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Good afternoon, everyone.

It is Thursday, December 4th, and the Special Governance Accountability and Economic Development Committee will come to order.

It is 2.02.

and Sarah Nelson, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll.

Councilmember Hollingsworth.

Present.

Councilmember Kettle.

Here.

Councilmember Lynn.

Here.

Councilmember Rivera.

Chair Nelson.

Present.

For present.

Thank you very much.

Councilmember Rivera is excused until she arrives.

Got word that she's running a bit late.

All right, this is our first meeting in almost three months, so it feels good to be back together again and get into the swing of things after budget.

Today is a special meeting since our regularly scheduled one would have fallen on Thanksgiving, but we also had too many items for just one meeting before we close out the year.

So with that said, we will have our regularly scheduled December meeting next week on the 11th.

Today we have just two items on the agenda.

First we'll have a briefing and discussion on the consultant ethics bill, and then we'll wrap up with a bill from Seattle HR related to inflation adjustments to pay bans.

If there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

All right, now it's time to move into our public comment period.

How many people have signed up to speak today?

We have two virtual and no in-person.

All right, let's give everybody two minutes and begin with the virtual please.

And you have to say the instructions too.

I will call on speakers in the order in which they are signed up to speak, starting with in-person commenters.

Speakers will have two minutes.

When you hear a chime, you will have 10 seconds left.

If you exceed your time, your mic may be cut off, so that way we can move on to the next speaker.

If you are offering remote comment, please make sure to press star six to unmute yourself.

Since we have no registered in-person public commenters, we will move to remote public comment.

Our first remote public commenter is Colleen McKaylor.

Go ahead and press star six, Colleen.

Good afternoon, City Council members.

This is Colleen McKaylor representing the Lawhurst Community Council of 2400 residents.

We strongly support this Council Bill 121130. It's long overdue and it brings a shining light to clarify the ethical role of its consultants.

This legislation will prevent the double dipping by some consultants who are paid by our tax dollars, who influence both city policies, but also run a side business in election strategies.

The bill aims to prevent a backdoor politics using insider information, which as you all know, is strictly forbidden, for example, by the SEC, and transactions for finance in both the public and private sector.

Access to insider information is as valuable as money when it comes to politics.

This bill promotes the responsibility of the stewardship of the city's resources and processes by requiring the transparency and accountability of its consultants.

And it ensures that the public funds are available for scrutiny by all of its constituents and all elected officials.

And this oversight is exactly what residents expect and deserve from their local government.

Finally, passing the bill will strengthen Seattle's reputation as a city that leads with integrity and equity.

We have the opportunity to set a great example here for our region, our city and the nation.

So we encourage you to vote yes today in favor of legislation 121130. And thank you all for your service and especially Council President Sarah Nelson.

We will miss you.

Thank you, Colleen.

Our next speaker is David Haynes.

Hi, thank you.

David Haynes, where's the ethics rules that verifies that if you're a landlord sitting on the City Council, you have to acknowledge before each and every meeting that there's a conflict with your consideration.

Would Council be introducing this legislation if the Mayor won re-election?

Is this another virtue signaling deceitful distraction from the fact that ethics board and city council never addressed the conflicts of interest in ongoing self-dealing with all the landlords on the city council, sabotaging the real developers, disincentivizing robust war plans and minimalizing the 21st century livable amenities and restricting the quality of living as if landlords decide the fate and pursuits of happiness while distracting with racially tainting the comprehensive plan.

to hide the fact that city council landlords are self-dealing conflicts of interest about making sure nothing was built back better to take advantage of an ongoing supply and demand oppressive squeeze so that council landlords and their double, triple, quadruple remortgage house and rental property could be artificially inflated and easily flipped onto the next unsuspecting buyer who doesn't even have a better choice in home because corrupt city council landlords.

I noticed we have a new slumlord in Belltown virtually signaling about helping oppressed working class move into a condemnable building known as the El Rey to charge 21st century rent courtesy of a corrupt city hall favor for another privileged landlord and ex-counsel Richard Conlon.

This is more proof that city council has not kept the efforts honest because we have a homeless crisis right now and you all aren't dealing with that and it makes me wonder like within all the landlords, are you all gonna continue to undermine the integrity of the efforts on public safety and homeless crisis that the mayor sabotaged, that you all rode the coattails off, that you all capitulated to, that is exacerbating the crisis that we suffer every day dealing with policies that you all never addressed proper?

It's like Maritza Rivera should be investigated for browbeating and lobbying Wayne Barnett,

Thank you, David.

Our next speaker is Alberto Alvarez.

Hello, thank you.

Councilmember Hollingsworth, Councilmember Lynn, and Councilmember Kettle, good governance is not about rushing vindictive legislation after suffering a major election loss.

