Week in Review: November 28, 2025 - with Erica Barnett

“Seattle Nice Interviews Mayor-Elect Katie Wilson!” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola

Seattle Mayor-Elect Announces Transition Director and Co-Chairs | City of Seattle

“County Executive-Elect Zahilay’s Layoff Proposal Shocks Some Longtime Staff” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola

“Council Adopts Harrell’s Budget With Minor Changes, Setting Up Huge Deficits for Incoming Mayor Wilson” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola

“What's in Seattle's budget? Mapping the $8.9 billion spending plan Mayor Harrell leaves for Wilson” by Teo Popescu from KUOW

“The Final City Council-Approved Budget Preserves Harrell’s Priorities” by Micah Yip from The Stranger

“Olympic Pipeline spill outside of Everett is one of several in recent years” by Julia Tellman from Cascadia Daily News

“Olympic Pipeline partially restarted after multi-week shutdown due to leak” by Julia Tellman from Cascadia Daily News

“What's Behind the Recent Decline in Overdose Deaths in Seattle?” by Andrew Engelson from PubliCola

“As reports of ICE emerge in Seattle suburbs, neighborhood watches take shape” by Gustavo Sagrero Álvarez 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.

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: Seattle political reporter, editor of PubliCola, and co-host of the Seattle Nice podcast, Erica Barnett. Welcome back!

[00:00:49] Erica Barnett: Great to be here.

[00:00:51] Crystal Fincher: Great to be here. Also, it was great to be with you on a panel that you expertly moderated last week - always know the moderation is in good hands when you're at the helm, that was a pretty fun event. Now, this week, we do have a few things to discuss. I want to start off talking about Mayor-Elect Katie Wilson, her transition, and your recent interview with her. Where does her transition stand and what were your takeaways from your conversation?

[00:01:21] Erica Barnett: Well, as listeners know, Katie Wilson, the Mayor-Elect, has announced her transition team co-heads. So there's four people directing or leading up the transition team - Andrés Mantilla, Brian Surratt, Quynh Pham, and Tiffani McCoy. Katie Wilson - changes that she's going to be making as mayor, which I assume are going to be pretty significant because she and her predecessor, current mayor Bruce Harrell, are pretty far apart on just about every policy issue.

[00:01:49] Crystal Fincher: You know, it's going to be interesting. I do think just from the outset that it is a kind of diverse and broad group in terms of experience, both professional and lived. And so that, I think, was pretty encouraging to see and may signal a different direction.

[00:02:09] Erica Barnett: Yeah. So, Tiffani McCoy is head of House Our Neighbors and was at Real Change. House Our Neighbors was the social housing campaign. Quynh Pham is from Friends of Little Saigon, which is the group that is working to improve safety in Little Saigon in a way that does not necessarily involve a huge police presence and tons of arrests and sweeps and things like that. So that was a really interesting and encouraging choice. Andrés Mantilla has been off and on with the city for a long time - he was the Department of Neighborhoods Director under Durkan. And Brian Surratt was a really interesting choice - he's also been off and on at the city. And I think those last two in particular are a sign that Katie is picking people that actually do have some institutional knowledge and understanding in the city. And in the case of Brian Surratt, I think, business partnerships. So it's not just people who - the sort of centrist would consider ideologues or people who are there for political reasons, but also people with experience with the institutions inside City Hall, which I think she is definitely aware that she's going to need as somebody who's coming in as sort of an outsider to the structures of government and all that kind of stuff. So I agree, it was interesting choices.

One interesting thing that I reported on briefly this week is she is getting rid of the structure where you have a million deputy mayors, which has kind of ballooned under Bruce Harrell. He had four, which I would say is a million for that position. And she's only going to have one. It's going to be kind of a flatter structure with a director of departments. And the idea is that she would empower the department heads to actually do the work that they are experts on instead of sort of telling them what to do and whatever the mayor says goes, which has kind of been the case under Bruce Harrell.

[00:03:56] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. That would be certainly - from many perspectives - a welcome change. Now, I do want to know - from your conversation with her, what were your biggest takeaways or what did you think was most notable?

