special treatment to have his street plowed during last year's storm.

In a statement, Nickels said, “It’s extremely disappointing that news reports left people with a

false impression. I have never tolerated any hint of special treatment in any regard and this allegation was both disturbing and frustrating. I requested this investigation because I expect nothing short of ethical conduct by all city employees.

"As we move forward, one thing is certain: We are determined to improve our response to snow."

The report by the Ethics and Elections Commission, found that:

"The Deputy Mayor (Tim Ceis) did tell SEEC staff that he informed (Transportation) Director (Grace) Crunican that Admiral WaySW, an arterial, was plowed east of California Avenue SW but unplowed west of California Avenue SW, and that Director Crunican informed him that Admiral Way west of California Avenue was not a primary route. (Kevin Desmond, Metro&...

Lauren B. Simonds, M.S.W., executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Washington, said in a release that if Susan Hutchison, a candidate for King County Executive,  makes it past the primary and into the November run-off, her group "will be poised to mobilize members and activists in opposition to her candidacy."

As first reported on Tuesday by the PostGlobe , Hutchison didn't answer a candidate questionnaire sent her by the National Abortion Rights Action League.

Instead she sent a statement saying abortion is divisive. She wants to bring people together. And she'll enforce the laws of the land.

"NARAL Pro-Choice Washington is laying the groundwork now for a massive grassroots and public education campaign against Susan Hutchison’s candidacy," Simonds said.

The issue around the questionnaire is really only a reflection of the concern groups like NARAL have of Hutchison's ideology.

“Susan Hutchison has made clear that she has no intention of talking about many of the issues that the voters of King County care about,...

City attorney candidate Pete Holmes has captured the endorsements of three Democratic organizations. The 37th, 43rd and 11th district Democrats voted to give Holmes their endorsement for city attorney, he announced in a statement Wednesday.

Homes is running against City Attorney Tom Carr. The campaign has been contentious from the start.

Holmes, who has advocated consistently for more community involvement in the City Attorney’s Office, said, “I am honored to have the support of these strong, progressive organizations whose members work hard to improve their communities every day.” 

Holmes also has received endorsements from state Sen. Ed Murray and state Rep. Scott White. 

Holmes, a 25-year lawyer, spent most of the past seven years as a member and chairman of the Office of Professional Accountability Review Board (OPARB), the citizens arm of the police accountability process in Seattle.

“I am running to make sure the city attorney is an advocate,...

Mayoral candidate Michael McGinn is crowing about a sign of support, from the 43 District Democrats on Tuesday night.

While not an official endorsement, at the 43rd district meeting Tuesday, McGinn says he was named on 38% of the ballots, compared with Nickels 28%, Mallahan 27%, Drago 11%, Donaldson 6%, and Sigler 3

The district requires a candidate to capture 60 percent of the districts votes before they are officially endorsed.

He has also favorable numbers by the 37th District Denmocrats and was flat-out supported by the Sierra Club, where he is the former state chairman and a closely connected member.

McGinn said the recent votes suggest strongly to him that he is the prefered democratic candidate for mayor.

McGinn has been quietly gathering support while Mayor Greg Nickels and Councilwoman and mayoral candidate Jan Drago have been duking it out.

On Tuesday, Drago called Nickels' dodging the picket line issue at the U.S. Conference of Mayors his...

See yesterday’s Q&A.

Greg Nickels is running for his political life. During a one-on-one interview Saturday, he acknowledged that he’s made mistakes. He’ll probably make more, he said.

 There’s also much to be proud of, he said. But Nickels, who plans to formally file for re-election on Monday, is a political animal. With polls showing low approval ratings, he seemed  aware that his tenure as Seattle’s mayor could end after eight years with November’s election.

Tonight, he’ll appear at his first mayoral forum at an event organized at the Labor Temple by several Democratic district organizations.

I covered his election as mayor eight years ago, As we talked, he acknowledged some of what’s happened during his first two terms were unexpected.

Question: You ran eight years ago, talking about the “Seattle Way.” What did that end up meaning?

Nickels: “I think the Seattle Way is for people to come together, talk over an issue, or a problem. Have a good talk about that. In the past, it meant...

As we reported last week, David Bloom, former head of the Church Council of  Greater Seattle (read: a tireless advocate for low-income people), formally kicked of his campaign for Seattle City Council on Thursday night.

We’ve also already noted that Bloom is one of the few standout candidates in this year’s crowded field of City Council hopefuls. And while candidates have come and gone over the years with a similar Dennis Kucinich agenda (I’m thinking specifically of lefty Joe Szwaja), Bloom brings humility, gravitas, and particularly, unprecedented credibility that is rare from the tofu-and-Fugazi left.

The kickoff, at an all-purpose room at the Swedish Cultural Center on Dexter, was packed with kindred spirits—people from Real Change and the Downtown Emergency Services Center and the Seattle Displacement Coalition (Bloom was a co-founder) and lefty City Council Member Nick Licata’s office—who’ve known Bloom for years.  

Bloom was introduced by a set of longtime political allies—former Seattle City Council...

We asked the other candidates in the Seattle mayor’s race to respond to today's Q&A with Greg Nickels. Here’s a response from Magnolia neighborhood activist Beth Campbell :

Consistently when Nickels points out his accomplishments, they are always related to inanimate objects – such as a building or infrastructure, self-serving marketing ploys he has initiated through his office – the various “brands” of city initiatives, the “Now” climate project along with the credit he regularly takes for the work that the directors of and the departments of the city carry out, or this now-overused catchphrase that is supposed to signify accomplishing something, but which really means nothing, this idea of “moving forward” with any one thing. In the end, however, there is never any solid connection between what he claims he has done and the literal lives of the people that live in Seattle. It is all about “what I have built,” as opposed to how have people been affected by what I have...

I went to last week’s City Council candidate forum at Olympic View Elementary in North Seattle to get a handle on the pack of 15 people running in the four different races—to try and separate the wheat from the chaff.  

Although, before I start, here’s a requisite gripe: It’s totally stupid that we don’t have districts in Seattle where different council members would represent different interests. Nope, instead we’ve got 9 at-large seats—9 mini-mayors with no real constituency and so, no real accountability.

Rather than having people run from the neighborhoods where they live, people run for the at-large seat that their political consultant tells them to run for; i.e. NOT the seat where the consultant is also working for the incumbent. (I think consultants run de facto protection rackets for incumbents this way). Challengers also don’t run for a seat where their political consultant is working for another challenger for the same seat.

Oh, Democracy.

For the more basic reason why we need...