The lame duck member had plenty of opportunity all year to bring her proposal up for conversation and public scrutiny.

Self-interest guides her and her personal grievances always came before service to the city.

Waiting till after an embarrassing loss is proof positive that she ends her term as she always ran it.

with rushed legislation and using council's time as a form of revenge.

Bring back a sense of honor to this council and vote no on sour grapes.

Thank you and have a great day.

Thank you.

That was our last remote speaker.

We have no in-person speakers signed up.

Alright, thank you very much.

Public comment period is now closed.

Will the clerk please read the first item of business into the record.

agenda item one, CB 121130, an ordinance related to the ethics code establishing reporting and disclosure requirements for political consultants, prohibiting political consultants from concurrently performing consulting work with the city, establishing a cooling off period for political consultants, adding a new section 4.16.72 to the Seattle Municipal Code and amending section 4.16.30 to the Seattle Municipal Code for briefing and discussion.

Thank you very much.

So colleagues, this legislation is about good governance.

It's about strengthening public trust and confidence that the policy decisions made by electeds are in the public's best interest.

Let the record show that Councilmember Rivera is now here.

Seattle has strong ethics rules for elected officials, lobbyists and city employees to minimize the influence of their personal financial interests on policy but lacks similar safeguards for consultants who advise policy makers, opening the door to potential conflicts of interest that can undermine public trust.

So I developed this legislation after researching what other cities do on this front.

So for example, Portland requires political consultants to register and report their activities.

San Francisco's ethics code explicitly applies to consultants and prohibits them from participating in decisions where they have conflicts of interest.

Page 1 of their code states, if you are a city officer or employee, including consultants, but are not a board member or commissioner, you should disclose the conflict of interest on the public record and abstain from discussing and participating in the decision in any way.

Page 2 states, all elected officials, commissioners and employees are public officials and as are certain independent consultants working for the city.

And then it goes on.

So Lauren, during discussion we'll be talking a little bit about some of the similarities of this legislation with other cities, but I just want to get something straight right now and get it off the table.

This is not about Christian Sinderman's role within the Mayor's Office or the Herald Administration as reported by the Seattle Times.

That was an unprecedented situation, contracting with a campaign consultant for strategic and policy assistance.

That was a situation that is very highly unlikely to be replicated.

Rather, the blurring of the line that I'm most concerned about is more likely to occur in the context of ballot measures.

and I'm more concerned about it because we renew ballot measures or we renew levy lid lifts quite frequently and that is what hits our constituents in the pocketbook.

So this is what I'm thinking about going forward primarily.

This is simply straight up ethics reform that fills a gap in our code modeled on what's working in other cities.

And while this bill is receiving positive reception in the court of public opinion across the political spectrum, The Ethics and Elections Commission has unfortunately not weighed in, although I did request on November 18th that they do so at their monthly meeting last night, but there wasn't time for people to get up to speed and discuss it last night.

So Lauren will present the legislation, and I've asked Wayne Barnett, director of the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, to be here to answer any questions that any of you might have.

on existing code or anything else.

So with that, I would like you to, I invite our guests to come to the table and please introduce yourselves for the record and you may begin.

All right, good afternoon.

Lauren Henry, Central Staff.

Wayne Barnett, Executive Director, Ethics and Elections Commission.

Okay, so I think first I'll move through the presentation that was attached to the agenda that provides an overview of the bill, some policy similarities and differences with the other two jurisdictions that Council President already named, Portland and San Francisco, and then conclude with any questions.

All right, great.

So to open as an overview, this bill, Council Bill 121130, would amend the Seattle Municipal Code's Code of Ethics, that's 4.16, to define and regulate political consultants and political consultant services.

So those are the two key terms that are being introduced to our Code of Ethics.

I'll dive into them in just a moment.

As was already stated, the bill before you is modeled most closely to the reporting regulations provisions in Portland, though it does bear some similarities both in principle and underlying policy decision to the San Francisco law as well.

The primary purpose for the bill would be to require political consultants to register and to report on the political consultant services that they provide within the city of Seattle to the Seattle Ethics and Election Commission.

This bill, 121130, would also and uniquely prohibit political consultants from performing compensated work on an election campaign while being under contract with the city in a consulting role at the same time.

I want to draw a distinction here between city employees versus contractors of the city.

So this bill is narrowly tailored to speak to the role of a political consultant that is serving in a contract consulting capacity with the city, as opposed to, say, an FTE and full-time employment with the city that is not addressed by this bill.

And finally, by way of overview, I'll note that the SCEC is already empowered to enforce the code of ethics, and so rather than creating a new regulatory regime just for political consultants, this bill, by having its provisions placed within the code of ethics, uses the existing regulatory framework, all of the civil penalty provisions and other enforcement provisions, that you have for investigation, enforcement, and appeal, all of those things would apply similarly to political consultants.

