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Editor's note: This article is revised from a speech the author gave some years ago, explaining the political culture of Seattle to a group visiting from another city. It serves as a short primer for Seattle's particular way of doing politics.
What makes our region tick? How do we make (or fail to make) decisions? What are some of successes and challenges? What’s our local political culture, and does Seattle still "work"?
Let me start with a favorite story about the Seattle culture that goes back to 1978. I had just hired a new police chief, a deputy chief from New York named Patrick Fitzsimons. He was going through an especially grueling confirmation by the City Council. He hated to fly, and the council would bring him out for a couple days of hearings, send him back to New York, and then fly him out the next week. This went on for a few weeks, and Patrick was starting to think he might not need this job.
At any rate, he was staying in a downtown hotel on one of these trips and woke up on East Coast time, about four in the morning for an eight o’clock hearing. He was staring out the window at an absolutely deserted Fourth Avenue, not a car or a soul in sight, and a driving rainstorm. He spotted a lone person standing on the corner, rain coat and umbrella flapping in the wind. This person was standing there, in the rain and wind, not a car in sight, at four in the morning, waiting for the light to change from wait to walk.
Pat told the council the story that morning and said, "You know, I really, really do want to be the police chief in this town."
Well, times change, even since 1978. Today that guy standing in the rain might be a dot.com millionaire on his way to work at four in the morning, and he most likely would cross against the light to get to the espresso cart on the other side of the street that probably would be open at four in the morning. And I guess that with what has happened around here in the last years — the World Trade Organization and Mardi Gras riots — it might take a whole lot more than it took for Pat Fitzsimons for someone to really, really want to be the chief of police in this town.
While there might be a lot more people walking against the light today, and while the pace has been driven up a notch or two by all the caffeine, congestion, and cash, Seattle is still a pretty laid back, pretty clean place for a big city, arguably in one of the most beautiful physical settings in our country.
One area where the pace has not picked up is how we make decisions. Well, we’re pretty big here on participation, on process. We have a nine-member, full-time, very-well-paid, very-well-staffed City Council, and a "strong mayor" form of government. The council is still elected at large, each member representing the whole city, just as the mayor does, so we sometimes call it the ten-mayor form of government.
Local government takes its time. We do a task force, an advisory committee, a citizen’s oversight panel, as well as any place in the country. In preparing these remarks, I asked 20 people, all of whom I know well, all of whom have been involved for many years in making policy or just generally trying to get things done. I asked them for a sentence or two that would answer the question, "How do things get done around here?" Said one person: "We know how to chew; we just don’t know how to swallow." Another: "The key to getting things done is figuring out how to turn 'process' into a verb rather than a noun."
A former community development director in Seattle: "Seattle gets things done by process. If Seattle were a cheese, it would definitely be Velveeta." And my son, who worked for the current mayor: "Two words: task force."
And it's only getting slower and harder. One reason is that the turf on which Seattle area decisions get made is dramatically different from just a few years ago. In 1910, the city of Seattle was about 90 percent of the region. Now the region is four to five counties, 70 cities. That makes regional decisions much harder to pull off well, and increasingly the big decisions, such as transportation, growth and the environment, are regional.
Let me illustrate the changing political culture with three major defining moments in our recent history. These are success stories, icons, really, in our culture. They help explain why making big decisions about public policy is much more difficult today.
The first story I would call "Seattle goes regional." Lake Washington, a beautiful 13-mile-long lake that separates Seattle and the Eastside, by 1958 had started to smell bad. In fact, it stunk. Fourteen towns and cities were independently discharging more than 20 million gallons of inadequately treated sewage into the lake every day. A group of citizens, led by a focused and skilled civic leader, attorney Jim Ellis, built a constituency for a new state law that would allow the formation of metropolitan municipal corporations to address water quality, transit, and planning issues that were beyond the capacity of counties and incorporated cities.
Energized by the smell of Lake Washington, citizens got metropolitan voters to approve a new government, the Municipality of Metropolitan Seattle — Metro — which was modeled on a regional government in Toronto. By 1993, after Metro had built four new sewage treatment plants, more than 100 miles of tunnels and sewers, and dozens of pumping stations, the lake was in nearly pristine condition. And it still is. It's got a salmon run. Metro was also running the region's transit system — one of the nation's best. It's a success story, and a defining moment we look back on, draw strength from, as we take on other big regional issues.
