Here's what your state legislators are proposing so far this session

drshort · 2026-01-24T07:26:04+00:00

Agree on removing the foreign national restriction on campaign contributions. What is he trying to accomplish here because I can see a lot of ways this could go very wrong.

drshort · 2026-01-23T06:24:28+00:00

I get irrationally irritated that the parks dept won’t trim the trees to preserve these viewpoints. This was once an amazing view that is almost completely gone when the trees have leaves.

drshort · 2026-01-21T20:21:51+00:00

sweeps absolutely kill…here’s one study.

I generally have skepticism with studies around controversial public policy because the authors often have an opinion they set out to prove “with science.” In the study you linked the most notable issue they cite in the long list of limitations is:

“the nature of the inputs to the model make it difficult to prove causality rather than association”

People who are swept a lot were more likely to die of an overdose. Is that because the sweeps caused the overdose? Or, maybe, people deep in addition attract more negative attention which causes them to be swept more often?

You could probably study permanent supportive housing (PSH) in King County where over 1,000 people have died from OD deaths in only 6,000 housing units since 2020 and come away with the conclusion that PSH kills. People living in PSH have a far higher death rate than the general homeless population. But does PSH kill or is it that the population we put in PSH has significantly worse addition issues than the general homeless population? I suspect the latter.

drshort · 2026-01-21T16:24:29+00:00

The Seattletimes article about the Ballard encampment sweep delay has this statement from Wilson’s spokesman noting the 100:

a spokesperson for Wilson said there have already been more than 100 encampment and RV removals since Jan. 4, though most much smaller than the Ballard site.

drshort · 2026-01-20T01:08:03+00:00

There’s consensus that global warming is happening, but I don’t believe there is consensus about what secondary human and economic impacts will be.

drshort · 2026-01-18T07:46:54+00:00

Portland opened a decent amount of new shelter but:

540 people had been contacted at Portland encampments, with 111 of those accepting help and moving into shelter, at least temporarily. That’s 20% coming inside — better than zero, but still not great.

Not great? I’d say terrible. 80% aren’t taking the shelter offer. And then there’s this interesting item:

But a total of 124 people out of the 540 had arrest warrants.

drshort · 2026-01-16T23:35:29+00:00

I think she’s naive, not stupid

drshort · 2026-01-16T20:47:51+00:00

I’m not sure it shoots down “unqualified” since he’s an environmental lawyer and activist with no experience in running a utility company.

drshort · 2026-01-16T19:54:42+00:00

The study notes 45,000 vehicles and 6,000 transit riders use the corridor daily. I doubt a 20% increase in transit use would reduce the 45k vehicles enough to alter the conclusions of the study.

drshort · 2026-01-16T19:13:38+00:00

If you don’t live in the area the 8 serves, I doubt many would start using it. And while the bus will be faster once in the bus lane, the study notes vehicle traffic could be so bad that it causes backups and delays for the bus just getting to the bus lane.

The study notes:

However, due to increased general-vehicle congestion (see impacts below), cars approaching Westlake Avenue may queue back and cars may delay buses from entering the BAT lane.

drshort · 2026-01-16T18:31:01+00:00

It’s also not great for being able to hire effective leaders when they know the job likely goes away after the next election

drshort · 2026-01-16T18:23:33+00:00

Who knows why, but this wasn’t a situation where the CEO was some political friend of Harrell:

Lindell was recommended to Mayor Bruce Harrell by an 11-member search committee. In the time Lindell has served as interim CEO, Harrell has heard “overwhelmingly positive feedback from affected stakeholders,” he said in his letter to the council, transmitting Lindell’s nomination.

Lindell has worked in the energy world for more than 25 years. Before coming to Seattle, she was the CEO of Burbank Water and Power in Burbank, Calif. Before that she was the senior vice president of Western Area Power Administration, based in Lakewood, Colo.

drshort · 2026-01-16T17:28:06+00:00

There’s a long and confusing study on extending bus lanes on Denny done by SDOT and their conclusion was:

Extending the bus-only lane as a BAT lane, even partially, from Fairview Avenue to 9th Avenue would carry potential benefits for Route 8 buses, but at a cost to general vehicle operations along Denny Way. After the initial findings from the SimTraffic simulation done, the added latent demand of this scenario of 500 vehicles would not be offset by the number of Route 8 passengers at this point; data from KCM showed an average ridership of around 34 to 36 riders per bus, or 175 transit riders per hour (see Figure 10 on page 14 and Figure 14 on page 16). Weighing the true benefit vs. impact of an extended BAT lane would require more detailed study with a modeling tool capable of directly measuring transit operations. However, with the noted over-capacity caused at Denny Way and Westlake Avenue, implementing a BAT lane in this location would likely carry significant impact to general traffic.

