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ECB: There seems to be a tension between people in your administration who are government veterans, who are like, ‘This is how the process works, and this is what you do, and this is how you compromise in advance so you can get things through’—and then people who worked on your campaign, who are saying ‘We were elected to do these things, we need to do them fast. How is that tension playing out, and is it causing problems?

The Sound Transit board voted to approve a new “affordable” light rail plan on Thursday afternoon that indefinitely defers construction of light rail to Ballard, builds rail to West Seattle without a planned station on SW Avalon Way, and adds the long-deferred Graham Street Station back to the list of “fully funded” projects.

Ballard Light Rail is facing its biggest threat yet. Despite the fact the Ballard Link Extension is projected to serve as many as 148,000 people daily, the most riders of any project in Sound Transit history, the agency is considering postponing the project indefinitely to address its long-term budget issues.

In an announcement that she immediately noted will please no one, Mayor Katie Wilson announced Thursday that she is pausing the expansion of an existing police camera surveillance program until the city gets the results of a “privacy and data governance audit” that will be conducted by researchers at New York University’s Policing Project, a process she said will take a few months. In the meantime, the city will install, but not turn on, 26 new cameras in the stadium district south of downtown, which can be switched on if there is a “credible threat” that warrants their use, such as an attack during the upcoming World Cup games in June.

On Monday, the Seattle City Council got its first, partial look at Mayor Katie Wilson’s proposal to build 500 new shelter units by the end of May, and 1,000 before 2027. The mayor’s office is waiting until later this month to announce the sites they’ve identified for the first few new tiny house villages, so the briefing was mostly an opportunity for the council to ask questions about the proposal—including how much new money it will require, how the mayor’s office plans to get buy-in from neighborhood residents, and why the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA), which manages the region’s shelter contracts, has been effectively cut out of the proposal.

Whatever their intent, the images and words had the effect of re-brutalizing the women on the screen, who did not consent to be used as examples by prosecutors pushing further criminalization of sex work. Although the prosecutor’s office denied any political agenda, they noted during the presentation that they’re hoping to drum up support for state legislation that would elevate paying for sex, currently a misdemeanor, to a felony, punishable by a prison sentence of up to five years and a fine of up to $10,000.