The second story I would call "Seattle goes Global." In 1955, a young man named Eddie Carlson, a vice-president of the small chain that became Westin Hotels, was one of several Seattle business people working on a plan to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in 1907. Then the idea got bigger. Carlson, a Chamber of Commerce guy, Ross Cunningham of The Seattle Times, and City Councilman Al Rochester started pushing the idea of a World's Fair in Seattle. In little more than a year they convinced the legislature and the voters, got a 28-acre site from the city, and beat out New York City for the fair.
Having dinner atop a 400-foot TV tower in Stuttgart, Carlson had another idea, and doodled on a napkin a towering spire with a flying saucer restaurant on top. Civic leaders broke ground for the privately financed Space Needle less than a year before the World’s Fair was set to begin, and got it open at midnight the day before the fair opened on April 21, 1962. With fairgrounds now swollen from 74 acres, a new, space age monorail shuttling people from downtown to the Fair, 35 major exhibits and representation from 59 countries, Century 21 would draw close to 10-million people and put Seattle on the world map.
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Comments:
Posted Mon, Apr 28, 2:03 a.m. Inappropriate
Seattle: middle class need not apply.: I work at a blue-collar, union job with about 75 co-workers. Many of the older guys grew up in Seattle, but I think we only have 1 or 2 left who still live there. Seattle is only suitable for the very rich and very poor. If you are of average income, itl better be a 2-income, no kid household. Others need not apply.
Posted Mon, Apr 28, 9:22 a.m. Inappropriate
Right, but old news: Though I lived in Seattle during Royer's reign my political memory really starts about the time of the race for his successor.
Talk about Seattle process is nothing new - this is a cogent summary of it, and the era in which the author succeeded in politics, but it adds nothing to the current discussion. It in fact may well be just another example of that process failing to work. Nothing against Mr. Royer, but sometimes you've got to step on toes if you want to get something done.
The first flaw in his analysis is viewing Seattle as a distinct political entity - it is first a part of King County whose other power center is the historically republican Eastside. One of the reason nothing happens in Seattle is because the Eastsiders don't want Seattle to be to efficient. That may well be easy, and even prudent, but in the long run it doesn't work.
Both the right and left are subject to excesses of group think to the point of abuse, if not a perspective on control of the same realm as the sexual pervert. The thing we, and the King County Courts, have forgotten is that what binds us together more than anything else is the respect for individual rights.
Lose that, and lose your own soul.
-Douglas Tooley
South Tacoma
My Blog
Posted Mon, Apr 28, 9:29 a.m. Inappropriate
Participate or comment: I admit I'm a relative newcomer to the Seattle political process -- relative, at least, to the folks I've recently been working with who've dedicated a good portion of their lives to trying to make Seattle a better place. Whether it's fresh eyes or 'youthful' (if you buy that 40 is the new 30 I guess I'm 'youthful') it's pretty apparent to me what's going on.
The point of having a process, my communications professors at Western told me, is to create a solution to a problem that is better than one person (or an isolated group) could create on their own. This view of process assumes what results is participatory where the involvement of the participants is intended to create the solution.
The process we have now in Seattle, especially over the last 5-6 years, is what I call "The Rise of the Citizen Comment Period." The Mayor (or Council) gets a grand idea to solve a problem and holds some hearings. They pick a portion of the outreach circuit that is unlikely to be uncomfortable, providing citizens the chance to comment on the proposal -- usually in 2-minute soundbites, 25% of which is telling the assemblage what their name is and who they represent.
With a collection of these 2-minute soundbites in hand, city officials can say "the public participated in the process," mark that check-off box, and then do what they had intended to do anyway (with minor modifications) while claiming they have the blessings of the public.
We need fewer chances to comment and more chances to participate or our governance in this city will get more dysfunctional.
Instead of coming to citizens with a solution already in hand, come to us with the problem and ask for our help in creating the solution. Respect the fact that some out here have a couple of decades worth of experience and that people not on the city's payroll are capable of making decisions that benefit the entire city or region, and not just the neighborhood they most closely represent.
I'm not advocating governance by committee. We elect leaders to represent us, after all. What I advocate is bring the problems to us, give us some parameters (which is not a synonymous of a method to get us to come to your pre-conceived conclusions), and then let us chew on the problem for a while. If you ask enough groups to do this, you'll get some competing and contradictory solutions. Share them, and get additional feedback to see whether they are really contradictory.