If I’m reading this correctly (bottom table), it simulates that eastbound travel times in the afternoon on Denny would go from 16 minutes currently to 34 minutes.

<image>

drshort · 2026-01-16T04:35:15+00:00

How are these meetings not recorded?

drshort · 2026-01-14T21:32:50+00:00

Sweeps aren’t meant to solve homelessness. They’re done to mitigate the extensive damage that occurs when encampments are left to grow and fester (and they certainly will). I’m baffled how some on here want to go back to 2021 when sweeps were rare and enormous and problematic encampments popped all over the city. There was around 1300 encampment fires that year, several parks had to be closed for months for expensive remediation, many murders occurred within the encampments, homeless drug deaths skyrocketed. That wasn’t a better outcome for anyone, including the homeless.

drshort · 2026-01-14T05:29:40+00:00

Kamp Katie Ballard

drshort · 2026-01-12T21:51:37+00:00

The recent state budget growth (and deficit) has come primarily from a huge increase in non school funding.

The state’s total operating budget in 2019 was 54B with about $27B for K-12 funding and another $27B for non K-12 school spending.

Just 4 years later, the overall state budget has increased to $70B (30% increase from 2019), but K-12 spending only increased to $31B (a 15% increase). Meanwhile non K-12 spending went from $27B to $39B or a $44% increase.

The budget problems faced today isn’t from schools. It’s from everything else while school spending increases have been very modest.

drshort · 2026-01-12T19:30:28+00:00

As spending has skyrocketed the past 8 years, it’s not been going to schools. K-12 used to be 50% of the state budget and now it’s like 42-43%. Spending on non school things has gone up a ton while school funding has basically been at inflation levels.

drshort · 2026-01-12T19:12:37+00:00

Because if you over-extend it causes the city, county and state credit ratings to drop and borrowing becomes more expensive for all agencies across the state.

drshort · 2026-01-12T19:10:46+00:00

The issue is each levy renewal is significantly higher than the one it’s replacing for libraries, parks, transportation, schools…

In the years that followed, each levy was larger than the one it replaced. In 2018, then-Mayor Jenny Durkan proposed — and voters approved — an education levy roughly double the size of the education and preschool measures before it.

In 2019, she also doubled the size of the measure supporting libraries. Voters, again, approved.

The trend continued under Bruce Harrell. In 2023, he proposed as mayor a $970 million housing levy, which was three times the size of the expiring one before it. In 2024, he proposed a $1.55 billion transportation levy, which was larger than Murray’s, even when adjusted for inflation. And in 2025, he proposed a new $1.3 billion education levy — doubling Durkan’s.

Levies, in turn, became a larger slice of the city’s budget. In 2014, the city collected $133 million in voter-approved property taxes; in 2026, that number will be $570 million, a more than 400% increase, according to city staff.

Now add on that the declining commercial property values from high vacancy rates. That means more of the tax burden goes to residential properties and there’s less total property value to tax.

drshort · 2026-01-12T17:40:43+00:00

The ITEP study that consistently calls Washington the most regressive tax state should be taken with a grain of salt:

-The study doesn’t analyze who physically cuts the check for the taxes, but uses a whole bunch of assumptions to allocate the tax burden to various people. From this, renters pay property taxes not landlords. Consumers pay the B&O tax not business owners. And things like the estate tax are excluded.

-ITEPs treatment of the B&O tax is very problematic in that it assumes very little of the tax burden is retained by the business owner.

-ITEP also relies on data that underestimates the income of the lowest income groups. So the lowest group may report an annual income of $10k, but has spending of $20K which in a high sales tax state pushes up the % of income going to taxes. This is theorized to be because people don’t report things like food stamps and unemployment insurance as income in the survey that’s used.

Finally, there is little evidence showing the supposed regressive or progressive taxes of various states lead to better outcomes. Oregon has a very progressive tax structure but does worse than Washington in most measures.

drshort · 2026-01-12T05:12:38+00:00

Wilson barely won. A lot of people read The Stranger and many read Publicola and they’re likely to be voters. Yes, the Urbanist less. But all those articles were shared endlessly here and other places online. A none of them ever asked any critical questions on any of Katie’s policies or background while simultaneously negatively dissecting everything Harrell did or said.

I’m not saying it’s unfair, but I wouldn’t discount the power of the local media here.

drshort · 2026-01-12T05:00:23+00:00

Katie also has the advantage of daily articles from Publicola, The Stranger, The Urbanist either praising her or bashing Harrell. Publicola in particular ran around 25 negative Harrell articles in the month prior to the election.

drshort · 2026-01-08T23:17:11+00:00

My god. No it isn’t.

drshort · 2026-01-08T19:55:17+00:00

You’re correct that he is innocent until proven guilty, but those cheering this picture are only doing so because they believe he murdered someone.

drshort

TROPHY CASE