Week in Review: December 12, 2025 - with Shauna Sowersby

Seattle's Creative Economy at a Crossroads: Randy Engstrom on What's at Stake from Hacks & Wonks

“WA flooding a state of emergency, governor says” by Shauna Sowersby from The Seattle Times

“WA AG, lawmakers propose law to protect workers from immigration raids” by Shauna Sowersby from The Seattle Times

“Public records fight over what WA lawmakers can withhold continues in court” by Shauna Sowersby from The Seattle Times

“King County has 3 plans for Trump’s homelessness funding changes” by Greg Kim from The Seattle Times

“Seattle council approves contracts for police officers, managers” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times

“City Councilmember Rob Saka: Why I’m Voting Against the SPOG Contract” by City Councilmember Rob Saka for The Stranger

“Seattle City Council approves new police contract, boosting pay and expanding crisis response” by Amy Radil from KUOW

Find stories that Crystal is reading here

Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here

[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm your host, Crystal Fincher. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work, with behind the scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it.

If you missed our Tuesday topical show, I chatted with Randy Engstrom, who's co-leading Mayor-Elect Wilson's arts transition team and argues culture must be central to solving housing, education, and economic challenges - not treated as expendable when budgets get tight.

Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows, where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: state politics reporter for The Seattle Times, Shauna Sowersby. Hey - welcome back!

[00:01:06] Shauna Sowersby: Hey, thanks for having me.

[00:01:07] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, we have a number of things to cover this week. First off, what lots of people are experiencing around the state and what Governor Bob Ferguson has declared a state of emergency over - flooding from this atmospheric river we've experienced. What is happening around the state and how has Governor Bob Ferguson's administration responded?

[00:01:33] Shauna Sowersby: Well, we are seeing what they're now calling historic flooding in some areas - where flooding is worse than it has been in recent recorded years or even in the past. So lots of people were being evacuated last night. The National Guard has now been sent out to help with some of these flood mitigation efforts. And yesterday, Governor Bob Ferguson declared a state of emergency and requested federal assistance from the federal government.

[00:02:07] Crystal Fincher: What are those prospects?

[00:02:10] Shauna Sowersby: That's a good question. Historically - earlier this year, we requested some FEMA funding for the bomb cyclone that happened in 2024. And those efforts to get that funding from FEMA were denied not just once but twice by the Trump administration with very little, if any, explanation why those were being denied to the state of Washington. So we haven't heard anything back quite yet, to my knowledge. Governor Bob Ferguson is going to host a press conference at noon today. And so hopefully, maybe we'll have an update to see if FEMA or the federal government are going to respond at all to our requests.

[00:02:56] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's quite challenging. There are reportedly over 100,000 people in the state who have already been or are at risk of being evacuated - really impacting so many people. So if the prospects of getting help from FEMA and the federal government are slight, what is people's recourse? How can people get help if they experience damage from the flood and are impacted, need to pay for alternate places to live during this time where they can't go home?

[00:03:29] Shauna Sowersby: That's a good question. I don't think there's an easy answer for that right now. I'm trying to think of where I saw a press release from, but one of the counties - I believe it might have been Skagit County - was telling people if they don't have anywhere to go, go to RV parks and that those are available. But in the long term, I don't know what that looks like - with already a state budget that we're already looking ahead and seeing that we're going to have another shortfall in the state budget. I don't know exactly how much they have for mitigation efforts such as these already, but I would imagine it is probably going to take a lot to get any sort of financial assistance whenever the state is already facing such a heavy shortfall.

[00:04:18] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, well, we will certainly continue to follow this. People need help, but budgets are stressed from the city, county, and state perspectives. The lack of support that has traditionally been there - that people have paid taxes with the expectation would be there - doesn't seem to be there now or is certainly unreliable. So we'll continue to follow this and see, but we're certainly thinking about everybody who's been impacted by the floods.

Also want to talk about news this week that our Attorney General Nick Brown, in coordination with some lawmakers, are proposing a new law to protect workers from immigration raids. What would this law do and how would it impact workers?