With this in hand, then the job of representative governance takes place. Someone has to make the decisions, after all. Generate a draft of what the proposed solution is, and give us a little time to figure out where the holes are.
If you are in city government and are reading this, my guess is your first thought is, "Heck, David, that's what we're doing now!" I have no doubt that's the general opinion. And in isolated situations, it might be the case. But I can tell you that's not what it looks like to us.
Posted Mon, Apr 28, 12:09 p.m. Inappropriate
First, reader miller is correct in pointing out that much of today's "consultation" or community input is not real consultation but, instead, lip-service consultation to ratify decisions already made by mayors and city and county councils---in response to pressures from single-interest and single-issue groups with political money and muscle hereabouts. This syndrome has become far more intense than it was during Royer's tenure.
Second, the process in Seattle is far less responsive to local needs than it should be in large part because, as Royer points out, all city council members are elected at large rather than by district. This exacerbates the problem of downtown money and political juice dominating the policymaking processes. Council members do not put neighborhoods and communities first but, instead, respond to those with citywide power.
Finally, there has been a change in the quality of public officials locally since Royer's time. The occasional Republican or non-partisan mayor or city council member is no longer present. Too many city and county council members come to office with no serious prior knowledge of economics, the law, local history, or governance which would prepare them to make important decisions on behalf of area citizens. Others possessing credentials (note Peter Steinbrueck) serve too briefly. More good men and women need to stand up and offer their candidacies.
Posted Mon, Apr 28, 12:25 p.m. Inappropriate
Seattle history lite: I remember sharing an elevator ride with Mayor Charlie and his hulking police escort one day. I had just walked through the demolished Westlake area and the vista towards Lake Union was incredible and I was mourning the loss (you fought the good fight John Hinterberger) of that beautiful open space in the heart of the city to the glorified shopping mall and soulless brick plaza pushed by Royer and the Seattle "process" gang. Small minded risk avoiders ever willing to sell out a greater public good to commercial interests so long as no one ever jaywalks or raises their voice in protest.
I've always regretted not thanking him for his "vision", but then again there was that cop.
Posted Mon, Apr 28, 2:20 p.m. Inappropriate
Ward Politics Repeatedly Rejected by Seattle Voters: Seattle voters terminated election of City Council Members by District in 1910. At least three times since then, most recently 2003, the public has voted with good reason against reintroducing Council Districts and ward politics. Without getting into names the example of the King County Council should be ample proof that District elections would not improve council member quality.
Posted Mon, Apr 28, 3:28 p.m. Inappropriate
Sustainable? Royer raises some profound issues.: I wish Royer had offered some suggestions about what to do as there's a larger context to his observations about our inability to make decisions (unless forced through by a large institution). That's the impending need for us to actually make decisions about some critical resource issues such as (would it surprise you) transportation.
We are going to be faced with some real problems in the next few years and I don't think our local government (forget about the Feds) is up to the task. It worries me. When I see a place like Dubai able to decide that it needs public transit and then act on it while we stand around "coordinating" it makes me concerned for our future. And then I see China able to build a simply massive airport from inception to finish in five years. Is there an inherent advantage to authoritarian regimes which will allow them to outlast us? And adopt sustainable practices while we discuss? Is democracy not sustainable in time of crisis? Royer raises some profound issues.
We are going to be faced with some serious issues of mixed economics and ecology in the next decades and I wonder if even at the local level we are up to the task of meeting them.
Mind you, I am not in the least arguing for some sort of "dictatorship of the wise" – wise folk rarely get elected or seize power. But I am perplexed at the political context of our ecological dilemma. It looks fairly grim as I see no clear way out except for us to "get smarter," which is a pretty lame prescription. Perhaps we'll be able to take effective action but it will obviously be at the last moment.
My own prescription btw is as much free market as possible. There is no more convincing way to force change than rising prices. So government should do very little to cushion us from the shocks we are starting to undergo, (except "vulnerable populations" of the old, disable and very young.) No band-aid attempts at "affordable housing" for what are middle-class people. So no subsidies for gasoline, for example. The quicker we realize that what we are doing ecologically is not affordable economicaly the better.
Posted Mon, Apr 28, 4:01 p.m. Inappropriate
RE: Seattle history lite: Huh?
I'm curious - since you are still so bitterly mourning the loss of an open space in the heart of the city, did you vote "Yes" to the Seattle Commons? I may be wrong, but my hunch is that you voted "No", in which case you would perfectly embody the attitude that makes it so hard to get anything done around here.
