Jan. 8, 2018
Standing here at the start of my third term as City Attorney, I’m grateful for Seattle’s vote of confidence—especially as the oldest, longest-serving and sole Y-chromosome-bearing public servant to be sworn in today!
We live in exciting, terrifying times, and the City of Seattle is prepared to meet today’s challenges head-on with elected leadership that is more diverse than ever. I am proud to serve alongside my 5th mayor, Mayor Jenny Durkan, and happy to report that we’re already off to an excellent start despite her short transition period. Jenny and I first worked together as opposing legal counsel more than six years ago on the pending consent decree, presided over by a “so-called” federal judge who is holding both of us accountable for reforming the Seattle Police Department. SPD is now headed, incidentally, by my 5th police chief, Interim Chief of Police Carmen Best. This is the term in which we complete federally-monitored police reforms, and make certain that these reforms are permanently embedded in SPD’s very culture of policing—and in our police union contracts.
I also remain dedicated to providing the best possible legal service to the hard-working women and men who serve as this City’s lawmakers, our Seattle City Council. Since my original City Council of 2010, eight additional such servant-leaders have come and gone. Councilmembers Gonzalez and Mosqueda—you represent my 15th and 17th city councilmembers, respectively! These are the leaders who must publicly cast their votes for the laws and budgets that directly affect the lives of everyone in Seattle. Your Law Department is not only proud to provide you excellent legal advice, but to vigorously defend any legal challenges that your cutting-edge initiatives might attract. You are the innovative litigator’s dream client!
Three books best represent my three terms in office. Michelle Alexander framed my first term with her amazing work, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Making clear the responsibility prosecutors like Dan Satterberg and I share in our criminal charging decisions, Prof. Alexander has made it impossible for us to ignore the institutional racism permeating our criminal justice system. She also laid out the compelling need for Drug Policy Reform and the work of brilliant lawyers like Alison Holcomb in crafting Initiative 502. Much work remains, if only (for now) to make sure that the regressive Sessions Justice Department doesn’t turn back the clock.
At the start of my second term, The Brookings Institution released The Metropolitan Revolution: How Cities and Metros Are Fixing Our Broken Politics and Fragile Economy. It made the case that the broader array of challenges confronting all inhabitants of this planet will only be addressed by cities like Seattle, including global warming, income inequality, homelessness and the scourge of opioid addiction. Seattle’s elected leaders, including our elected representatives to the state legislature and Congress, and our Governor and State Attorney General, will all have to lead on these fronts. The federal cavalry is certainly not coming, and if my third book for the start of this third term is any indication, it may represent our biggest obstacle to progress.
How many of you have already downloaded and read Michael Wolff’s Fire & Fury: Inside the Trump White House? Yes, it is as bad as we feared, when 92% of Seattle voters refused to cast our ballots in 2016 for this “like, really smart, very stable genius.” Well, it’s this little book that represents our best hope [display copy of Constitution], and as reflected today in my solemn Oath of Office, I again pledge to both uphold and invoke the Rule of Law to protect Seattle values from attack. In doing so I pledge to work with my fellow progressives, and to engage in even more problem-solving and a little less hand-wringing. I urge all of us to do the same.