So I'll point out at the end of my presentation some of the civil penalty provisions that would apply.

As I said, there's two key definitions that are being included into the code of ethics.

The first is the term political consultant and the second is political consulting services.

So I want to walk through what those definitions are because they become the main drivers of the reporting requirements and of the prohibited conduct that occurs later.

So the definition, as you can see on your screens and was provided in your agenda packet, the definition of a political consultant is a person that provides political consulting services to, and then there are several listed categories, an elected official, a candidate for city office, or the authorized campaign committee registered with the Washington Public Disclosure Commission for a city ballot proposition.

Note also that political consultant also has a few exclusionary definitionary elements.

Those are that a political consultant is not a city employee.

They're not an accountant, an attorney, a pollster, or a professional fundraiser that is operating in those distinct lanes as opposed to providing political consulting services.

That's a key distinction because it narrows the focus of the bill quite extensively.

Now the other driver, if a political consultant is defined as someone who provides political consulting services, then the definition of political consulting services becomes the main avenue to determine who's in within the scope of the bill's regulatory requirements and who's out.

So that definition of political consulting services are actions in city campaign management, and political strategy services.

And then there's an including but not limited to, and it lists many of the typical roles that you'd find within the political consulting field.

Those are advocacy and strategy, political polling, assisting or advising in voter contact strategies and services.

You have media strategy, policy training, political image consulting, The list is very iterative.

I'd note that this definition tracks one for one with the definition Portland, so it was a lift and incorporation into our code.

All right, as I said, the bill has two main drivers.

One, a requirement that political consultants register and provide information to the SEEC about their political consulting contracts and activities for the jurisdiction in Seattle, be it a candidate campaign or a ballot initiative campaign.

So to answer those few threshold questions of who would actually have to register, that's anyone falling within that definition of political consultant.

Note that that's both an individual or a business entity.

As for when registration would occur, the bill notes that registration must happen within 15 days after providing any political consulting services.

And then when does registration need to be updated?

There's two types of updates that would be required.

First, within 15 days of a change in the registration information.

That's anything from a change in your contact info to those in your employee that are also performing the political consulting services work.

And then secondly, there is a termination statement that's required to be filed within 15 days of the termination of that political consulting service work that was provided for an election campaign.

Election campaign is also a defined term in the code, and so that term would apply to both a candidate election campaign and a ballot measure campaign.

Within the existing bill, there is also a reporting requirement for elected officials.

Those are all officials who were elected to elective office or appointed to elective office, and that's also a defined term in our code.

Within 15 days after the end of each quarter, and quarter is a defined term as well, an elected official must file a statement with the SEC Executive Director, Wayne Barnett, identifying for that quarter any political consultants that they contracted with and then what political services were provided and the date that those services started.

Similarly to the last slide around the requirement for updates, same timeframe applies for elected officials.

Elected official must update the information within 15 days of a change to that reporting information.

There's also a provision in the bill concerning the transparency angle of what the SEC does with the information that it receives.

The commission would be obligated to post on its website all the information submitted in a statement or the registration within five days of receipt.

Portland had a similar provision.

Their timeframe was three days.

Ours is only unique in that it is a five-day requirement.

Now, as I said, so many of the bill's provisions are a lift from Portland's registration law.

Note, the major difference between Portland's law and ours is that Portland's is, and San Francisco, they are sunshine laws.

They have reporting obligations, but they don't have the same prohibited conduct measures that are found within our council bill.

but that said, as it relates to the reporting aspects of the bill, these two track very closely together.

I'll just note the differences, because there are far more similarities than differences, so I'm just gonna note the differences here, assume if I'm not mentioning it that there's more of a one-to-one correlation.

The first difference I'd note, is that Portland's law applies to political consultants for elected officials and successful candidates to city elected office or successful campaign committees.

Our law would apply regardless of the success of a campaign outcome.

The final note that I'll make there is that Portland's only applies to political consultants that make that work their trade or profession, and we have no similarly limiting provision within the scope of our definition.

Council Bill 121130, as I said, would take this and apply it to any candidate for office, but only applies to the authorized campaign committees for ballot measures, not the campaign committees for candidates.

So that's a uniqueness in the definition.

One other difference in registration that I wanted to note between Portland and this council bill is that in Portland, the political consultant must report the names and the contacts of their principals, employees, and contractors that provided political consulting services to a city elected official.

Our bill that's in front of you, Council Bill 121130, does not have that same restriction, and so a political consultant would be required to register their name and their contact info of all of the principal's employees and contractors, regardless of whether they worked on a particular campaign or not.

So in other words, disclose your infrastructure if you are performing the political consulting services.

I just want to note a few of San Francisco's reporting law distinctions.