[00:04:12] Erica Barnett: I think what is most notable about - and of course, I'm in the place right now, just as we're going into a transition between mayors, of comparing her to her predecessor. First of all, she talked to us. Bruce Harrell never talked to either PubliCola or Seattle Nice, even though we asked. I mean, we did ask and he said no or just ignored us. So I think that just her accessibility is going to be a difference. And I don't just mean to PubliCola. I mean, in general - I think she is accessible to all kinds of outlets. She said this week - not that Trump asked her - but she said, You know, I'd meet with Trump. I'll meet with anybody. So I think that is one key difference that we're already seeing. And I think that she - interestingly, she has a way - she punted on a lot of questions, including whether she will replace Shon Barnes as police chief, which is one of my biggest outstanding unknowns and the thing I am most curious about right now. But she does it in a way that doesn't make you feel like she is obfuscating, or has a secret, or is trying to hide something. I think she is genuinely gathering information at this stage and trying to make informed decisions and not rash decisions, particularly about personnel, which is kind of her biggest focus right now is - what am I going to do with all these people in the city? And I mean, she just is a very thoughtful person. The main reaction we got from the interview was basically - Wow, what a smart person. And it's clearly someone who thinks really deeply about the issues that she's going to be facing and doesn't have a one-size-fits-all answer or an absolute answer. And doesn't have this attitude of - I know what's best going in already, and I don't care what you think. And I think that is really refreshing. And I think a lot of people who listened to the interview found it refreshing - that she doesn't sort of portray herself as the expert on all things or the person with the right answers. Which I think is a change. I certainly found it refreshing, and I think a lot of our listeners did as well.

[00:06:12] Crystal Fincher: I think that's spot on. Now, I want to talk about another transition. Girmay Zahilay, our new King County Executive, who was just sworn in - so it is now official and in place. He announced a much larger transition team, and he also announced a bit of a staff shakeup already. What is he embarking upon? What has he announced within the county?

[00:06:37] Erica Barnett: Well, we're going to have a little more reporting on this this week. We're recording on Wednesday, and I'll have something about this later on this week. But he announced that he is going to be reconsidering essentially the jobs of about 100 people who are executive appointees. And what that means in practice is they sent out notices to the entire executive staff. And by executive staff - that doesn't mean the same thing at the county as it does at the city - this is everybody who is appointed. So it's everyone from regional planners to people who are accountants to people who monitor ADA compliance, things like that. A lot of those folks are appointed technically, even if they have been serving at the county as career professionals for longer than Dow Constantine was in office. So the way that folks found out is there was an all-staff meeting, and they were told basically that they should wait. It was on a Friday - they should wait until Monday. And if they got a phone call on Monday, they would know that they still had a job. And if they didn't, they would know that they didn't, but that they could apply for new positions that were either in the administration or elsewhere in the county but the competition for those jobs would be very competitive.

And so that left a lot of people very worried over the weekend, obviously. And then apparently the phone call thing sort of went off as planned and sort of didn't. Some people got phone calls and were told that they were laid off. So it caused a lot of anxiety, and I think bigger picture, I think that the Zahilay transition team has portrayed this as extremely standard. And I don't think it is for a couple of reasons. I mean, it is extremely standard - and the employees that I talked to at the county who are being laid off said, Yeah, it's totally standard for an executive to come in and to bring in a totally new executive staff. And that's about 30, 40 people. That makes perfect sense - Dow's team is Dow's team, Girmay's team is GIrmay's team - and that's how politics goes. But then you're talking about another hundred or so people who are really doing in some cases very wonky policy-oriented jobs that are not political. And of course, they know that they're appointed, but I think a lot of them were very shocked that suddenly - as a planner or an ADA specialist - they were being laid off in favor of other people or other positions replacing their jobs and just didn't really understand why. So I think it has been a big shakeup. And I think that Team Zahilay has been a little bit sensitive about this. They did not like me referring to these layoffs as layoffs, but that's the only way that anybody in the county that I've talked to has referred to them, so - not sure what the sort of correct terminology would be, but people are losing their jobs right before the holidays and they're quite freaked out about it, understandably.

