Mayor Katie Wilson Gives Cops’ Budget 13.9% Boost

Just recently a “change candidate,” Mayor Katie Wilson took a page from tradition in her first crack at the City budget: Cuts for almost every department besides the cops. In part, her hands were tied with raises for cops mandated under the last administration, but plenty of 13.9% increase is Wilson’s own doing — at least enough to shut up any Laurelhurst pearl clutchers still dutifully regurgitating campaign era accusations that Wilson wants to defund the police. 

As Mayor Wilson noted in her budget remarks Tuesday, she inherited a mess, or more specifically, a General Fund deficit estimated at $175 million. 

“For years, that deficit was papered over rather than faced head-on," Wilson said. "That ends today. We cannot keep lurching from shortfall to shortfall, year after year. We cannot keep kicking the can down the road, because there is no more road. This budget tells the truth about where we are and still dares to point toward where we are going."

Wilson said that her plan doesn’t just balance this year and next, but keeps Seattle out of a deficit until 2030.  And she’s right — that’s a big change from previous administrations. 

Wilson achieved this without any new major taxes on the rich or on big business (more on that in an upcoming post). Instead, most departments will manage cuts of 1% to 8% for a total of $50 million in general fund reductions a year, all in service of the most serious attempt to settle the annual structural budget deficit problem the City has seen in recent years. 

To be fair, not every department will see cuts. Not so long ago a progressive advocate decrying austerity in public comment periods herself, Wilson protected and in a few cases padded some of the left’s darling departments such as the Office of Labor Standards, Office of Immigration and Refugee Affairs, and the CARE Department. But no department was as clear of a winner as the Seattle Police Department (SPD).

The Wilson administration will oversee, for the first time in Seattle history, a police force backed by more than half a billion dollars, allocating $556 million to SPD in 2027 and then $568 million in 2028. That’s an increase of $68 million or about 13.9%. 

That isn’t all Wilson’s fault. The City’s new labor contract with the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild (SPOG) put Seattle on the hook for $56.5 million in 2027 to cover the raises and benefits the union won in their negotiations under the previous administration. Still, an impressive $12.6 million will fund 66 new officers, which is not mandated under the new contract. 

To put that number into perspective, Wilson’s completely voluntary $12.6 million bump to SPD is 20% greater than the entire budget for the Office of Labor Standards, the office tasked with solving the single most prevalent form of theft in the nation: wage theft. 

But in her budget remarks and the text of the budget document, Wilson isn’t framing this as a hands-tied situation or an unfortunate consequence of circumstances. In fact, her office appears to be highlighting their decision to bolster the force as a victory of the budget, perhaps to bat off the constant attacks from the bootlicking media. In any case, this should officially put to rest the assumption that Wilson is secretly planning to send our boys in blue to gulags or whatever neighborhood watch groups think she's got brewing.

During her campaign, Wilson’s opponent, business-backed incumbent Mayor Bruce Harrell, tried desperately to paint her as a “defund” candidate. His campaign dug up some op-eds, quotes in various blogs where Wilson supported scaling down SPD’s footprint and imagining a society that works harder to prevent crime rather than just punish it.

For example, when the Seattle City Council voted to eliminate any net increases in SPD officers in 2021, Wilson told a now defunct blog that she was “disappointed that more significant moves hadn’t been made in this budget to reduce the size of the police force.” Six years later, Wilson’s better position to make those “significant moves” than anyone else and she goes the opposition direction. 

Before the comment section fills up with “Shady Katie” allegations, Wilson didn’t run for Mayor as a “defund” candidate or an abolitionist or anything nearly as cool. She tried to (albeit clumsily) distance herself from her past comments when Harrell brought them up on debate stages. So this isn’t a switch up from campaign-era Wilson, rather activist-era Wilson. 

Still the progressive advocates she once stood shoulder to shoulder with in budget hearings are not pleased. A representative from the Solidarity Budget, a project Wilson once spoke on behalf of to media herself, called the "staggering" $68 million increase for SPD "unsettling," particularly as the City faces a $175 million deficit. The group acknowledged some of that was unavoidable due to SPOG, but she can't distance herself from bolster the department all together.

"This budget resurrects ghost cops. The budget eliminates unused positions in other departments while it simultaneously creates and fully funds 66 empty sworn officer positions within SPD. The Mayor’s budget even includes a $7M cut to the fire department’s overtime budget. And yet there is no proposed cut to SPD’s overtime budget despite over a decade of overuse, abuse, and overtime fraud," The Solidarity Budget explained in a message to The Burner. "This passes the cost of SPDs overtime abuses onto the tax payer because that money is not being used for actual public safety investments. The Mayor has acknowledged the need to invest in evidence-based solutions to address violence and create public safety and she has started to follow through with some funding, but it’s still incredibly disappointing that there could have been so much more money for these vital investments and instead it will be wasted on SPD."

Whatever this move says about the Wilson administration, the budget is kind of out of her hands and up to the City Council to mess around with it and send it back up for her signature. And most of the City Council is even more cucked by SPD than Wilson, so activists would be wise to get all their anger out about Wilson's proposal quick and prepare to fight back against the possibilty of even more spending for SPD.

If you want to learn more about the budget process, the Solidarity Budget is partnering with the City Budget Office for a budget crash course Saturday at 2pm in the community room at Cedar Crossing Apartments in Roosevelt.