San Francisco's law focuses on reporting and transparency, does not have the prohibited conduct provisions that I'll go into in a moment.

In San Francisco, its political consulting definition is limited to those consultants that earned $1,000 or more in a calendar year.

Ours does not have a dollar value assigned.

The reporting information that San Francisco had appeared to be more detailed, including how much a political consultant was paid.

This council bill is silent as to that particular detail of the contract.

And then in San Francisco's version, the political consultants are the ones that file the quarterly reports.

In the council bill in front of you, it's the elected officials that would file those quarterly reports.

I'll pause there to see before I turn to the prohibited conduct provisions, gonna check in and see if they're early questions.

If not, I'll keep powering through.

Council President.

Are you going to mention the changes that are- Yes.

Okay.

Yes, I was going to just do them collectively at the end if that's okay.

Sure.

Sure.

Alright, not seeing any other hands, we'll keep moving.

Within Council Bill 121130, there is a prohibited conduct provision that lists three different elements of restricted activity for political consultants.

They are, number one, to provide political consulting services without reporting them, as is required under the bill, to perform compensated work on both an election campaign and provide consulting services with the city at the same time.

and then finally to perform compensated political consulting services for an election campaign within one year after the termination of a consulting services contract with the city.

So if a political consultant has a consulting contract with the city, upon the termination of that contract there's a one-year cooling period before they can engage in political consulting work for the city.

And by the city I don't mean of the city as a client, but I would mean within the city's jurisdiction.

So a candidate for elective office in the city or a ballot measure that's being put forward for the city.

I'll speak to the existing code, though follow-up questions as to the specifics are maybe most appropriate for the executive director of the SCEC who's with us today.

Regarding the existing code, the enforcement provisions would apply to the political consultants and the elected officials that are regulated under this bill.

So those existing provisions are in 4.16.100 and they, at least as it relates to political consulting services, there were three components that I think would be most likely to be enforced, I would say.

One is that elected officials are prohibited from knowingly using a political consultant that's in violation of the bill's provisions.

So those existing enforcement provisions would apply to any official that knowingly uses a political consultant who, for example, has violated the cooling off period or who hasn't been up to date with their reporting requirements.

Next, no person may submit false, fraudulent, or misleading info in any statement or registration to the SCEC.

If they did, the existing enforcement provisions of our code of ethics would apply.

And then finally, if a person fails to report as required, they would face the potential penalties, including civil liability, that are in our existing code.

One unique feature of the bill that I do want to highlight relates to contracts.

There's a provision in the bill that says that contracts that violate the provisions of the bill would be considered void.

That would possibly involve the repayment of any compensation given under that contract.

So for example, if a political consultant violated the bill, the contract that they are working under for a city campaign might have to be repaid if the SEC ruled that there was a violation and ruled that the contract was void.

Then if any person violated subsection F2 of the prohibited conduct of political consultants, that would mean that they worked for both a campaign and a city consulting contract at the same time, they'd be precluded from contracting with the city as a consultant for five years.

This is a term that's otherwise known in our code as debarment, It's a process that FAS currently utilizes in keeping track of who our consultants are, and so there's a mechanism by which FAS would be able to classify someone as debarred or ineligible to hold a city consulting contract for a five-year term.

I'd note that within 4.16.100B, that's the enforcement section that's existing in our code and is not being amended by this council bill, there's a list of enforcement penalty options for Wayne Barnett and the SEC to evaluate and attribute to any found violation of the ethics code.

One of those is a monetary fine of up to $5,000 per violation or three times the economic value of anything sought or received in violation of our code of ethics.

So that's just one example of a potential civil penalty that would attach to a violation.

The executive director of the SEC establishes the fine amount but cannot exceed that $5,000 threshold and would be able to attach any other available code sanctions.

All those violations are subject to appeal.

The appeal provisions are already in our code.

Now, as Council President alluded to, within your agenda packet, there is a substitute bill that makes three discrete changes to the version that's introduced and before you right now.

So finally, I'll note what those three changes are.

One is a change within the political consultant definition to define political consultants as those who are compensated or paid to perform their work.

work, so volunteers would be excluded from the regulatory scheme of the bill.

The second change in the substitute bill is that it amends the quarterly reporting section.

Recall that right now in the introduced version it's the elected officials who file that quarterly report.

This change in the substitute version would have the political consultants doing that quarterly reporting, not the elected officials.

And then finally, it adds a fourth prohibited action to provide a cooling off period between the end of a political campaign and the beginning of a consulting contract.

So recall in the introduced version, that cooling off period goes from the end of a consulting contract, one year period before a political campaign.

This would be at the conclusion of a political campaign, there's a one year cooling period before you can engage in contract consulting work.

for the city.

So those are the three discrete changes that are in the introduced, no, that are changes to the introduced version and in the substitute bill before you.