[00:05:03] Shauna Sowersby: Yeah, so it wouldn't actually change too much about what's currently in state statute, but it would just really outline some of the responsibilities that employers in Washington state have. It would also reinforce this idea that they do not have to cooperate with the federal government, especially as it pertains to these raids. Mainly, I think the purpose of this bill, though, is - if the federal government is kind of poking around and looking to do some of these I-9 audits to see whether or not employees are "legal" or "illegal,", it would prevent that - or wouldn't prevent it from happening, but it would give employers the chance to let employees know that the federal government is investigating, I guess I should say. That way workers could seek legal counsel, if they needed to in order to kind of combat the actions of the federal government, ICE enforcement actions.

[00:06:09] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And this is legislation put forward by Representative Lillian Ortiz-Self and State Senator Rebecca Saldaña. I think that's the key difference right now - it would require employers in Washington to notify employees when the federal government requests an audit of that eligibility information. At least giving folks heads up - letting them know that there is essentially an investigation underway and that other actions may be following, giving people to get their paperwork in line or whatever is needed to happen. How are workers and other people around the state responding to this?

[00:06:49] Shauna Sowersby: I think that there is quite a lot of support for this. I've heard from some employers - there were some at the press conference last week who talked about - they get put into a kind of a weird position. whenever these requests come down. And so this would give them a little bit more guidance on what they need to do. Of course, you're going to hear from the other side who says this is trying to bypass federal law or trying to hinder efforts of ICE enforcement officials. But it seems like - from some of the employers that came forward and talked about this - this would give them a much clearer idea of what they can and can't do when these audits are requested by the federal government.

[00:07:33] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, we'll see - I guess I'm wondering what your opinion of the prospects of this legislation are to pass in the Legislature. It looks like there may be opposition from Republicans. Is that correct?

[00:07:45] Shauna Sowersby: Of course, yeah. And that's to be expected with this sort of thing, I think. As we've seen in the past with any of the other efforts on behalf of Democrats in the Washington State House to try to protect their communities and stuff - of course, we're going to see pushback from Republicans on this. It also doesn't carry a very big ticket price. The Attorney General's Office is saying it would cost about $400,000 and that would just be for the first year. But again, we're going through a budget shortfall, so I don't know if $400,000 is too much to ask from the Legislature at this time.

[00:08:24] Crystal Fincher: Certainly. And I think Representative Lillian Ortiz-Self and Senator Rebecca Saldaña have talked about this - and especially just how these raids are impacting Washington residents and communities overall. I believe a New York Times analysis showed that almost half of those arrested did not even have criminal records. Most immigrants who've been arrested by ICE have no criminal record. These are people just working, contributing to their employers and communities, just trying to feed their families, make a life. And a lot of people don't think that's a negative in our society, that that's a positive. So it'll be interesting to see how this conversation unfolds and how this legislation moves through the Legislature during this upcoming session that'll be starting in January. Which is coming up a lot quicker than - I mean, my goodness, we've just got a few more weeks and then a new legislative session is starting.

[00:09:22] Shauna Sowersby: I know. I feel like I blinked and it's already here again from last session. So hopefully it goes a lot smoother than the last one did.

[00:09:32] Crystal Fincher: Yes. Now, you also recently did some more reporting - you've been following this for quite some time - about a public records fight in Washington and what lawmakers are allowed to withhold and what should be made available to the public. Can you give us some background about how we got here and what is happening now?

[00:09:54] Shauna Sowersby: Yeah, absolutely. So maybe to give some context to this, this is not the first time that lawmakers have tried to seek some sort of exemption for themselves and tried to exempt themselves from the state's Public Records Act. This is what, maybe their third attempt in recent years, and they'd kind of been planning on this one for a little while. But in 2021, we started seeing public records come back with an exemption for legislative privilege.

[00:10:23] Crystal Fincher: Let me pause for a second, and can you explain what the Public Records Act is and why it's important?

[00:10:31] Shauna Sowersby: Yeah, absolutely. The Public Records Act was voted in on an initiative by the people in the 70s, the early 70s. And this basically just states that public records should be available to the people. And at the time when it was enacted, there were not many exemptions to it. So basically anything on a government level that you can think of, you were able to request through Public Records Act. Now, we've seen that, especially in the past few years, a lot of exemptions being added to on top of that. So there's a lot more things that are exempt. Some do make sense, like personal information for people that might have been in a bad situation before, such as DV.

[00:11:15] Crystal Fincher: Domestic violence.