Posted Mon, Apr 28, 6:39 p.m. Inappropriate
RE: Ward Politics Repeatedly Rejected by Seattle Voters: Umm, Rat, Seattle is one of only two large cities (>500K pop.) that elects all of its city council at-large. The other is Detroit, Michigan. District elections have nothing to do with "ward politics." The political machines of old were fueled by patronage jobs, a phenomenon that just doesn't exist any more. Seattle councilmembers (no matter how they might be elected) have only 3 patronage jobs to dispense, in their personal offices. Advocates of more representative government have no interest in abolishing civil service and returning to old-fashioned ward politics.
Advocates of district elections and/or proportional representation are seeking a more representative city council. A majority of Seattle voters are white middle-class liberal Democrats, and it's appropriate that they can elect a majority of the council. The problem, however, is now they elect ALL members of City Council, and the result is a troubling lack of political diversity on the council.
Posted Mon, Apr 28, 7:51 p.m. Inappropriate
I'll agree to let others make decisions with out me, will you Charlie?: I find Charlie Royer's stories to be telling, in that two out of three represent a time when a small group of people could develop a vision (cleaning up Lake Washington, a worlds fair) and then sell that idea to the regions civic and governmental leadership without years of process. It was in fact a time when we expected people to make decisions, and then proceed.
Unfortunately we now think that no decision can be made unless each of us was at the table, and part of the consensus. I find it ironic that Charlie would be the one to decry that new reality. In 1978 I attended a meeting in the Montelake Community to discuss widening of 520 as recommend by the DOT the previous year after a lengthy public process. The then new Mayor of Seattle Charles Royer came to that meeting and announced that since he had not been part of that process he did not feel bound by the decision. Seems like maybe Mr. Royer has in fact been part of the problem
Before we whine about things not getting done, we first have to agree that we will let some one else decide, and then live with the fact that they may make a decision we don't entirely agree with. I'll sign on, while you Charlie?
Posted Mon, Apr 28, 8:07 p.m. Inappropriate
The Generalized Metastasized Seattle Process: It's gotten much worse since Royer was Mayor. The Balkanization of governance structures has itself become sub-Balkanized so that there are so many taxing districts overlaid by so many levels of law that there's essentially a power vacuum everywhere. The processed has metastasized like a cancer.
For example, there's clearly no physical reason that inside of five years, just like the Chinese, engineers and construction companies and consultants cannot design and build ALL the infrastructure we dream about (Viaduct, 520-Bridge, and all the Sound Transit 2 light rail). Unfortunately, the process slows everything and makes everything take way too long and cost too much. Our process has long since ceased to add the multi-layered value that was initially intended.
A case in point is the 520 bridge. The cost estimate was originally $4.4 billion, but WSDOT has found big cost savings, and we're now at a mere $3.7 to 3.9 billion. The schedule was brought in from 2014 to 2012 (although the full project connecting 520 to I5 and 405 will take through 2014). This is very good progress. But we still need resolution to the negotiations by stakeholders, which I'm guessing will add about hundreds of millions to the cost and years of delay.
By contrast, the existing bridge, which has been operating for 44 years, took 3 years to build. Construction started in 1961 and ended in 1963. It cost only $23 million in 1961 dollars, which, according to the Federal Reserve CPI calculator, is equivalent to about $151 million today. Compare that to the low end of the WSDOT estimate of $3,700 million: the new bridge will cost TWENTY-FOUR TIMES what the current bridge is estimated to cost, even after adjusting for the change in the CPI. And don't forget the 30 cent toll ($2.16 in today's dollars) that paid off the bridge, early, in 1979, after only 16 years.
Here's an excerpt from an article in the latest Economist about the long moribund Fiat motor company in Italy, which has magically risen like a Phoenix out of its own ashes. I think it describes what should be done in the Seattle metro area:
"So poor was the state of Fiat's carmaking business ... that Mr Marchionne felt he had no choice but to act quickly. He says: "The single most important thing was to dismantle the organisational structure of Fiat. We tore it apart in 60 days, removing a large number of leaders who had been there for a long time and who represented an operating style that lay outside any proper understanding of market dynamics. We flattened out the structure and gave some relatively young people, in terms of both age and experience, a huge amount of scope."