[00:09:31] Crystal Fincher: Certainly from their perspective - no one likes the prospect of people losing their jobs at any time of the year, let alone during this holiday season. I do think that they're - you know what kind of job you have and you know that this is a potential, generally - unless there was weirdness in the hiring process. I don't know if there were people who truly did not know. But certainly-

[00:09:55] Erica Barnett: Yeah, I don't get the sense that anybody thinks that they are civil servants when they're not in the civil service, for sure.

[00:10:01] Crystal Fincher: And so that leaves it - you know that there's a vulnerability there, you know that you're essentially serving that particular administration as much or more than you're serving the county in that different kind of capacity there. I think sometimes people, especially in some of those more wonky positions, may expect - okay, if there is some justification, a reason, some review, that maybe would be appreciated before making a wholesale change. I don't know if that review has already happened. I mean, that transition team is large. There may be some intelligence in there. I don't know. So I guess I'm waiting to see still - kind of like with Katie Wilson - just waiting to see what the end result of this is. Are there larger reorganization and streamlining plans afoot, which I think Councilmember Zahilay said was under consideration, particularly with some of the budget challenges of the county. So certainly interesting, I'm looking forward to your story. Will absolutely be reading it and to see what reaction results.

[00:11:13] Erica Barnett: Yeah, I'll be curious what you think after you read the story. I mean, some of the people I talked to, like I said - yes, of course, they know that they're not in the civil service, their jobs aren't protected. But you are talking about people who, let's say, have been an accountant for the county since the Ron Sims administration and have had that continuity just because of the nature of their job. To me, a lot of this stuff is like - why is this stuff under the executive? There's like road services and stuff like that that's under the executive. And so it's almost like a structural thing where you have to sort of consider - well, yes, I could lay off all these people, but should I? And maybe it's just that he has people in mind for all these positions or a type of person in mind. I don't know. There was a LinkedIn post that went around that was advertising for tech people to apply to some of the county jobs, so maybe that's just the approach that he's going in the direction of. And that I don't have any particular insight into. But I do think a lot of these jobs are like super technical in nature and they benefit from some institutional knowledge. I mean, it's kind of like - I cover the city more and like I always say the city could not run without the deep state of the city because it's people who just kind of know how things work. I mean, there's a big learning curve when you start in a government. I mean, probably like a year before you really know the ins and outs of one of those more sort of technical institutional jobs. So it takes time and I'm sure it'll all shake out. But I do think it feels - if nothing else, the way that this was handled through essentially a meeting and then an email, people feel that or express to me that the human touch kind of wasn't there. And people who have chosen public service, I think, not out of political ambition, feel a little bit betrayed by just that aspect of it.

[00:13:05] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and that's valid. Now, I want to talk about the budget that was just passed by the Seattle City Council. Now, this budget was initially put forward by Mayor Bruce Harrell, was amended and finalized by the Seattle City Council, and will be the budget that Katie Wilson and the new Council inherits. So what is in this and what does it mean?

[00:13:31] Erica Barnett: Well, very big picture - the budget is larger this year than it was last year. The budget last year was larger than it was the previous year. This is the second year of a two-year budget, and theoretically that is not a year that is supposed to change very much, particularly right now when the City is facing structural deficits that are in the hundreds of millions. And yet, the City managed to pile about $50 million in new spending onto the budget, thanks in large part to a couple of new taxes that voters passed in one case, and that the City Council passed in the other. There's a new sales tax and a new business and occupation tax that are providing some money for some of these new programs or expanded programs. One is, and probably the biggest, is the expansion of the CARE team, which is a group of social workers, unarmed first responders, who are able to now dispatch on their own to a very limited number of 911 calls. But there's just tons of new stuff in there. The biggest ones that I focused on are the expansion of SPD - there's $26 million for new cops, just sort of ramping up hiring with the new police contract, which gives police a salary of $126,000 after six months. So that's obviously getting a lot of people in the door. And then there's, I believe, $4 million more for graffiti rangers - for people to go out and remove graffiti, which has been an absolute obsession of Mayor Bruce Harrell and some folks on the City Council. And there's just lots of little things here and there. Rob Saka from West Seattle got a bunch of new little projects in his district. The sweeps team is remaining quite large, the encampment sweeps team, with 116 people.