[00:11:16] Shauna Sowersby: Right. And you don't want their names out there. So there are some valid reasons for it. But I would argue that this latest attempt is not a valid argument, and they are trying to use a provision in our State Constitution that protects - it's the speech and debate clause, very similar to what Congress has. So it protects what lawmakers say on the floor from any sort of recourse from things that they talk about out there.

[00:11:47] Crystal Fincher: Well, and I'll just throw in here - this has been a big deal for quite some time. Essentially, the government works for the people. It is serving people. And so the activities of government should be open and transparent to the people. We should be able to see how dollars are being spent, how time is being spent, what people are doing in the roles that are being paid for by tax dollars and people that are essentially there to serve the public and in the public interest. And so things like public records requests are the method that we have basically established to say - Okay, well, we're interested in what is happening in this particular department, in this executive office - to be able to see how they're spending their time, who they're talking to, what is being discussed so that there aren't shady backroom deals and grift or corruption or bribery. And really, this is how so much of that is uncovered - when it is - by seeing what people are discussing in email, how they're spending their time, who they're conducting business with, how contracts are being awarded. And so the public does have a real interest in this happening. And when that information is not made available to the public or shielded or kept there, it really puts a cloud over everything that's happening. And creates an environment where we don't know what's happening, but it makes it easier for waste, fraud, and abuse to proliferate when there's no oversight, no transparency, and no way to see what is really happening with the dollars that the government has been entrusted with. Would you say that's a fair summation?

[00:13:40] Shauna Sowersby: Yeah, oh - absolutely. Yeah, I mean, it is one of the only tools that we as the public really have. We're not going to get that information from a press conference. We're not going to get that information just by talking to lawmakers or policymakers. It is, yeah, one of the only ways that we can really find out - what's the phrase everybody always says - how the sausage is made on the inside.

[00:14:03] Crystal Fincher: Yep. And I think especially in these times where there's a lot of people feeling like many elements, areas of the government have not been working in the best interest of people - wondering if there's fraud or corruption, waste or abuse happening, looking like it's happening in several different areas, and really wanting to feel like - No, we want to make sure that our government is working for the people. This is the way for that to happen. But we've had this escalating fight and these escalating exemptions, as you just said. So what is this particular fight over and what are the impacts that it would have?

[00:14:47] Shauna Sowersby: Yeah, so they created this privilege, right? And they'd been working on this for many years to sort of create this privilege. We don't really know what's being withheld. Joe O'Sullivan and I did some work on this a couple of years ago. Some of the things we found were they were just covering up stuff they were embarrassed about. They try to claim it's for deliberative documents. So if they've got a policy or an idea in mind, they should be able to redact the information so that they're given space to be able to kind of sort out policies before they present them to the public. There is already a deliberative process exemption outlined for them that they have. But that's the problem with this legislative privilege, right? Opponents of this, attorneys against this - WashCOG, Washington Coalition for Open Government - will argue that this just gives them a very broad privilege to cover up anything that they would like to cover up. And I've had previous conversations with the Speaker of the House, Laurie Jinkins, in some very tense moments about this, where she basically said - Well, how do we know how we are able to use this exemption if we don't test it out with the courts first? And so that's exactly what's happening right now - is it's going through appeals court. Two Thurston County judges - two years ago now, I guess - gave lawmakers this privilege through their ruling. And so now two cases are being fought against that. And that's kind of where we're at right now is we're waiting on this. The first oral arguments were just given last week. The other oral arguments in the other case will be given in January. And so we'll go from there and see if the appeals court agrees with lawmakers on this one or if they agree with the public who thinks that these documents should not be shielded.

[00:16:47] Crystal Fincher: Now, are the types of privileges, exemptions - this legislative privilege that they're asking for - consistent with the types of exemptions at other levels of government, like in cities and counties?

[00:17:00] Shauna Sowersby: Well, that's a good question. And that's what we're kind of trying to figure out with these, because the opponents to this legislative privilege at the statehouse will argue that if we open this up to state lawmakers and we give them this privilege, then what is that going to do on a local or city level? Does that also mean that they will have this privilege?

[00:17:24] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Well, we will continue to follow this. What's next here?

[00:17:30] Shauna Sowersby: Well, this has been a long saga. I don't see an end to this anytime soon. But like I said, in January, there will be the second oral arguments in the second case, which is the Washington Coalition for Open Government and open-government advocate Jamie Nixon, they will go up and do their oral arguments. And then the appeals court, at their discretion, will make a ruling one way or the other. And regardless of which way it turns out, we already know that this is going to go up to the Washington State Supreme Court - it's just kind of a matter of when at that point it will be able to be heard.