Council President.

Just a point of clarification.

The reason why, because it was modeled so closely in other cities, the original bill requiring the elected to do the reporting is because in a lot of other cities, the election season or the campaign season is not as clearly delimited as it is here.

So people can be kind of campaigning on an ongoing basis, raising money, etc.

Whereas our election rules are different and so that is why.

And I had not caught that discrepancy to begin with.

So just trying to explain why that.

that change was made and also when it comes to compensated, just wanted to make sure that things were more clear because a lot of people give a lot of advice in this town.

So that was the reason behind that.

Go ahead, sorry.

Didn't mean to interrupt.

No, that's great.

This concludes the overview of the bill.

I'm happy to take any questions.

Well, thank you.

Thank you very much.

I'll open it to questions right, you know, immediately, but I just want to note that you mentioned something about a cooling off period and I didn't hear in your, can you please address whether or not, we do do cooling off periods for city employees, correct?

Yes, so there's a provision within our existing code of ethics on leaving city employment, and there are ethical duties that each city employee must be bound to when they leave their city job.

It involves what you can do with the sensitive or confidential information that you learned as a part of your role with the city.

It involves the ways in which you can accept contracts with the city moving forward.

and so this cooling off period would be specific to the consultant contracts because city employees are already regulated in their ethical conduct after they leave the city.

Thank you for that.

So the overarching goal here is to bring some rules around consultants that are applied to either lobbyists, the reporting functions, and also the cooling off period and some of the prohibitions that go along with the enforcement of those rules.

And I just want to restate that the goal here is to establish very clear rules so that we can reduce the perception of the potential conflict of interest amongst consultants that we are already trying to do when it comes to elected officials' financial interests and other entities that work with the city.

And under current rules, under current ethics rules, a consultant can simultaneously advise city officials on policy while working on political campaigns, including ballot measures, which I remind people is what I'm really concerned about, related to those same policies.

And they can leverage insider knowledge that they get from these relationships developed in the course of working on policy matters or through city work.

and they can parlay that into electoral advantage for a ballot measure, a candidate after that.

And so I just want to sort of put clear in my words what some of the problems that exist right now are not necessarily problems but the state of play currently.

The bill does not regulate what consultants can say or what advice they can give.

It simply creates transparency and establishes boundaries between public service and private profit, the same principles that we already apply to lobbyists and electeds and employees.

So that's a more jumbled up way of saying what you said in a short amount of time, but I just am trying to convey the principles behind this legislation.

So now I will open it up to any comments or questions.

Chair?

Yes, Councilmember Kittle.

I was curious, thank you for the briefing, Ms. Lauren and Mr. Burnett, thank you for being here.

It's an interesting bill for many reasons, actually both bills we have to substitute, given our roles and the lanes that we're in.

One of the things I noted in your presentation, you seem to be making a point about city FTEs.

Is there anything, because you seem to foot stomp it a little bit, can you speak to that a little bit more and why that distinction was being made?

Yes, happy to.

I'd first note, within this presentation, playing the role of a policy analyst, so within that vein, I'll note that there is a state law that protects the full measure of a city employee, any governmental entity across the state, county, city, that protects those employees' First Amendment rights to expression and association.

and allows for the simultaneous work for a city and political consulting, advising, or political work in general.

That law applies to all City of Seattle employees.

and so I make the distinction in the presentation and the distinction is made in the bill that it is contract consultants for the city that would be regulated under the bill.

I'd also note that in my other role, I serve as the legislative council to this body and I'm happy to take offline So, any questions about the intersection of that state law with this bill?

Thank you, Ms. Henry.

That kind of goes to, it's interesting in like the public safety side, you know, I'm always interested in clean lineup.

Like we just did this at the end of our committee schedule in terms of aligning the SMC with the RCW.

So that kind of goes to the same thing, you know, the idea of aligning with state law.

and so I do find that interesting because of the, like Portland and San Francisco, obviously those are two different states, but to the point that you just made, understanding the RCW SMC piece of this is really important, so thank you for that.

That's a really good point you bring up.

So San Francisco basically explicitly includes consultants in their code of ethics and basically says they're not different from what the actual employees or electeds are bound to.

And this is explicitly saying that we are not talking about city employees, we're talking about paid political consultants.

but so that is being careful to make that distinction.

Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Lauren and Wayne for being here.

Nice to see both of you.

Just in terms of the FTEs, I mean, it doesn't apply to them, but there are other ethics rules that apply.

You can't, when you do advocacy or you do volunteer work or paid work, you cannot do so under your title at the city.

You have to do it as a personal, you know, and so sometimes we have employees that come to advocate even in chambers, but they always say, I'm here on my personal capacity, not my official city role.

So I believe we already have ethics laws that apply to city employees in that way.