I think it's telling that the people who believe that things CAN get done and CAN get better are "old" people like Van Dyk or now like Charlie Royer, who remember, actually, really, getting things done. There's unfortunately a whole bureaucratic generation now in power that's main claim to fame is stopping anything from getting done. That's initially what the environmental movement was all about: stopping pollution, stopping sprawl, stopping rapacious development, stopping logging, stopping degradation of riparian habitat and "managing growth." All this was good in its day. But the generalized Seattle Process is now a twenty-passenger bus with eight brakes, no accelerator, and six steering wheels. You can put people in it, and no one will die in a crash, but people never get anywhere unless they get out and walk.
The solution to this problem is a smaller, more fuel-efficient government vehicle that stops using bureaucratic power and instead uses the State's emergency power and its eminent domain power to enable important big projects to really happen. By doing so, we should be able to lower costs by nearly an order of magnitude and and really build things that happen on time.
Posted Mon, Apr 28, 8:54 p.m. Inappropriate
RE: Ward Politics Repeatedly Rejected by Seattle Voters: I don't think so. There is quite a bit of turnover on the Seattle City Council. At the present 2 council members or 29% are minorities. The two councilmembers elected last fall can hardly be called liberal Democrats, maybe not even Democrats. In King County with districts everyone has a secure position, never a serious challenger, and they do engage in log rolling parceling out funds and goodies. For example, Seattle has most of the Metro riders and is the largest contributor of taxes but Metro bus expansion is skewed to the furthest out suburbs. Moot point anyway, Seattle has firmly rejected district representation.
Proportional representation is even worse than districts, that is the Israeli Knesset, where small minority parties can dictate policy by withholding support and causing a coalition to fall. Imagine Seattle gridlock with two Greens and Libertarian on the Council.
Posted Mon, Apr 28, 9:51 p.m. Inappropriate
Royer; one in a long line of RE lapdogs: It was Royer who helped the landlords and developers by going to the state in the 80s (?) and getting anysort of rent stabilization outlawed on a state level, because their was strong sentiment for it at the time. Royer is one of a long line of Seattle mayors that hold the interests of wealthy, and especially the developers, over low and middle income earners.
Posted Mon, Apr 28, 11:46 p.m. Inappropriate
Missing something in analysis: Stuka & others say it well. One other thing to mention, is that, since Royer's day, the city has gone from a city of poverty ("last one out...") with the Boeing bust, to a city of enormous wealth. I like to say that the vortex of Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon, & Starbucks, but to name a few, funnel money into the Puget Sound region like a toilet bowl. It's not just gentrification, but like Italy in the Renaissance. It's a place for the wealthy and yes the poor. Those in the middle have been wedged in by ever increasing taxes, and attitudes of the wealthy. Heck, I've left!
So you can't get anything done anymore, because the wealth in this city isn't about community, it's about 'mine'. The folks I knew living here in the 70s' were here because they came here to live first, and work second. Living poor was the norm, not the exception. Hiking, climbing, sailing, biking, we wanted the lifestyle, and now you have the vast hordes coming to make their fortune, moving here because of the jobs first. Hell, I had no job and no hope in 76. The notion of moving here for a job was a joke. So people felt like we had the city in common to make better. It was a people's city. Now it's a city of people.
There's no turning back. It is what it is. And those of us who felt like it was a large small town, have left. If I'm not mistaken, I thought Royer did too...
Posted Tue, Apr 29, 9:52 a.m. Inappropriate
RE: Missing something in analysis: Hey, wait a minute, I'm still here! I did go back East to work for five years after I left the mayor's office, but I couldn't wait to get back. I, too, am concerned about the bleeding of middle class families from the city. That's one of the reasons I have started something called the Middle Income Housing Alliance of Seattle--an effort to preserve and increase the supply of affordable housing in the city. As I get older and grumpier I grow more and more concerned about some of the changes in Seattle. However, after seeing most of the rest of the country, I think it is still the best place to live. If you can afford it. And thanks for all the interesting feedback.
Posted Tue, Apr 29, 2:23 p.m. Inappropriate
Leadership and Vision: Eddie Carlson, Jim Ellis, and others had long term "vision and leadership" and, in a metropolitan area where "Every Elected Is A King" (apologies to Huey Long), provided third party ideas and proposals that the "Kings" would otherwise have been unable to adopt in a "government by task force."