[00:18:11] Crystal Fincher: Right. Well, we will be staying tuned.

Now, I also want to turn to King County at this point in time and talk - kind of like we talked about before - that so many entities in our government are having to respond to federal cuts or instability in federal funding. And King County was going to be incredibly impacted by proposed changes to how the federal government provides funding to counties to respond to homelessness. What is the change that the federal government laid out, and how is the county now saying that they're planning to respond?

[00:18:51] Shauna Sowersby: Yeah, so currently King County does more of a Housing First approach to homelessness. So that means that there aren't barriers for folks to be able to get into housing situations if they need it. And the Trump administration has basically said that they are against this approach. They think that there need to be more guardrails in place before people can get in. And now the Trump administration is threatening to pull majority of that funding unless there are some requirements that are met by the county, including cooperation with ICE and immigration enforcement. There's some kind of weirdness with them about trans folks and not providing services to folks that are trans. And then also putting in a work requirement for folks that are using some of these services.

[00:19:55] Crystal Fincher: Now this flies in the face of what decades of research shows work, what decades of research shows is most effective. Greg Kim wrote about this in The Seattle Times this week and noted that same thing - the Housing First model is what has been shown to be most effective. We have employed this more punitive, hardcore approach that says - Get a job, get off of the street, you can't be in here if you have a substance abuse problem right now. You need to come in here clean, work hard and get straight. And lots of providers are saying - not only does that fly in the face of all of the evidence that we have about what is actually most effective, both from getting people out of homelessness and from a cost standpoint. But it also just doesn't make any sense. If someone is struggling with addiction, they need treatment. And the conditions for treatment - housing is one of the most foundational, stabilizing tools there is. If someone doesn't have housing, everything else becomes monumentally challenging. It's nearly impossible to get clean if you don't have a stable place to live. And it's been shown that that's been much more successful when people do have a safe and secure and stable place to stay - and then you can build on that there. But the federal government is essentially saying - That's just coddling people and they're taking advantage of resources. And we're not going to give you more money if you continue to do that. In fact, we're going to take money that was initially budgeted and even putting, like you said, more restrictions on it - if they serve trans people, if they don't cooperate with ICE, those types of things. So this is creating essentially a deficit that the county is having to deal with. How are they planning to respond or fill the gap or make do?

[00:22:00] Shauna Sowersby: So King County can still apply for those federal benefits. But if they are not meeting those regulations laid out by the federal government, it's pretty unlikely that they would be able to continue getting that funding. And looks like it's not very promising from a local government perspective if this is something that the Trump administration decides to follow through with.

[00:22:28] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the challenges is that the county is already in a very challenging budget situation. They're already in a deficit that they have to address. And folks from the county are saying they don't know if they can fill this gap at all - which is really concerning. And if anything, everybody's talking about how homelessness is such a priority issue. Treatment services, crisis services, these kinds of wraparound services that especially in supportive housing and a Housing First model are really necessary and helpful. If anything, we need to invest more in them. And now we may have a massive cut. This is really shaping up to be a humongous problem.

[00:23:17] Shauna Sowersby: Well, and as Greg Kim also points out in that article, too - like many from the Trump administration or others might say - this isn't just people that are there to leech off the government. These are elderly folks. These are people with disabilities. These are folks that cannot work or unable to work because of one reason or another.

[00:23:39] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And as a lot of data has shown, kind of contrary to what a lot of folks assume or propaganda that you hear out there - homelessness is not primarily a function of addiction or criminality. The places in the country with the highest levels of homelessness are the places where housing is most expensive. Homelessness is a lack of housing. That is the problem - it's not having a home. And that exacerbates all of the other problems. But we know that we're still continuing to experience a housing affordability crisis. And so this is a problem that is continuing to persist - People are just not able to afford to live. As you said, the age of our unhoused population has shot up, and there are so many more seniors or close-to-seniors that are experiencing this. In Greg Kim's article, there's a person quoted here saying, "Folks are a lot closer to 60 than 50. We're serving folks that are disabled. They've lived a life of poverty and trauma. They're not going to suddenly go through a job training program and go back to work. I think we just need to be realistic about what this actual population is, what challenges they're facing, and how we can address those and not just settle for easy talking points and propaganda that just seems like it's going to blow a hole in this budget, completely devastate services, and ultimately put more people out on the streets. Just seems like we're teeing up a humongous problem here.

