City Council Landlords Vote To Lower Ethical Standards, Legislation Aimed To Allow Them To Roll Back Renters' Rights
- Hannah Krieg
- May 23
- 5 min read
At the Seattle City Council’s Governance, Accountability, and Economic Development Committee meeting on Thursday, only Council Members Mark Solomon and Maritza Rivera, the body’s two landlords, gave a “do pass” recommendation the universally hated bill to lower ethical standards, a bill spurred on specifically to allow council landlords to vote to repeal renters’ rights that threaten their profits. The amended bill, which allows council members to vote in their own financial interest in most cases as opposed to recusing themselves from such decisions, will get a full council vote on June 3 where the council can expect utter chaos.
So far, the council’s done a good job shoving their fingers firmly in their ears and singing “la, la, la, I can’t hear you” to the loud, unified chorus of disapproval from the public. On Thursday, Council President Sara Nelson moved the meeting to a video call, out of earshot from a crowd of angry constituents, she steamrolled concerns about rushing amendments through before the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission (SEEC) could review them, and she barely let the bill’s most vocal opponent, Council Member Dan Strauss, get a word in.
For context, last November, I exposed Nelson’s concerns that the recusal standard would foil her and Council Member Cathy Moore’s plot to repeal a whole slew of renters’ rights since it would likely prohibit landlord members from voting on such protections. Then last month, Moore unveiled legislation that would lower the standard from recusal to disclosure, meaning that council members could vote in their own financial interest so long as they revealed those financial interests publicly.
Outrage ensued. The City Council has not known peace since they introduced that bill with advocates, mostly former Council Member Kshama Sawant’s band of socialists known as Workers Strike Back, staging disruptions during public comment. Nelson is notorious for overreacting to disruptive public commenters, but has shown restraint enough to let her constituents leave on their own volition rather than in handcuffs.
For Thursday’s meeting, public commenters filled council chambers and performed their usual disturbances. Nelson cut off the public comment period after an hour and then instructed her colleagues to finish the meeting remotely, cowering in their offices.
The council worked through their agenda to the last item: The ethical standards change. Council Member Joy Hollingsworth introduced what she called a “universe” of amendments.
The most substantive of the amendments reintroduced a recusal standard in some, limited cases “when the elected official’s financial interest is impacted to a greater or less extent than that of other members of the same professions, occupations, classes, or groups affected by the legislative matter, the elected official must recuse,” according to the legislative text. While Central Staff director Ben Noble described Hollingsworth’s amendments as movement toward a “middle ground,” Moore accepted them as “friendly” to the spirit of her bill.
The committee passed the amendment unanimously.
From the dais, Strauss, a guest to the meeting who could not vote on amendments or the committee’s recommendation of the legislation, asked if the SEEC had time to review Hollingsworth’s amendments. SEEC Executive Director Wayne Barnett answered, “No, not to my knowledge.”
Strauss tried to ask a follow up question only to get cut off by Nelson.
“The instructions at the beginning of the — uh — I’ve said the instructions twice and I’m not going to repeat them,” Nelson said before repeating them. “There’s not to be an engaged back and forth, you raise your hand to ask another question. You will have one very short question and then we are proceeding.”
Strauss asked how the council could receive feedback on the amendments as he wanted third-party input. Barnett said that he could bring the issue to the next SEEC meeting, which is scheduled for June. Based on previously scheduled meetings, the SEEC typically meets the first Wednesday of the month, conveniently after the full council will vote on the bill.
Moore claimed that Hollignsworth’s amendment borrowed the “exact language” from when she brought her first draft of the ethics code change to the SEEC many months ago. She argued that they’ve had an opportunity to look specifically at one of the many amendments Hollingsworth proposed.
Rivera also made a point to clarify her belief that despite what Strauss thinks, the bill does not “lower” ethical standards. They’re just changing them… to be lower… Or at least that’s what literally every public commenter has said of the changes so far.
But that wasn’t the only time Strauss got a finger wag from his council colleagues. After Nelson literally called on him ahead of the vote, he started to deliver his final remarks. Started.
“I just want to say that over the past few days we’ve seen even Republicans on the Supreme Court take principled recusals,” Strauss said. “Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself while she was the deciding vote on a case that would have approved the country’s first public religious charter school. It’s something that she’s on the record supporting, but recused herself anyways. All of this to say that I don’t think we should be the ones leading with legislation that in my opinion lowers our ethical standards —
“Thank you very much,” Nelson cut in as Strauss thanked Hollingsworth for her amendments. “I’m going to interrupt you now and get to the vote."
“We need to be taking more time with on bill as I’m hearing there may be additional amendment ideas and as the commission has not provided their feedback,” Strauss said. “There’s no reason to rush this — unless there is.”
“I have only spoken to the merits of this, the 2016, and the 2018 bills,” he continued. “If we see in the next few weeks legislation that will only pass because of the bill before us, then we’ll know why this process is rushed.”
Nelson butt in: “Council Member Strauss, you are not on this committee, I erroneously said your name because your at the top left of my screen, I was proceeding to a vote on this bill because we had a hard stop and we’re already past it. You will have the opportunity to speak to this when it is before full council. K, I’m sorry to interrupt but we do have to move on.”
Council Members Bob Kettle, Nelson, and Hollingsworth abstained. They all said they wanted to wait to vote until they can see all the amendments. Kettle may introduce an amendment that will set the implementation date for any changes for after their terms end to neutralize concern that the council has alterior motives. Hollingsworth wants to fix one of her amendments that she pulled which would clarify transparency around the SEEC investigation findings. Nelson, desperate to distance herself from a bill she clearly helped develop during her re-election campaign, also abstained.
Council Member Rinck, a non-committee member who also took the meeting from dais, closed the meeting out after the vote.
“This is not the moment we should be weakening our City’s code of ethics,” Rinck said. “In fact, given the fragile national environment, I’d go as far to say this is the worst possible timing for this.”
She continued, “To my colleagues advocating for this legislation, who [voted] yes to move this out of the, what feels ironically named Governance and Accountability meeting today, I have three simple questions for every person who usually sits behind this dais: why now, what comes next from this body, and how much of that will build off the backs of poor and working people?”
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