Being Seattle city attorney is about more than criminal cases

The DOJ had announced that the training sessions, which focused on internalized racism and were made public by a former Seattle City Council candidate Chris Rufo, were in violation of civil rights law.

In the wake of the barely veiled threat, the civil rights office needed support from the public prosecutor’s office.

“It was serious exercise for them [City Attorney’s Office] try to understand what the work of the Racial and Social Justice Initiative is and how it can best protect the city, ”said Tamar Zere, manager of the initiative. “And I feel like it has been a really thoughtful and measured attempt to see what they can do to help us and protect the city.”

After 12 years there will soon be a new city attorney. Incumbent Pete Holmes failed to get past the primary and hosted a race between two distinctly different candidates, Ann Davison and Nicole Thomas-Kennedy.

To date, much of the city attorneys’ race has centered on the office’s approach to criminal offenses – how and when each candidate would or would not prosecute them.

But the office also plays a bigger role, representing the city and its employees in civil litigation – defending against outside lawsuits and disclosing people who have been injured in the city. The proposed 2022 budget for the Civil Chamber is $ 16.7 million, compared to $ 9.4 million for the Criminal Chamber.

Again, the candidates have very different views on the role of the office. For Thomas-Kennedy, as a partner of the town hall, it is an opportunity for creative solutions in line with the progressive goals of the town council. For all of her criticism of Holmes’ law enforcement agencies, she said his civil department did well and she has not yet met a lawyer there whom she would have fired if elected. In fact, Thomas-Kennedy has announced plans to expand the civil division, possibly at the expense of the criminal division.

Davison, who ran for lieutenant governor in 2020 on the Republican ticket and whose policies are far more centrist than the Seattle city council, largely avoids discussing a specific strategy for civil proceedings and instead uses it as a sort of arbitrator. She will honor the city attorney’s legal obligation to provide solid legal advice, she said, while her own political preferences would not invade the area.

Each candidate rates the other’s approach as flawed.

“That’s the old ‘balls and strikes, I’m just out here as a referee and I call it what I see’ ‘argument,” said Thomas-Kennedy of Davison’s approach. But nothing is as simple as a lawyer, she said. “This is a chosen position. The city attorney directs all civil litigation for the city. There is no leaning back and ordering. “

Davison, meanwhile, said that if Thomas-Kennedy wanted more leverage in politics, she shouldn’t have run for a prosecutor’s office.

“If you’re curious, you can ask me about my position, but the law is very different,” said Davison. “So I think it is important for the voters to listen to my opponent, who is clearly politically inclined and perhaps should have run for the city council.”

Work in progress

Whoever is elected will inherit nearly 20 major civil cases pending. These include lawsuits brought by Holmes against Monsanto for its alleged role in polluting the Duwamish River and Purdue Pharma for its alleged role in the opioid epidemic. In most cases, prosecutors are defending the city – against lawsuits brought by the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce over the city’s new wage tax; from Charleena Lyles’ family on her death by the Seattle Police Department; from Instacart on the city’s mandatory premium wage for grocery suppliers; from landlords via the eviction moratorium; from the Seattle Times about Mayor Jenny Durkan’s missing text messages; and more.

Much of the department’s work, however, is aimed at preventing the city from going to court first. Here, say city officials, the role of the public prosecutor’s office lives in a gray area.

When Erika Pablo worked for the city, one of her responsibilities was to help develop the city’s Fair Chance Housing Law, which prohibits landlords from denying people with previous convictions housing. In essence, the city was trying to create a new protected class of people.

Pablo said she would love if the attorneys’ only role was to give a cold risk assessment. But in the case of this legislation, which was new to every city in the country, it required more. “There was no jurisdiction on anything like that,” said Pablo, who now works for King County and is a lawyer herself. “So the legal risks that we were exposed to were pretty big. The law firm we worked with would not be able to bring a case if they did not share these values ​​and goals that we pursue. “

It’s a familiar refrain in a city that likes to push the boundaries of legislation, sometimes into unfamiliar territory. And that’s what many city workers have gotten used to as Holmes’ office has evolved over the past 12 years.