[00:25:21] Shauna Sowersby: Yeah, and I mean, I think it shows, too, what the - I'm sure the Trump administration probably knows these statistics, they probably see the same sort of information. And so I think it kind of shows that they know these things are out there, but they're just choosing to ignore them for the purposes of pushing forward their line of messaging.

[00:25:44] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, we'll continue to follow that as well. I want to turn to the city of Seattle. And the news that the Seattle City Council recently approved contracts for police officers. And this is a big deal because unlike many other departments where - hey, you have the head of the department and they basically have the latitude to hire and fire, determine how to most effectively assign work to people in their department and deploy that. The police department is a lot different, and this contract dictates so much of what can and cannot happen when it comes to oversight, accountability, discipline - in addition to pay and other working conditions. So these police contracts are very consequential. A lot of people would argue, I think correctly, that this is a much more consequential decision than who the police chief is. It seems like the contract dictates a lot more than even the police chief does. So this is a big deal. The Council approved this contract, but not without controversy and not without some really notable and unexpected dissent. So what happened here, Shauna?

[00:27:08] Shauna Sowersby: Yeah, so this is a new contract that increases officers' pay by about 13% for new recruits. So starting pay would be about $120,000. But like you said, this also reduces more oversight for police officers. And some of the councilmembers that you may not have anticipated to vote against this contract - like Rob Saka - voted against this. As well as Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Eddie Lin. So those three voted against it, they had definitely some concerns about the oversight issues and what this contract will allow police officers to do and undermining the CARE response team.

[00:27:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, really notable here in what it does and doesn't do. So, like I said, yeah, it increases pay, which most of these contracts do. More notable with this SPOG contract because their pay was already among the highest among employees in the City. And so there's another bump there. And for a long time, there was what was generally viewed as kind of a trade-off - yes, we will give you more money, but there's going to be some accountability and oversight additions, enhancement that we're going to ask for. That over the past - I mean, we're coming up on a couple of decades now - seems to be rolling in reverse. And there's been resistance to oversight, to increased accountability. While we have seen so many troubling instances on TV, in reporting of all different types - from misconduct to discrimination to really troubling incidences on the road, unauthorized or illegal uses of force - those types of things. And how the department can respond to them is dictated in this contract.

Above that, just the oversight and determining what happened after an incident like one of these is really up to how strong civilian oversight of the department is. Subpoena power is a really big element of this because that gets to being able to determine the truth, being able to determine the facts about what happened. Councilmember Rob Saka, as you talked about, was an unexpected opponent to this. I think if you look back, it's kind of pessimistically unexpected. But as you know, we talk with candidates before they run for office. And I asked Rob Saka when he was a candidate if he would vote for a SPOG contract that didn't have subpoena power for civilian oversight entities. And he said no. He actually stuck to his word here, which a lot of people were not expecting. Interestingly, I asked the same question of Joy Hollingsworth, Maritza Rivera. Maritza Rivera essentially hedged, said - I need more information. She was essentially not sure, noncommittal. As we know, noncommittal usually means you're - not usually, I will say often means - you're avoiding answering the question. I think a lot of people assume that. And we saw Marissa Rivera vote in support of approving this contract. Joy Hollingsworth was another person who I asked if she would vote for a SPOG contract that did not have subpoena power for civilian oversight entities. She said she would not. Ultimately, she voted for this contract. So that was really interesting to see.

But Rob Saka also wrote a column in The Stranger laying out why he wasn't voting for this. And I think I'm going to read a little bit of what he said to get out why this was so important to him and so important to many advocates, civil rights groups, other councilmembers, so many people in the community. " Glaring failure of this contract is the refusal to grant subpoena power to the Office of Police Accountability and Office of the Inspector General. That alone justifies a No vote. Without it, investigators cannot require officers or witnesses to participate, access all key records and evidence they need, or independently verify statements. They cannot gather information that would reveal misconduct patterns or verify claims made by officers. Investigations cannot be complete without those tools because oversight essentially becomes guesswork. And when investigations are incomplete, trust erodes, misconduct festers, and communities suffer. Seattle also retains loopholes that allow delays in investigations and keeps disciplinary rules inconsistent and vulnerable to arbitration rollbacks. Accountability cannot function under those conditions. Seattle officers are already the highest paid in Washington. This contract adds tens of millions of dollars above baseline over four years. Meanwhile, Seattle's working families face crushing housing costs, childcare shortages, homelessness, food insecurity worsened by federal SNAP cuts and rising behavioral health needs. Every dollar matters and I cannot justify spending so much more on officers who already earn the most in the state while essential accountability tools remain missing." It's serious.