And so it makes sense that this makes that distinction that doesn't apply because we already have something that applies to city employees.

Correct?

Yes.

Yeah.

I just want to say about this particular rule, this particular proposal that I understand, Council President, you are trying to bring transparency that other cities like Portland and San Francisco have specifically addressed.

and Seattle has not addressed in the SMC and in our ethics codes related to this work.

So I appreciate that you're always looking with an eye toward transparency and good governance that way.

And so I understand that that is the intent behind this proposal that you're making for this law.

So I appreciate that you are always focused on ensuring that our constituents understand, have the full transparency on all that is happening at the city because that's not always apparent.

and constituents having more information is better than less.

And I appreciate you Wayne, you as the enforcer of all the laws that we do to give transparency at the city for our constituents.

You play an important role and the commission that supports your work plays an important role that way.

And just to say that we all are as elected officials are required to report yearly on all our own, not just work, but just a lot of personal information for transparency's sake so that the public is aware as we're doing our work.

So anyway, not a question in this case but just a comment about I understand the intent behind why you are bringing this and I always appreciate your eye toward the good governance piece at the city and I know many constituents also appreciate that as well.

Thank you.

Thank you for those comments, both of you.

And getting back to something that you were saying, Councilmember Rivera, it really, there is a very fine, not fine line, there is a very visible, hardcore line between what we can do as electeds when it comes to ballot initiatives.

As soon as we vote to send a ballot initiative to the county to get on the ballot, we cannot talk about it, except for in very rare cases when we are explicitly at asked by a reporter in a public forum.

Wayne, you can tell me if I'm getting all of this wrong, but we know what we can and cannot do.

We know that when we are an incumbent running for re-election, then we cannot use any city property.

We cannot be present and engage in any kind of electioneering.

We can't talk about other campaigns.

So that's just pretty much...

That's very clear and that's off the table as well.

And so what this does is it also just gets at a gap in our code where people in positions of power and who carries a certain amount of legitimacy and authority are also in a realm of influence and it just is basically just kind of establishing across the board the similar kinds of rules that will assure our constituents that we're playing by the books.

And if you just strip away all the sort of the goody-two-shoes language that we're talking about and all this stuff about good governance and transparency and minimizing conflict of interest, what we're really talking about here is creating a level playing field among the professionals who we hire to give us policy advice.

that's what I'm trying to do here.

And we're trying to get away from some of the insider politics that's really at the heart of public distrust of government.

You hear about, you know, and people thinking that there are backroom deals going on, et cetera, et cetera.

That narrative is out there and the more we can do to dispel that thinking about our own governmental practices, the better.

Because people hate that.

They do not like the feeling that something is going on that they don't know about but that is happening because of somebody's insider status.

And so that's what I'm trying to do with this bill and that's why you'll see comments online about this legislation ranging from, this seems dot, dot, dot, incredibly reasonable, lots of opportunities for conflict of interest currently, quote, heartbreaking.

The worst person you know just made a good point.

By the way, I know that that is a meme and so I'm just owning up to it.

Yes, a lot of people who would probably find themselves in or would see themselves to be on the opposite end of the political spectrum do also like this because it's getting at something that across the board nobody really likes, which is to feel like there's something going on in their government that they can't understand, that there is some influence that is not really named.

And so frankly, I think that's sort of what I'm trying to get at.

As to the timing of this legislation, sometimes you don't become aware of something, you don't distill it into your mind until it appears in a media story or in reporting or whatever.

You hear about something, then all of a sudden you're aware of it, and frankly, that is what happened to me as well.

but I did wait until after the election because I wanted to avoid any kind of perception of political self-interest on my own behalf.

I didn't want to drag the mayor into the mud and then soon thereafter we were in budget and I was able to get this onto the referral calendar the first opportunity that I could.

So that explains the timing.

So before, unless anybody else hasn't, go ahead, Council Member Lynn.

Thank you, President Nelson.

Yeah, just a couple comments, questions.

One thing, just in general, when we are considering new regulations, I think it's important to make sure that we have a clearly identified concern that we're trying to address and that the regulations that we're adopting are kind of narrowly tailored to address that concern and that there aren't other you know inadvertent sort of consequences or things that are being dragged in.

And so I do want to make sure that as we consider this that I have a full understanding of the concern that you're trying to address which I hear is you know about consultants for levies or and I wonder if those need to be addressed through the ethics rules or if there's other ways of addressing those concerns through how we hire consultants or contract through our contracting laws.

So that's just kind of one generic question.

And just kind of to put a point on like one concern for this draft is we already have fairly robust reporting requirements for campaigns.

We report to the Washington PDC, we report to the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission.

