TOUGH TIMES MAKE difficult relationships worse. Don’t they?
Last week, Mayor Greg Nickels laid out how he wants to handle the city’s $60 million budget gap. Since the mayor and the Seattle City Council have been fighting all year, it seems likely that this gloomy financial situation will only exacerbate City Hall’s internal conflicts.
Seattle City Council President Peter Steinbrueck believes it’s time for the council to pull together and make the budget reflect the legislators’ priorities—particularly in the area of human services. He expects some tough wrangling ahead. Surprisingly, Deputy Mayor Tim “The Shark” Ceis is predicting a relatively harmonious budget process.
Steinbrueck has been leading the council’s resistance to Nickels’ effort to consolidate power in the mayor’s office. He took umbrage at the mayor’s speech on the budget, calling it “a highly political statement that left council members dumbfounded.” Steinbrueck sees the budget as the opportunity for the council to clearly put its stamp on city government. “We should not balance the budget on the backs of the poor. Now is the time when [human] services are needed more than ever,” he argues.
The mayor cut human services by 8.45 percent and public health by 25.51 percent—the largest percentage of any department. Nickels clearly anticipated criticism of these choices. He went to great lengths to point out that human-services spending is still double what it was in 1995. Only in the past two years has human-services spending by the city ever been higher, he claims. “This is not a time for false choices of people vs. potholes, parks vs. police,” Nickels says. “The result is a budget that continues significant investment in core human services and preserves our safety net.”
Yet at least five other council members share Steinbrueck’s concern over human-services cutbacks during an economic downturn. If six council members can stick together, they will have a veto-proof majority. “We have inherent powers and budget authority,” asserts Steinbrueck. “What’s important is that we stick together. Our weakness is everybody going off in different directions.”
Deputy Mayor Ceis respects the council’s budget authority. “This is the time for the City Council to assert its prerogatives,” he says. Ceis claims, however, that they won’t easily find more money for human services. “Human services were spared,” he asserts. “We did everything we could to minimize cuts to direct services.”
Several council members hoped to transfer the money the mayor proposed for building 80 blocks of new sidewalks to human services. As City Council member Nick Licata asks rhetorically, “Are you talking about putting in more sidewalks or keeping people off the sidewalks?”
Ceis says sidewalk money can’t be used for human services—only for infrastructure. “That’s a box they are not going to get out of,” he claims. That’s Ceis’ general view. In an austerity budget, there isn’t much flexibility. “How much money moves around? Not a lot, but it will allow the City Council to make their policy statement in some areas. Out of a $635 million budget, it will be a few million bucks.”
That is key to why Ceis believes there isn’t going to be any fireworks during the budget process. “I am hard-pressed to see where our priorities are different” from their priorities, he notes. Just the opposite may occur, he believes. When the City Council thoroughly examines the budget and finds out what a fair, thorough job the mayor’s office did of balancing the many competing interests within the city, he hopes they will find themselves in agreement with the mayor in nearly all areas. “It can help that working relationship” between the mayor and the council, Ceis claims. “The mayor proposes, the council disposes.”
Steinbrueck isn’t so sure. He says the mayor’s priorities have been different from the council’s all year. He recalls the fights over the council’s $800,000 appropriation for studying a hygiene center in January and the $560,000 in funding for social services in February. “Different ways of balancing the budget are going to reflect different values,” he says. He questions the mayor’s “results-oriented emphasis.” He wonders, “How do you know how many people are going hungry? How do you know how many children are not going to the doctor? It’s difficult to create a test” that measures these problems.
In addition, Steinbrueck says, “trust has never been fully established” between the mayor and the council. He explains, “The relationship got off to a tough start. We put out an olive branch, and it was rejected. Things have not improved since then.” While Steinbrueck remains “an optimist,” he is clearly anticipating having to fight for those things he believes in.
By Dec. 1, City Council members must pass the mayor’s budget or come up with one of their own. Who can better predict the future—Ceis or Steinbrueck? In either case, the next eight weeks will tell us a lot about City Hall’s political future.