And so it sets Katie Wilson up as a new mayor with a deficit of around $140 million on her first day of her first budget. So the budget's balanced for next year - it has to be legally, but Harrell's budget put it immediately out of balance, which is not a good practice. And it's not necessarily standard practice to have these nine-figure increasing deficits. So Council could have addressed that, and they chose not to once again. For the second year in a row, this new Council has put off the tough decisions that they said they were going to make when they got elected, and they're going to have to face massive deficits next year. And Katie Wilson did tell us that she's willing to look for cuts, including in the police department - to make cuts to things other than hiring officers. So that's just kind of high-level.

[00:16:05] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I think you hit on what was most notable to me - and it's that the structural deficit remains. For the past two years, the Mayor and Council have known they have this deficit, meaning that just the operations of the City are known to cost more money than is being brought in under the current system of tax revenue in Seattle. And for the past two years, they've done just kind of a bunch of one-time fixes, account transfers, but nothing that structurally addresses - we need to either trim the budget to be within the realm of what is taken in in tax revenue, or increase the tax revenue to cover what the expenses of the City actually are. The tough work of governing is figuring that out and the Mayor and Council have declined to do that over the past two years. And like you said, just kind of kick the can down the road for this to be handled elsewhere - that requires some tougher decisions. Either cuts, and no one likes the idea of cuts - they're always fought against because they have real impacts in the community. Or there needs to be more revenue. And hence the revenue discussion. I do think there's probably more of an appetite for revenue than the prior Council had from a governing perspective - that there's more acceptance and demand from voters, certainly, with Katie Wilson running on establishing more progressive revenue, with the winning City Council candidates doing the same. So it'll be really interesting to see what proposals are put forward to address this structural deficit. And don't know whether that new revenue will cover the whole thing. And to your point, whether cuts will be necessary. But that's going to be a major thing that Katie Wilson will have to address. And doing the work that should have been done years back. She's walking into this, she was handed this when it could have been handled before. I think it goes a lot to when people talk about pragmatism and fiscal responsibility - we just had an example of the opposite happening. Seems like there was a lack of pragmatism and it just feels irresponsible to not deal with a pretty significant budget issue and to just hand it to your predecessor and say - Okay, well, that's your problem now.

[00:18:41] Erica Barnett: Yeah, and one thing they did - and this will only go for a year and it could be lifted, I think. But for example, one place that I personally would like to see cuts is to the Unified Care Team, which has just ballooned and ballooned and ballooned. It used to be called the HOPE Team. It was called the Navigation Team. It's been called all kinds of things, but it's the Police and HSD - Human Services Department - and Parks and SDOT. It's this massive sort of multi-departmental team that removes encampments. Generally speaking, they do not - I mean, they will refer some people to shelter. A big point of Harrell's campaign was that they made more shelter referrals than ever before. I've written a bunch about why shelter referrals are essentially meaningless, but at the same time, the bigger thing they're doing is doing these sweeps of areas that they say are where encampments are obstructing something - the right-of-way, people's enjoyment of an area, whatever - and they don't give shelter referrals. So it literally is just moving people from place to place to place. Katie Wilson has said she is not going to - she is, of course, going to remove encampments that are a safety hazard or that are becoming dangerous in themselves. I mean, I don't think sweeps are going to end under Wilson, but the point of that was to say that the City Council placed a proviso on that money - $36 million - that says that at least for her first year, Katie Wilson can spend it on nothing but that, the sweeps team. And I think she's trying to find some creative way to interpret that so that she will be able to use them for maybe more productive purposes. But the Council is really dedicated to sweeps. They also put a proviso on police spending. And they put one also on Erika Evans saying that she had to keep Ann Davison's drug prosecution alternative for people who are arrested for using drugs. So they're really trying to restrict the new people and constrain their ability to do their jobs in a way that I think is a little anti-democratic.

[00:20:41] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, certainly feels that way. And we will continue to follow what results. I also want to talk about news that lots of people heard about in context of travel, particularly holiday travel in Sea-Tac Airport. But that potentially has a lot of different ramifications - is that the Olympic pipeline experienced another spill outside of Everett, which essentially cut off operation of that pipeline until just yesterday, where they said they found the source of the spill. What happened and what are the impacts here?