And so it looks like to me, if you're a first-time candidate, you're running a campaign, you hire a consultant, now there would be an additional reporting requirement as a consultant as well.

and so just a little bit of concern of, you know, if we already have really robust reporting requirements under, you know, our PDC, does this add another sort of reporting requirement on top of those and is that necessary or is there a way to more narrowly, you know, carve out who needs to report?

I'll get at your first question.

And so why the ethics code?

And believe me, I did go back and forth on that.

I was thinking, why don't we put this where we have all the rules for contracting and procurement and all of that stuff.

And so I did have a long conversation with FAS.

And then also I spoke with Executive Director Barnett.

And I basically said, is there anything that First of all, it turns out that it didn't seem to really fit because the contracting regulations were quite specific and related around projects.

And so there was that reason why it didn't seem to fit in there.

And then conversations with Wayne Barnett, basically you just said, if I recall correctly, is there anything that can be done?

And you basically said you're just gonna have to amend the ethics code to address this.

So that's how we ended up in this situation talking about ethics instead of contracting.

As for the other, did you have any thoughts on the, because this is related to political consultants when they are working within the city family on other projects like a like it applies to the political consultants that are working on a ballot initiative or an electoral campaign or that might be and it's be considered for a policy body of work but Lauren did you have any further thoughts or did you

I guess within the provisions of this bill, the unique component about the reporting would be that all of the documents received by the SCEC is published on their website.

Perhaps Wayne could speak to this.

I don't know that our own SCEC publishes the existing reporting documents that you were speaking to, though they could.

Beyond that, I would need to look into and get back to you about what types of information are already filed with the state and the SEC and to the extent that there is duplication or new information that would be at the SEC's disposal and on their website as a result of this bill.

I'll look into it.

Thank you.

All right, let's see, any other questions or comments?

Go ahead, Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, I appreciate the opportunity, I know there's not a vote today and this is just a conversation, so full disclosure, my husband's a political consultant in town, as Wayne Barnett very well knows.

I wanted to address, Council Member Lynn, spoken like a true attorney, I love it, I have a lot of greed, did not practice in the way you have, but I love the conversation about narrowly tailored.

And I feel like this particular bill sounds like it's narrowly tailored because it only applies to those political consultants that both have a contract with the city and then would be engaged in some kind of non-city related campaign like a ballot measure.

So in that case, it sounds like our legal counsel, Lauren Henry, and also Executive Director Barnett, gave advice, it sounds like where it is pretty narrowly, it is narrowly tailored to that.

So it doesn't cover all political consultants, it's just those folks that have the contract with the city.

And also full disclosure, my husband's never had a contract with the city.

But again, the interest of transparency, I'm saying that.

But to address the concern about narrowly tailored, my understanding is that this is narrowly tailored to meet that specific consultant who both has a contract with the city because we do have political consultants that have ongoing contracts with the city and then separately might work on a ballot measure like the transportation levy for instance we just had or the families in that levy next year we're going to have a libraries levy and those campaigns are not city campaigns, they're independent campaigns.

So this would apply to the consultant that has a city contract and then might work on that independent campaign.

That's how I'm reading this, but please correct me if I'm wrong, Lauren or...

or executive director Barnett?

Yes, under existing state and local ethics law, it is already impermissible for the city to hire a political consultant for campaign purposes.

That's not a city function.

So when we say the city, we're talking about city-related candidates for city office or ballot measures that impact city residents.

both of which are independent from the city.

That's exactly right.

It must be under state and local law.

That's right.

Oh, you look like you...

No.

Okay.

Thank you for that distinction.

If you, I was, while you were talking, I was thinking we just got done with the, the family and I'd let it be.

And, but we'll be go, you'll be going into the implementation plan and you'll have to vote on the implementation plan.

So you would not want the consultant of a school, a school board member to be involved in that policymaking for the packaging of that, of that implementation plan or advising council on on that implementation plan.

I'm just providing a different example for the one that you're giving that could be relevant coming up.

Not that they would be paid for.

Right, right.

Is that a new question?

Go ahead.

Yeah, I just wanted to make sure I understand, but at least as I look at the bill, there's two or a few different parts, but there's both the kind of reporting part, which appears to me to be much broader than the prohibitions.

I see there's prohibitions, but the reporting part seems to be at least on my read, any political consultant, and it's broadly defined, including for not just campaigns that win, for losing campaigns.

So I just want to distinguish between the reporting kind of registration type, which is very broad, versus the prohibition part, which is more narrow.

Would that be accurate?

Yeah, I think that's an accurate assessment.

Okay, not seeing any other comments or questions.

When would you, if there are requested amendments, when would you need those?

What an excellent question.

I feel like I'm always supposed to ask that, but maybe I shouldn't invite that.

What an excellent question.

This will appear for possible vote discussion and possible vote next Thursday, is that right?

Right.

So with agenda published on Wednesday, perhaps ideas half-baked or otherwise by Monday afternoon so we can do some drafting on Tuesday.

