Seattle Nice

David Hyde, Erica Barnett, and Sandeep Kaushik
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  • Politics
  • Updated weekly

It’s getting harder and harder to talk about politics, especially if you disagree. Well, screw that. Seattle Nice aims to be the most opinionated and smartest analysis of what’s really happening in Seattle politics available in any medium. Each episode dives into contentious and sometimes ridiculous topics, exploring perspectives from across Seattle's political spectrum, from city council brawls to the ways the national political conversation filters through our unique political process. Even if you’re not from Seattle, you need to listen to Seattle Nice. Because it’s coming for you. Unlike the sun, politics rises in the West and sets in the East. 

  1. 11 hr ago

    Six Months In: Grading Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson

    Six months into her tenure at City Hall and Mayor Katie Wilson has a message for Seattle: things are going great, actually. On this episode of Seattle Nice, hosts Erica C Barnett, David Hyde and Sandeep Kaushik dig into Publicola’s two-parter with the mayor: a "spicy" interview that covers everything from whether she's the next "sweeps" mayor to whether Chief Shon Barnes keeps his job.  Plus, why the council keeps finding out about Wilson's legislation the same way the rest of us do: by reading PubliCola. And what she's doing to fix the tense relationship with the council. Also: a school lunch program got ambushed the same day the mayor bragged about it. World Cup hangover / promise. Seattle's role in the World Cup is over and Sandeep is back to driving his gas-guzzler to work at Pioneer Square, but the vibes (and the Occidental Park jumbotron) haven't fully left. Will Wilson pedestrianize more of downtown for good?The Pioneer Square playbook. Sandeep makes the case that the PDA-led shelter-and-services push that cleared the neighborhood for the World Cup actually worked, and that Wilson wants to replicate it citywide. One catch: there's no money in the budget for it yet.The "Sweeps" Mayor Dilemma: Erica presses Wilson on encampment removals. Wilson's answer boils down to political triage: stop all sweeps and you lose the "political will" to build more shelter. $175 million hole. We discuss the deficit and the looming push for new progressive revenue (capital gains? JumpStart again?), and why Wilson admits there's "no silver bullet."SPD budget in the crosshairs and Chief Barnes stays, for now. Every department's been told to model budget cuts, including police, even as SPD keeps hiring at a pace the city may not be able to afford (starting pay tops $126K after six months). But will they actually cut officers? In the middle of that squeeze, Wilson confirms she's retaining Chief Shon Barnes. The council relationship: still a mess, but improving? Wilson owns some of the dysfunction from the shelter-legislation fight earlier this year, admitting her office was "slow to staff" council relations. There are reportedly efforts now to rebuild those one-on-one relationships, but meetings aren't going great yet.Looking Back: How does Wilson’s first six months compare to former Mayor Bruce Harrell?Read the two-part interview in PubliCola: Mayor Katie Wilson at Six Months In: "Incredibly Proud of What We're Accomplishing" (Part 1) Mayor Katie Wilson Says She's "Doing a Reset" on Housing Agenda, "Very Hopeful" About Police Chief (Part 2) If you appreciate the in-depth, behind-the-scenes coverage of Seattle politics, help us keep the lights on. We're a bare-bones operation trying to expand into video, and we can’t do it without our listeners.  https://www.patreon.com/seattlenice     Send us a text! Note that we can only respond directly to emails realseattlenice@gmail.com Thanks to Uncle Ike's pot shop for sponsoring this week's episode! If you want to advertise please contact us at realseattlenice@gmail.com Support the show Your support on Patreon helps pay for editing, production, live events and the unique, hard-hitting local journalism and commentary you hear weekly on Seattle Nice.

    43 min

  2. 4 Jul

    Is Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson Still an Urbanist?

    Just as urbanists thought they had a deal to jumpstart stalled housing construction, it fell apart. We unpack the rise and fall of a proposed temporary break on Seattle's Mandatory Housing Affordability program, which taxes new development to fund affordable housing. Those tax dollars have all but dried up as building costs have soared and construction has stalled. Developers and density advocates argued a two-year partial fee pause could revive dozens of stalled projects while costing the city little to no affordable housing revenue. But after weeks of backroom negotiating, Mayor Katie Wilson pulled the plug, siding with anti-displacement advocates on the left over the pro-development urbanist coalition. We ask what this reveals about Wilson's brand of urbanism, and whether "the Urbanist Mayor" label still fits. Plus, Seattle and King County announced they're clawing back roughly $160 million in service contracts from the flailing King County Regional Homelessness Authority, effectively gutting the agency's core function. KCRHA was supposed to be the region's big fix for homelessness: one coordinated system instead of a patchwork of city and county programs. But KCRHA never delivered. We break down how years of leadership turnover, a structurally messy governance model, and a scathing forensic audit brought KCRHA to this point, and talk about what comes next. Support the show: We are transitioning to video and need your help to make it happen. If you value this podcast, please support us on Patreon at patreon.com/seattle-nice. Your contribution helps us keep the show free and independent.  Send us a text! Note that we can only respond directly to emails realseattlenice@gmail.com Thanks to Uncle Ike's pot shop for sponsoring this week's episode! If you want to advertise please contact us at realseattlenice@gmail.com Support the show Your support on Patreon helps pay for editing, production, live events and the unique, hard-hitting local journalism and commentary you hear weekly on Seattle Nice.