[00:21:18] Erica Barnett: Yeah, I mean, I think you described it well. There is yet another leak in this pipeline in Everett. And I believe it was reported by - to authorities - by BP, the petroleum company. Which we were talking before we started recording - about the fact that these leaks are the ones we know about. Maybe there are no other leaks and BP is telling us about everything, but it is really disturbing that these leaks keep happening. And it seems as though there's nothing to be done about them. They just keep happening over and over. I mean, I don't know what the state is planning to do beyond declaring emergencies when these things happen. But we had a tragedy with this pipeline many years ago when it failed and it caused an explosion that killed three people. So this is not just merely a disruption to people trying to travel out of town, although that is for sure annoying to have your flight canceled. But there is potential for tragedy here, and it's alarming that these spills keep happening and getting reported. And I wonder if this is the whole of it, if we're hearing about everything.

[00:22:25] Crystal Fincher: Certainly wondering if it's the whole. I mean, even the way that the information came out about it. It was first reported to BP on November 11th as a sheen in a drainage ditch. And this is reported in Cascadia Daily News. But BP didn't send out its first news release about it until about a week later on November 17th. What was happening in the meantime? Do they know the scope of it? Several reports say they still don't know what the total amount of fuel spilled was. Was a large continuous spill - how long had it been spilling before it was noticed on November 11th? And this is in the middle of a blueberry farm. What's happening to this farm that now has like jet fuel spilled in the middle of it here? And this being one of a number - there have been a few in the past year. What assurances do we have that they're actually taking appropriate measures to make sure that something like this doesn't happen again? Seems like they had a hard time even figuring out the source of this leak. Between the 11th and it just restarted, I believe, yesterday, November 25th - either the 24th or 25th. So you had essentially two weeks there where they were trying to figure this out. Is this a repeating problem? Is this a new problem? Are they going to fix it? They were just fined just over $3 million for a prior spill in a prior year. That doesn't seem like it was much of a deterrent, seeing as we're right in the middle of another spill right now. So it just seems like there's a lack of accountability here that's pretty alarming. And that, to your point, goes beyond just interruptions to travel caused by lack of fuel.

[00:24:19] Erica Barnett: Yeah, $3 million to BP - that's probably pocket change to you and me, right? I mean, the equivalent of a quarter in our pocket. So maybe the issue is that the fines are not sufficient. But the stories that I have read are all about sort of repairing it and getting the oil flowing again. But what sort of prevention is being done? I don't know. And I don't know whether the emphasis - Bob Ferguson has been quoted in talking about, We're getting the airport back to stability and flights are not going to be disrupted, don't worry. But where is the emphasis on prevention of incidents like this in the future?

[00:24:55] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I also want to talk about a really important story that appeared in PubliCola this past week - really examining what's behind the recent decline in overdose deaths in Seattle. This is good news, but really we want to understand why. What did you uncover?

[00:25:14] Erica Barnett: Well, this story was by Andrew Engelson, a reporter who writes feature stories for PubliCola. And it's a great story - it looks at the causes that the Mayor's office and police are saying are responsible for the decline in overdoses, which, as you can imagine, they're saying that because we're arresting more people and putting more people into jail, particularly on felony charges, that is disrupting the supply. And experts say that's not the case. What's really doing it is a combination of things that are basically public health approaches. We, in the city of Seattle and King County, now have better access - drug users have better access - to overdose reversal drugs. In a survey in King County, something like 85% of drug users said they had naloxone on hand, which can reverse an overdose. And also just better access to treatment drugs and different forms of treatment drugs. And this is for opioid overdoses - like buprenorphine, which can be injected. Now it can be taken daily, but there are new forms of that. The Fire Department has a new program where they can immediately administer buprenorphine after somebody overdoses, but a formulation that makes it easier to take and makes it easier for people to kind of get into taking that drug. I mean, these are all kind of boring little things that have made huge differences in just the number of people who are dying and the number of people who are able to get into recovery.