Where are those leaders today? Bill Gates Sr, Bill Gates Jr, are working on non-Seattle centric issues: critically important but nonetheless not Seattle focused (Bill Sr. do you hear Jim Ellis calling your name?). Steve Ballmer, John Stanton, and others are trying to "save the Sonics," while Howard Schultz is doing his best "mea culpa" to apologize for losing the Sonics.
Come to think of it, The "Sonics" are a great example of those who should be the Jim Ellis's and Eddie Carlson's of today focusing on the short term, immediate, "let's have circuses" view of the world.
Transportation, education, and the other mega issues are where vision and leadersip are needed'. Seattle and King County's "Every Elected a King" governance structure is not suited to bold action and decision making but to endless "process." Real community leaders will recognize this reality and provide direction to the otherwise rudderless, typically indecisive "Kings" who pontificate in endless debates and soundbites about "Ringling Brothers animal cruelty," "removal of eastern Washington hydro dams (but not their own)," or the "parking garage at the zoo."
Posted Tue, Apr 29, 3:27 p.m. Inappropriate
RE: Seattle history lite: The desire to have a park at Westlake rather than the abortion that's there now predated the Commons.
Posted Tue, Apr 29, 8:28 p.m. Inappropriate
RE: Missing something in analysis: Charlie, in your response you mention "middle income" and "affordable housing" in the same sentence. According to most of the "political class", these two terms are mutually exclusive. "Affordable housing" is such housing that is accessable to those individuals and families earning 60% or less of the area's median income, and that particular income cohort is classified by HUD as "low income", not "middle income". This is the one aspect of the current discussion concerning housing affordability that has me quite concerned, given the fact that in my neck of the woods (SE Seattle) half of our rental housing stock is subsidized (that's over 250% of the city-wide average). I embrace "middle income" (aka "workforce") housing, but am quite concerned about "affordable" housing as defined bu HUD and the "political" class".
Posted Thu, May 1, 10:54 a.m. Inappropriate
RE: Missing something in analysis: When I use the terms "workforce" or "middle income" housing I am referring to housing for individuals earning between 80% and 150% of Area Median Income (AMI). Individuals below 80% are generally eligible for public subsidies for "low income" or what is sometimes referred to as "affordable" housing. One problem in our region is that the HUD income limits for subsidized housing way out of line with Seattle median incomes. They are much lower.
Posted Thu, May 1, 7:51 p.m. Inappropriate
RE: Missing something in analysis: Charlie, thank you for your clarification. With that in mind, I would hope you could start using the the term "workforce" as opposed to "affordable".
Posted Thu, May 1, 10 p.m. Inappropriate
RE: Ward Politics Repeatedly Rejected by Seattle Voters: And every one of the successful candidates for Seattle City Council last November made a persuasive case that they were liberal Democrats also. Yes, 2 are racial minorities, and they are there only because the majority votes colorblind. It my come as a shock to some, but there are folks in the minority communities who think they should be able to elect their own representatives, rather than having to rely on a white majority to do it for them. (And 2 out of 9 is 22%, not 29%.)
Nearly all the world's democracies have adopted proportional representation for their national parliaments, save for most of those descended from Great Britain. The Knesset is but one example, and yes, not a good one.
You are enamored of the group-think that stifles City Council? Having a Green, a Libertarian, and a Republican on the council along with the majority liberal Democrats could only result in good things. We might actually have substantive debate on major policy alternatives, discussions that would no longer put voters to sleep.
Posted Thu, May 1, 10:11 p.m. Inappropriate
RE: The Generalized Metastasized Seattle Process: Lest anyone get to romantic about the "good old days" when a few leaders could "get things done", please remember the grim side: Elected bodies deliberated and voted in Executive Session, smoke-filled rooms with no press or citizens observing. Public hearings were formalities held AFTER decisions were made. And there was no disclosure of campaign contributions and expenditures, and no limits on them either. Too many public officials were literally "owned" by the bad guys, allowing crime syndicates like the Seattle police payoff system to flourish for years.
Thanks, but I prefer open and honest government. The current system is not perfect, but going back to the bad old days, for the sake of "getting things done" is not an option.
Posted Thu, May 1, 10:17 p.m. Inappropriate
RE: Missing something in analysis: I talked briefly once with Charlie about his housing program, and the concept has much merit. Poor and working poor people can find subsidized housing in the City. The upper-middle and wealthy can buy or rent at the market.
It's the middle-income folks, too "rich" for public subsidies and too poor for the marketplace -- they're the ones being squeezed out. And a city without a large and healthy middle class...I worry about its future.