    48 min

  3. 27 Jun

    World Cup Glow, Homeless Surge: Seattle's Unsheltered Population Up 21%

    While Seattle celebrates hosting the World Cup, the city's unsheltered count just jumped 21 percent. What explains the increase? Can we trust the numbers? And why are we seeing shelter capacity shrink right when it’s needed most?  Also: Mayor Katie Wilson's "zero-tolerance" push in Little Saigon. Is this the same old policing playbook, or something genuinely new? Can a progressive socialist approach call for more policing? Our co-hosts do not agree. Send us a text! Note that we can only respond directly to emails realseattlenice@gmail.com Thanks to Uncle Ike's pot shop for sponsoring this week's episode! If you want to advertise please contact us at realseattlenice@gmail.com Support the show Your support on Patreon helps pay for editing, production, live events and the unique, hard-hitting local journalism and commentary you hear weekly on Seattle Nice.

    35 min

  4. 16 Jun

    Has King County's Human Services Department Fixed the Problems Flagged in that "Damning" Audit?

    Last August, an alarming, high-profile audit of King County’s Department of Community and Human Services’ spending on “high-risk” youth program providers found widespread problems and indications of potential fraud. So now, 10 months later, has DCHS been able to clean up the issues that led to the serious internal control problems the audit surfaced?  New DCHS Director Susan McLaughlin joins Erica and Sandeep (while David is away) to make the case that DCHS is back on track. The agency is now emphasizing “a culture of accountability,” McLaughlin tells us, and is implementing new supports for smaller community-based organizations to document their work. McLaughlin also expresses strong opposition to a recent proposal from King County Councilmember Rod Dembowski that would require the council to directly approve all spending under the county’s Best Starts for Kids program, saying his proposed approach would “have devastating impacts” by bottlenecking DCHS' work.    Going beyond the audit aftermath, McLaughlin tells us that she is confident that DCHS is ready to provide oversight of homelessness services contracts if County Executive Zahilay and Seattle Mayor Wilson decide to claw back those contracts from the troubled King County Regional Homelessness Authority (as they're rumored to be planning), and shares insights about what DCHS learned from the contentious process of siting its new Seattle crisis care clinic on Capitol Hill. Send us a text! Note that we can only respond directly to emails realseattlenice@gmail.com Thanks to Uncle Ike's pot shop for sponsoring this week's episode! If you want to advertise please contact us at realseattlenice@gmail.com Support the show Your support on Patreon helps pay for editing, production, live events and the unique, hard-hitting local journalism and commentary you hear weekly on Seattle Nice.

    28 min

  5. 5 Jun

    Mayor Wants to Double Down on Seattle Transit Sales Tax

    Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Seattle Nice, which takes up Mayor Katie Wilson’s proposal to double the current transit sales tax. It’s a familiar Seattle policy dilemma: how do we pay for the reliable public transit we need without relying on regressive taxes?   Next, we examine the newly passed Housing Opportunities Package (HOP). It’s a massive set of zoning changes and regulatory shifts aimed at kickstarting residential construction across the city. Is the unanimous vote a good sign for the upcoming, high-stakes battle over Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan?   Finally, we’re opening the mailbag to field your questions and comments. If you’ve got a take on transit, thoughts on housing, or just want to tell us we’re getting it wrong, write in at realseattlenice@gmail.com.   Send us a text! Note that we can only respond directly to emails realseattlenice@gmail.com Support the show Your support on Patreon helps pay for editing, production, live events and the unique, hard-hitting local journalism and commentary you hear weekly on Seattle Nice.

    18 min

  6. 2 Jun

    Are Falling Seattle Home Prices Good News? Redfin's Chief Economist Has Answers.

    Daryl Fairweather, Chief Economist at Redfin and author of Hate the Game: Economic Cheat Codes for Life, Love, and Work, joins us to explain why the housing market is doing something it almost never does here: cooling off. In this episode we break down the recent headlines that stopped Seattleites mid-scroll: prices here are dropping here faster than anywhere else in the country. Fairweather points to the perfect storm behind the slowdown: sky-high mortgage rates hitting expensive markets the hardest, Amazon layoffs, and a local tech sector that's lost the confidence it had pre-pandemic. She says San Francisco is eating Seattle's lunch right now, thanks to its AI boom. But Daryl also sees a silver lining: a slow, steady reset could finally make Seattle more livable and affordable for working people. We also get into the policy fights. Should Seattle build its way out of the crisis with more market-rate housing, or invest in social housing? (She says: yes, and yes.) Why does she think rent control or stabilization backfires? What can Seattle learn from Austin's building boom, and what should it absolutely not copy? And what about AI? Daryl thinks it could genuinely help by speeding up permitting or making modular housing cheaper to build. But she's not buying the hype wholesale. Contractors still need to show up and do the work, and no algorithm is going to fix a bureaucratic bottleneck. Send us a text! Note that we can only respond directly to emails realseattlenice@gmail.com Thanks to Uncle Ike's pot shop for sponsoring this week's episode! If you want to advertise please contact us at realseattlenice@gmail.com Support the show Your support on Patreon helps pay for editing, production, live events and the unique, hard-hitting local journalism and commentary you hear weekly on Seattle Nice.