“We won’t get very far if we don’t test the limits of these laws,” said Zere from the Office for Civil Rights. “I guess what I would hope for is some courage and a real desire to lean on these values ​​that we say are part of our institution and part of Seattle.”

“Legal advice only”

But for Davison, the public prosecutor’s office has gone too far in policy advice.

“I guess what needs to happen is [the City Attorney’s Office] must once again become a place of fair legal advice for those elected to make politics, ”she said in an interview last summer. “I don’t think it’s going that way at the moment.”

Holmes declined to comment on this story.

Davison promises she can separate her political preferences from her role as a city attorney. It’s a promise that, if elected, will be quickly tested in the context of the city’s new payroll tax, which the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce sued for repeal last year. The case was dismissed but the board appealed and the case is still on trial.

In her previous campaigns for Seattle City Council in 2019 and as a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor in 2020, Davison has expressed skepticism about new spending and taxes. Her current campaign is supported by donors who are resistant to new taxes in general and Seattle’s payroll taxes in particular.

One of them is Steve Gordon, whose Concerned Taxpayer Accountability Center spent nearly $ 10,000 on Davison’s behalf and another $ 10,000 on Holmes before the area code. Gordon also stands behind Concerned Taxpayers of Washington, a political action committee that was launched in 2018 in part in response to Seattle’s first attempt at a tax on large corporations.

Gordon, who owns commercial truck dealerships in the area, said support for Davison was more about perceptions of lawlessness in the city rather than how she would run the city’s civil department. But he added that he was fed up with what he called the “anti-business sentiment” in Seattle.

“I think there are concerns, especially with the business community, who want to make sure that the taxes they pay are used to support thriving businesses and not continually put them in an uncompetitive position,” he said of Seattle’s policies in general.

In addition, a new political action committee formed on Davison’s behalf is sharing donors with efforts in 2018 to repeal Seattle’s first business tax through a referendum. It includes several big names in development and real estate, such as Richard Hedreen and Martin Smith. Thomas-Kennedy called the donors a “who’s who of people who don’t want to pay their fair share of taxes” and who don’t have to if Davison is elected.

But Davison again denied the importance of her own political leanings.

“It has nothing to do with what I think about politics and the purpose of what you want to do,” she said. “It is everything that is allowed under the applicable laws.”

Police officers defend

The public prosecutor’s office is also responsible for defending police officers from civil lawsuits – a task that for Thomas-Kennedy could contradict her attitude as an abolitionist and her police-disapproving tweets.

Prior to 2011, the city outsourced much of this construction to a private law firm, but Holmes brought it in to cut costs and improve results. The police unions fought the deal and created some friction, said Brian Maxey, former assistant city attorney for Holmes and former chief operating officer of the Seattle Police Department.

“Pete always had problems with the police, certainly friction with the officers,” said Maxey. “But we had a very clear understanding that we would represent these officials.”

However, given Thomas-Kennedy’s stance on policing, he believes she will have to outsource that work again. “I think they should, ethically,” he said. “I think the officers would file a complaint pretty quickly.”

Thomas-Kennedy denied the notion that she would have to ship the work out of the office. She said she spoke to Jessica Nadelman, the current head of the civil department, and expressed her confidence in the office’s ability to defend police officers if she is elected. Thomas-Kennedy believes that the process can be faster and more transparent by keeping the work in-house.

“I think people deserve a fair trial,” she said. “I was a public defender. I didn’t like many things that my clients were accused of. That doesn’t mean I won’t defend them. “

Zere from the Office of Civil Rights expects a challenging transition no matter who is elected. It’s an issue for the city government; Seattle will soon have its fourth elected mayor in 10 years. “We always start over,” she said.

The DOJ’s threat to the Seattle Civil Rights Bureau diminished under a new presidency. But whoever is elected city attorney will be in office until at least 2025, a year after the next presidential election. While no civil lawsuits have been filed against the city’s racing and social justice training sessions, “that doesn’t mean that based on the current trends we’re seeing, we don’t expect them to happen one day,” said Nona Raybern, Communication advisor to the office. “And should there ever be a serious legal threat to race and social justice work in the city, we would count on a city attorney who understands these principles and values ​​and can support our work that we advance.”