That sounds good.

Thank you.

And again, this is not designed to be a controversial bill.

This is a good governance, transparency, filling of gap in our existing ethics code.

All right, thank you very much for being here.

Will the clerk please read item number two or the next item into the record?

Agenda item number two, council bill 121131, an ordinance related to city employment commonly referred to as the pay zone ordinance, adjusting the pay zone structures for the 2026 for the city's discretionary pay programs and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you for that.

So, There are two ways we could have gone with this.

One way would be to send it just directly to full council, before I became president.

That's largely the way a lot of the HR bills were handled when things would, for example, the quarterly employment legislation in which certain positions move from civil service to exempt or vice versa.

A lot of that went straight to full council.

I decided that this committee needed to weigh in because there are sometimes financial impacts to those changes and we would take one or two meetings.

This is one of those cases that could very well have probably gone to full council given the sort of the pro-formanness of it, but I wanted it in committee and I really thank you very much for, Amanda, taking this on.

HR couldn't be here today at the table, but this is executive generated and we're just trying to move it forward and I am hoping that we can vote it out of committee today.

Go ahead, please.

Amanda Allen with the central staff.

And I'm just gonna share my screen, maybe.

Oh, and while you're doing that, I do have to say that this is one of three HR bills that we'll have.

There are two more next week.

All right, when the clerk showed me this earlier today, it seemed very straightforward.

and it was.

Okay, thank you, council members.

I'm here to walk you through the Seattle Department of Human Resources Pay Zone Ordinance.

This is, as the council president alluded, a fine example of the essential and sometimes administrative legislation that comes your way.

This pay zone ordinance will help the city to ensure that those in discretionary pay programs receive equitable pay in accordance with prior legislation that has already been passed.

For example, in December of 2024, the City Council passed legislation to set the annual wage increase for 2025 and to set the calculation for the increase for 2026. That calculation has resulted in a 3.6% annual wage increase for 2026. and since that time there have been various collective bargaining agreements that have come before the Council and have been adopted and most recently the City Council passed a 2026 adopted budget which included allowance for this 3.6% annual wage increase.

This ordinance is going to help to update those pay ban structures to be in alliance with the annual wage increase.

It will impact titles like managers, strategic advisors, executives, as well as some select titles like the chief of Seattle IT, the fire chief, the police chief.

So there are 15 different discretionary pay programs that will be impacted by this legislation.

Really the purpose of the ordinance is just to comply with the rules as set out in the municipal code that the SDHR director is responsible for setting the pay structures and that those structures must be approved by the city council.

and the director has recommended this change to help ensure that prior legislation will be implemented in a timely fashion at the beginning of the next year.

It will impact 2,600 employees, 1,000 of whom are represented.

The remaining are non-rep employees.

And again, this is maintenance legislation, so to speak, routine that happens annually within the legislation to ensure that it is implemented in accordance with our established pay periods.

There's a prior ratify and confirm clause that allows these pay ban changes to be made as of December 31st, 2025. and let's see, I think it just helps to ensure the consistency that all of your prior legislation can be enabled in accordance with the timing.

and if there are any questions, I'm happy to answer them, but that's the end of my horse and pony show.

I really appreciate it.

That was a very thorough explanation of routine and annual legislation that we have to do to keep everything in line with prior acts with ENSO.

I really appreciate that, and I'm glad that we had the time to discuss that today.

Are there any questions that folks have about this legislation?

All right.

Hearing no questions, I move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 121-131.

Is there a second?

Thank you, it's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of Council Bill 121-131.

Final questions, going, going, gone.

All right.

Could you please call the roll?

Council Member Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Council Member Kettle?

Council Member Lynn?

Yes.

Council Member Rivera?

Aye.

Chair Nelson?

Aye.

Four in favor, none opposed.

All right, the motion passes and the bill with the committee's recommendation will be sent to the City Council.

All right, now due to the timing of today's meeting and in anticipation of the lengthy December 16th City Council meeting agenda, believe me that's gonna be a long committee probably, I'm going to request that the rules be suspended to send this bill to the December 9th meeting instead of December 16th City Council meeting.

If there is no objection, the council rules will be suspended to send Council Bill 121131 to the December 9th City Council meeting.

Hearing no objection, the rules are suspended and the bill will be sent to the December 9th City Council meeting agenda.

All right.

Colleagues, this concludes today's meeting.

We're at the end of the agenda, and our next, unless anybody has anything to add, is there any further business?

Okay.

Our next committee meeting is scheduled for Thursday, December 11th.

Our next and last committee meeting is scheduled for next Thursday, December 11th at 2 p.m.

And hearing no further business, it is 3.07, and I wish you all a good evening.

Okay, we are adjourned.

Thank you.