If you don’t remember voting for him...well, you didn’t. But five sitting Seattle City Councilmembers did, and so on April 27, he was selected to replace the outgoing Sally Clark. And even before being sworn in, John Okamoto had already become the latest example of how, on the City Council and in Seattle’s city government, the important decisions are made behind closed doors by “The People Who Matter.” The hearings, the public process, the much-maligned “Seattle Way” — often as not, it’s a slow, elaborate dance meaning nothing.
In the case of Okamoto, the fix seemed in even before Clark resigned. Clark’s decision last winter to run for reelection as an at-large council member helped persuade council veteran Nick Licata — who didn’t want to run against a colleague this year, and lives in the same district as colleague Mike O’Brien — to retire. Then, a few weeks later, Clark abruptly announced she wouldn’t seek reelection after all.
M. Lorena Gonzalez, Mayor Ed Murray’s attorney, announced she was running for the seat two hours later, leading to speculation that the Gonzalez-for-Clark swap was a package deal, orchestrated in a way that would force Licata off the council in favor of the insider Gonzalez. Certainly, there appears to be a backstory to Clark’s maneuverings that the general public has yet to hear.
But Gonzalez can’t be elected until November and needs to defeat two credible challengers first. And so, when Clark abruptly resigned in early April to take an $150,000-per-year position with the University of Washington — the sort of job one doesn’t land overnight — the fix appeared to be in once again.
The last two times that the council appointed replacements for mid-term resignations, it was due to scandal: John Manning’s led to the appointment of the late Richard McIver, and Jim Compton’s resulted in the selection of Clark herself. In the case of both McIver and Clark, the council chose safe, unthreatening appointees with no real public constituency — members who wouldn’t rock boats. Sure enough, both McIver and Clark went on to decade-long council careers as anonymous council members with no discernable accomplishments.
Insider candidate?
With Clark’s resignation, however, council president Tim Burgess took this tradition a bit further. The council’s call for applications to replace Clark emphasized a strong preference for a person of color who had a background in social services (Clark chaired the council’s housing committee) and city government.
The description was basically written for Okamoto, whose most recent job was as interim director of the city’s Human Services Department and who’s held a number of other jobs with the city, state and Port of Seattle. As a consummate insider, by all appearances, he’ll be a reliable ally for the council’s developer-friendly agenda, even as Seattle’s lack of affordable housing shapes up as the biggest issue in this year’s elections.
(About those elections: the council also specified that it wanted someone who, unlike McIver and Clark, wouldn’t run for the permanent seat. But due to Clark’s timing, the May 17 filing deadline falls after the council was required to name her replacement, and there’s no legal way the council can prevent Okamoto from now filing if he chooses.)
The unpleasant smell behind Okamoto’s appointment intensified with reports that Burgess was rounding up colleagues’ votes for Okamoto as a finalist, in apparent violation of the city’s Open Meetings Act.
Sure enough, Okamoto led the eight finalists selected and, with Burgess’ support, won the actual appointment — but not before withering criticism from non-insider Councilmember Kshama Sawant. She had the temerity to bring up Okamoto’s record while working at the Port of Seattle during the Mac Dinsmore scandal a decade ago, a time when then-U.S. Attorney Mike McKay described the port as a “cesspool of corruption.”
Sawant’s use of that quote gave the council’s insider majority a case of the vapors, notwithstanding the far more personal attacks they’ve leveled at Sawant herself over the last year and even led to a hilariously hand-wringing editorial in The Seattle Times, urging Sawant to apologize for telling embarrassing truths.
Learning on the job
More importantly, Okamoto actually has very little understanding of the housing crisis that’s presumably his biggest concern as a new councilmember, professing, at one point in his audition before the council, to have no idea what linkage fees are, even though they’ve been the council’s hottest housing issue for the last year.
But having a councilmember who might acknowledge problems with the current practice of giving away the store to well-connected developers — let alone, consider innovative ways to address those non-problems — simply wouldn’t do.
Caring about affordable housing isn’t why John Okamoto is now on the City Council. As always, the public is the last to get the memo.
GEOV PARRISH is cofounder of Eat the State! He also reviews news of the week on “Mind Over Matters” on KEXP 90.3 FM. To comment on this column, write to MPTimes@nwlink.com.