And additionally, one thing that I thought was interesting - if not surprising, I mean, because epidemics are cyclical - is that Gen Z is not using opioids as much as the previous generations did. Probably because they have seen friends, parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters suffer from and die from overdoses and other impacts of addiction. So there's a lot to be hopeful about. Of course, we don't fund this stuff at nearly a sufficient level, but the more we kind of keep seeing good results, I think, and perhaps under the new administration at the city and the county, hopefully this will become more of an emphasis.

[00:27:21] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think that was what I came away feeling - like, okay, this seems like we're heading in the right direction. And fortunately, looks like we have incoming administrations at the city and county that are really looking to increase the focus on what seems to be working. So that's really encouraging. I hope we continue that trend and are able to make continued progress.

Now, I do want to talk about a final story today, which has wide-ranging impacts across the region. But really, as reports of ICE emerge in Seattle, the suburbs have already been experiencing its presence. What was covered in this KUOW story by Gustavo Sagrero Álvarez? And I guess, what did you come away thinking?

[00:28:11] Erica Barnett: Yeah, this is a great story that focuses on the city of Burien, where ICE has reportedly been out in force and sort of roaming around in unmarked cars. The reporter talked to a couple of people whose families have experienced being followed by ICE, who have been pulled over by ICE, who have been targeted by ICE. And it talks about the way that, first of all, it's affecting the community - the fact that people are just not out on the streets anymore. This is happening, of course, across the country, but it hits home when it's about a place like Burien, which is very close to Seattle. And it's happening here. As much as we consider ourselves a sanctuary state and have laws against law enforcement participating in ICE raids, things like that, it's still happening. People are being yanked off the street right here. And so my takeaway was that the city of Burien, at least, wants to get to a place where - Hugo Garcia, who's on the Burien City Council, which just elected a progressive slate after a few years with a very centrist to conservative majority on the Council. But he said that he really wants to see more policies there like the ones we've adopted in Seattle around being a sanctuary city, around not allowing ICE to wear masks. Now, I would say, as an aside, I don't think those policies are going to be effective here - just because I think ICE does whatever it wants.

The other thing - they talked about automated license plate readers and how they can be used to track immigrants. And this raises a lot of issues about surveillance that we are also dealing with here in Seattle. We have a very large surveillance state in Seattle. I get made fun of when I use that term, mostly by my podcast co-hosts on Seattle Nice. But it's true. I mean, we have automated license plate readers, we have red light cameras, and we have surveillance cameras that are monitored by police in an increasing number of neighborhoods. So all this is a concern when ICE has the right to access that by subpoena under federal law.

[00:30:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and the concerns are growing and suspicions are growing that that information may be shared even without official government-to-government handover. But if there are police who feel like that information should be shared with ICE, who are cozy with ICE - I mean, we certainly hear the thoughts of the head of the Seattle Police Officers Guild that are aligned with the actions of the current federal administration and ICE. And they are monitoring this data. Are they in group chat sharing the data? This has happened in other jurisdictions. There are suspicions that it's happening here. Once you put in place the infrastructure for this mass surveillance, these are the kinds of risks that emerge and the kind of things that are happening. Increasingly, are we essentially setting ourselves up for this to become inevitable by people who think that they're doing the right thing and doing it for safety's sake - by implementing new license plate readers, new facial recognition, cameras, these Flock cameras that we have around - but are really building the infrastructure of fascism? Is that what's happening? A lot of people are saying that's in effect what we're setting up and feeling like we're beginning to see the impacts of this. Do we know for sure this is happening in Burien, for example? No. But it is raising a lot of concerns and people are wondering how are they getting this information? How are they putting these things together? And it seems like this is a likely culprit at the top of the list.