    41 min

  7. 30 May

    How Badly Did Sound Transit Just Screw Seattle?

    On the latest episode, we cut through the fig leafs and happy talk from Sound Transit officials to lay bare the hardball political realities underlying their decision to kill the long-promised light line extension to Ballard, which has been left unfunded and postponed indefinitely.  Who to blame? Erica says it is a systemic failure, pointing to ST's excessively slow, expensive, and politicized planning process, noting that it took approximately 30 years just to fund the relatively simple Graham Street Station. Sandeep argues that executives from Pierce and Snohomish County strategically outmaneuvered Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson and King County Executive Girmay Zahilay to get their priorities addressed, at Seattle's expense. This successful political power play ensured the Everett and Tacoma segments of the Sound Transit spine were fully funded while leaving the high-ridership Ballard extension dead in the water. Can some newly passed amendments promising to explore new approaches and find cost-saving measures somehow save the Ballard line? Or is this more political "bullshit" that will not address the agency's deeply flawed and entrenched status quo institutional culture or do anything significant to mitigate the multi-billion-dollar cost overruns plaguing Sound Transit projects? Neither Erica or Sandeep see much cause for optimism, though David suggests that will largely depends on whether the County Executive and Mayor follow through and turn the heat up on Sound Transit to deliver.    The discussion then shifts to the latest "defenestration” in Mayor Katie Wilson’s office, with the forced resignation of her housing and homelessness advisor Jon Grant, the latest fallout from the breakdown in relations between the mayor's office and the Council. While critics on the right claim this is evidence of chaos at the top, we all give the mayor credit for demonstrating decisive—if "cold-blooded"—leadership by prioritizing her office's performance over personal loyalty as she moves to repair the seriously frayed relationships with councilmembers. And we suggest this is an indication of a shifting power balance within the mayor's office away from activist outsiders to more experienced city hands.  Our editor is Quinn Waller. Send us a text! Note that we can only respond directly to emails realseattlenice@gmail.com Thanks to Uncle Ike's pot shop for sponsoring this week's episode! If you want to advertise please contact us at realseattlenice@gmail.com Support the show Your support on Patreon helps pay for editing, production, live events and the unique, hard-hitting local journalism and commentary you hear weekly on Seattle Nice.

    35 min

  8. 21 May

    Is Sound Transit Ignoring a Plan that Could Save Ballard Light Rail?

    Sound Transit is facing a $35 billion budget gap and the long-promised light rail extension to Ballard is at severe risk of being cut. Scott Kubly, former Director of Seattle's Department of Transportation, joins us to unpack how the region landed in this mess and shares a plan to cut costs and save the Ballard line.    The headline number is jaw-dropping: Sound Transit projects cost two to three times more than comparable transit built almost anywhere else on Earth. Why? Kubly walks us through the regulatory traps, the agency culture, and the political dysfunction that have made building anything in Seattle and most of urban America agonizingly slow and absurdly expensive.  Kubly's solution for Seattle borrows from Copenhagen. The idea involves shorter trains, modular stations, and other fixes that could save $10 to $15 billion on the Ballard line alone and move more riders than the current plan.  The question is whether anyone on the Sound Transit board is willing to listen.    Send us a text! Note that we can only respond directly to emails realseattlenice@gmail.com Thanks to Uncle Ike's pot shop for sponsoring this week's episode! If you want to advertise please contact us at realseattlenice@gmail.com Support the show Your support on Patreon helps pay for editing, production, live events and the unique, hard-hitting local journalism and commentary you hear weekly on Seattle Nice.

    48 min
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About

It’s getting harder and harder to talk about politics, especially if you disagree. Well, screw that. Seattle Nice aims to be the most opinionated and smartest analysis of what’s really happening in Seattle politics available in any medium. Each episode dives into contentious and sometimes ridiculous topics, exploring perspectives from across Seattle's political spectrum, from city council brawls to the ways the national political conversation filters through our unique political process. Even if you’re not from Seattle, you need to listen to Seattle Nice. Because it’s coming for you. Unlike the sun, politics rises in the West and sets in the East. 

Information

  • Creator
    David Hyde, Erica Barnett, and Sandeep Kaushik
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    199
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Seattle Nice
  • Show Website
    Seattle Nice

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