[00:32:43] Shauna Sowersby: Wow. That's a heck of a statement.

[00:32:46] Crystal Fincher: A big statement. He also goes into - and so many other people did - noted how even though this contract allows for more people to be hired in the CARE Department that handles low-risk, non-criminal, behavioral health crisis, substance use crisis type of calls. It also handcuffs them, in essence - gives police officers essentially veto power to calls where they're dispatched to. Police officers can say - Nope. They can still respond to a lot of others. It puts guardrails around how and where they can be dispatched in ways that even in so many other jurisdictions across the county where alternative response is thriving and receives high marks from police to community advocates to crisis responders and others. They're doing a good job there. They don't have those kinds of restrictions, but Seattle does in weird ways. And it just seems like it flies in the face of saying we want to free our officers up from handling these low level, often non-criminal, often health-related calls and focus on serious crimes. Especially when we hear so many people reporting that officers take several hours, if any, to show up to really serious calls where people have been victimized and have been victims of crime.

[00:34:18] Shauna Sowersby: Yeah, it kind of defeats the purpose of the CARE team, if they're allowed to step in and decide where they want to go or if they want to kneecap the efforts of the CARE team.

[00:34:30] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. Interesting also - this was not the only police contract that was approved in that City Council meeting. The SPMA, I believe it's Seattle Police Management Association, contract - the contract for like lieutenants and captains, the managers was approved without controversy unanimously. But notably because they agreed to more civilian oversight and accountability measures. I think the general stance of elected officials here is - Hey, we're willing to double down on funds for hiring, provide state-leading salaries if you also agree to some accountability and oversight. The Seattle Police Management Association came much closer to doing that. Their contract was approved without any controversy. This contract had - it was a 6-3 vote to approve with Councilmembers Alexis Mercedes Rinck, like you said, Eddie Lin, and Rob Saka voting in opposition.

Notably, Councilmember Dan Strauss talked about a number of problems with this contract, talked about things that concerned him, including the things that concerned Rob Saka. But he essentially said - But the community needs the CARE team right now and these other interventions right now, and we can't wait any longer. Which was really interesting because there were plenty of other times where they're saying - We have to get this right. This didn't just pop up and the world doesn't blow up tomorrow if this isn't approved. This has been the result of a couple of years' worth of bargaining. So it is curious that now is the time that they have to get this out. And is it worth rushing this out if this codifies an insufficient or ineffective response for the next several years? I guess that's what voters are going to have to look at and the conversation Dan Strauss is going to have to have. We'll see what this would be. I think the other interesting element is that we still don't have everybody on the Council yet. Dionne Foster, who was elected to replace Council President Sara Nelson, is not seated yet - so Sara Nelson also voted on this contract. I think Dionne Foster would have had some major concerns with this, like several of her other colleagues. And then you get to a 5-4 scenario. Dan Strauss has been flexible - it seems, in the past, with what he has supported. He was one of the people who voted in 2020 to essentially say we're going to move towards reducing and reallocating funding, then later said that was a mistake. So he's been on multiple sides of an issue before. I wonder if hearing more concerns from more colleagues would have turned. But we certainly are going to have a Council composition that seems to be increasingly concerned with ensuring that there is an increased oversight and accountability here. The question is - what's going to happen in the upcoming years while we're dealing with this contract that they just ratified? And how are voters going to respond in 2027 - which is going to come pretty quick - to the folks who approved this contract? It'll be really interesting to see.

And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, December 12th, 2025. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng - and we love her. Our insightful co-host today was state politics reporter for The Seattle Times, Shauna Sowersby. You can find Shauna on Bluesky at @ssowersby. You can follow Hacks & Wonks and me on Bluesky, too - just search us. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you prefer to get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Please subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen - it really helps us out a lot. You can get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com.

Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.