[00:31:55] Erica Barnett: I mean, SPD here in Seattle - if they get a subpoena for, let's say, their surveillance cameras, they don't have to announce that to the public. And I'm not fomenting a conspiracy theory here. I'm just saying if ICE asks for camera footage and they have it - they retain it for, I believe, 30 days or longer if they're investigating a crime, which has a very broad definition, and so theft, things like that, that might have been caught on camera as well as violent crimes. And I don't think we would necessarily know. And I mean, to your point about fascism and the surveillance state, I would just say we don't have to do this. The police can solve crimes if they dedicate themselves to that job of solving crimes instead of maybe standing around at encampment sweeps or some of the other things that we've all seen police doing. They can investigate crimes without the need for cameras. They do not need this. And I think that we have to remind ourselves that like AI - like many of the uses of AI - these new technologies are old technologies that the police want to use, are not inevitable and they're not necessary. They're choices. And the City could actually choose to dismantle these cameras, shut them down. There's just trade-offs with everything. Automated license plate readers certainly allow the Department of Transportation to collect tolls. And they allow police to scan people's license plates before pulling them over, all that stuff. At the same time, I think we should actually be asking if the trade-offs are worth it. And I don't think that that question gets asked enough. I think that a new technology comes along and the cops ask for it. And the people in charge - city councils, mayors, county executives, sheriff's offices - they say yes. And we don't have to do that. So that's my little screed against the surveillance state. I don't think we ask enough questions about it. And I think when police say - Oh, well, this is necessary to fight crime. - people don't want to be in favor of crime, so they vote for it. And I just wish people would just take a beat and ask if this is really necessary or if maybe the police are capable of solving crimes if they focus on that instead of stop and frisk in some cities, or instead of working on encampment sweeps, or just other things that police do that are arguably a waste of time.

[00:34:19] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. Public safety is very important. A lot of times people interpret opposition to a particular tactic to opposition to anything at all happening. And you want just crime riddled streets and lawlessness and chaos to rule the land. And I think virtually no one feels that way. I mean, there's so many people - I'm so frustrated with violence on the streets. I'm so frustrated by having friends have break-ins and now have no expectation of any kind of response by the police and just like - Well, that happened to me. There's essentially no recourse. No one is interested in solving this or addressing this. And it's just going to continue to happen. I do think that we should be demanding answers and accountability and demanding results. And if we aren't getting them, that there needs to be a change in tactics because we do have to figure out what works here on our streets. We have a lot of information from other jurisdictions about what is effective in different ways and what isn't. And what we haven't yet proven and what has been disproven in many other jurisdictions is the lack of effectiveness of a lot of these surveillance tools, is the lack of effectiveness of the results that they were sold as bringing. Hey, we're going to reduce gun violence. We're going to reduce the amount of gunshots. We're going to be able to apprehend people. We have two high-profile local examples of misidentifications in cases. Where are the examples of, but for having this technology, we are able to solve these specific cases? Because of having this technology, we're able to dedicate resources to serious crimes. We're able to give more resources and assistance to people who have been violated and have been robbed or broken into. It just is very frustrating that we seem to not have any problem continuing to absolutely throw bagfuls of money at these problems that need solutions while getting no closer to the actual solutions. It feels very irresponsible.

[00:36:35] Erica Barnett: Amen. Wholeheartedly agree. I would love to see police actually solving the kind of crimes you're talking about. I am a data point there where I've been robbed. A very long time ago, I was mugged in front of my house. That was the last time I bothered calling police about anything because they did not take me seriously. And I felt were extraordinarily dismissive when I had been - somebody like came up to me and snatched my bag and fell to the ground. And that was quite scary and sudden. And the police were basically like - Eh, happens all the time. You're never going to see your computer again. Deal with it. And I was like - Okay, there's no point in calling the police. And that was more than 15 years ago. So that's just a data point. I know lots of people who don't bother calling about crime because they just kind of don't see the point. And it takes time - you have to hang around and wait for them to show up. And like, it can take hours. So yeah, I mean, I would really like to - I don't think - it's not an anti-police position to say that you would like for them to be solving crimes instead of investing all their money in technology.

[00:37:45] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, November 28, 2025. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was Seattle political reporter, editor of PubliCola, and co-host of the Seattle Nice podcast, Erica Barnett. You can find Erica on Bluesky at @ericacbarnett and on PubliCola.com. You can follow Hacks & Wonks and me on Bluesky also. 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. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review, please, wherever you listen. It helps us out a lot. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at OfficialHacksAndWonks.com.

Thanks for tuning in - and we'll talk to you next time.