A Seattle City Council committee voted 2-0 Thursday, with three abstentions, on a controversial revision to the city’s ethics code, allowing members to vote on matters in which they may have a financial interest so long as they make a public disclosure.
The change, recommended by the head of the city’s ethics commission and sponsored by Councilmember Cathy Moore, is a shift away from the current practice requiring members to recuse themselves and has stirred up the city’s politics months before several of the body’s members are up for reelection.
Councilmembers Mark Solomon and Maritza Rivera voted in favor of the bill; Councilmembers Sara Nelson, Joy Hollingsworth and Bob Kettle abstained. The bill will now go to the full council for consideration.
The stated goals of the change are to minimize voter disenfranchisement and lessen the role played by an unelected city staffer in influencing the outcome of legislation. Two significant wage-related bills were derailed last year, in part because several members were likely not qualified to vote.
“Really what we’re trying to look at here is a way to make some adjustments to the ethics law to allow it to work better,” Moore said Thursday. “It has not been working well.”
But the proposed law has landed with a thud among some circles, both progressive and moderate, who say it paves the way for elected officials to legislate to their financial benefit while damaging public trust.
Former Councilmember Kshama Sawant, a Trotskyist, has helped rally huge turnouts in City Hall reminiscent of the mid-2010s. But the concerns are not limited to the far left: Mayor Bruce Harrell is also opposed, meaning the council would likely need to pass the bill with a veto-proof six votes.
The proposed bill is simple: A disclosure is enough to allow members with a perceived financial interest to vote. An amendment from Hollingsworth added a narrow recusal requirement if the legislation targets the interests of a council member in a “unique and direct” way, though parsing the boundaries of such a standard could prove to be complicated.
Current Seattle code requires elected officials to recuse themselves from any vote where they might have a financial interest.
Last year, then-Councilmember Tanya Woo was told she should not vote on a bill rewriting the city’s wage law for delivery drivers on apps like DoorDash or Uber Eats because her family owned a restaurant that used those services.
Woo, as well as Nelson, were also unlikely to be able to vote on a proposed bill allowing small businesses to credit tips against the minimum wage for a longer period. Nelson still owns a stake in Fremont Brewing, which she co-founded. Both bills died before getting a vote.
For Wayne Barnett, executive director of the city’s ethics commission, the recusal requirement had shifted too much power to the commission, particularly in the district-based system where voters have fewer direct representatives. Disclosure would give voters the information they need, he argued, while empowering members to draw from personal experience.
“So long as an elected official’s interest in legislation has been disclosed, in writing, I believe it would be appropriate to leave it to their constituents to pass judgment on their participation,” he wrote in an email last year.
Rivera argued the proposed bill does not represent a lowering of ethical standards but rather a clarification.
“There are still standards here for ethics,” she said.
Several members of the council have already rejected the argument that the current code disenfranchises voters and oppose the legislation, including Councilmembers Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Dan Strauss. Both were present for the committee meeting on Thursday, but are not official members, so they couldn’t vote.
“We may be elected by district, but we represent the people of the entire city,” Strauss said.
Rinck called it a “betrayal of public trust.”
Moore can ill afford to lose any more support. Harrell was unusually blunt in his opposition to the bill, meaning it will likely need a supermajority to survive his veto pen.
“When legislative issues arise where an elected official stands to financially gain, there must be a clear, objective line to demonstrate to the community that decisions are being made solely with the public interest at heart,” he said in a statement. “Simple disclosure does not accomplish this; recusal does.”
Fanning the flames of opposition is suspicion that the bill is a precursor to another proposed change to the city’s landlord-tenant laws. Both for-profit and nonprofit housing organizations have been pushing Moore for a bill softening the city’s restrictions on tenant screening and evictions as they struggle financially.
There are questions about whether all members could vote on that change; however, Councilmembers Rivera and Solomon both rent out properties and would likely be asked to recuse themselves.
Moore has said the timing is unrelated, but that hasn’t stopped the ethics bill from becoming a larger fight over the city’s priorities.
The vote came after an hour of tense public comment and protests, with a parade of activists accusing the council of selling out the city and no one speaking in favor of the change. As has happened several times under this council, lawmakers eventually retreated from council chambers to finish their meeting over Zoom.
The council considered a similar change in 2018, by way of a bill sponsored by then-council President Harrell who was transmitting the bill as a formality. But Harrell himself opposed the change at the time, as did enough other members that the bill never got a vote.
