Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan’s attempt to veto City Council measures to defund the police department was handily thwarted in a 7-2 vote this week.
Three bills — Council Bills 119862, 119863, and 119825 — will move forward despite the Democratic mayor’s stance that doing so will have unintended consequences for the city’s homeless population.
“At the end of the day, after previous promises of a 50 percent cut to SPD, the reductions to the SPD budget are almost exactly those proposed by the Mayor and former Chief Best, but none of the other issues Council admitted are problems have been addressed,” she said in a statement released Tuesday.
“Votes do have consequences,” she continued. “Because of Council’s actions today, the Navigation team will be eliminated, severely restricting the City’s ability to move people out of homelessness and deal with encampments for the rest of this year. The City will move forward with layoffs for the City staff who are coordinating and helping individuals experiencing homelessness at encampments across the City.”
Ms. Durkan added that she is committed to a $100 million investment budget for Black, Indigenous and people of color communities.
Seattle has been mired in unrest for months since the death in Minneapolis of George Floyd while in police custody.
The retirement of Police Chief Carmen Best in August also followed calls to defund the department amid deadly violence in the “Capitol Hill Organized Protest” (CHOP) zone occupied by Black Lives Matter and Antifa activists.
Groups like Decriminalize Seattle and King County Equity cheered City Council’s successful override of the mayor’s veto.
“Today, we are encouraged to see the City Council—emboldened by the support of tens of thousands of BIPOC community members—resist Mayor Durkan’s bullying tactics and anti-Black obstructionism,” the group wrote, a local NBC affiliate reported. “Specifically, City Council upheld their decision to divest from the Seattle Police Department (SPD) by 3 million dollars—less than 1% of SPD’s annual budget—and invest modestly in Black communities.”
Seattle City Council President M. Lorena González categorized the council’s relationship with the mayor as “functional and focused” after the vote.
“I have had productive conversations over the past several weeks, and I feel hopeful about continued collaboration going into the fall budget deliberations, and our ability to meet the community’s needs,” Ms. González said in a statement.
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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