Tammy Morales' Issue With City Council Is Democratic, Not Personal

Anyone paying any attention to Seattle City Council knows Tammy Morales has had a rough year. From her fellow councilmembers voting to seat her opponent, Tanya Woo, in Position 8 after she lost District 2 to Morales, to striking down her Connected Communities legislation, which would have made way for more community-led development projects, Morales feels her time on Seattle City Council has passed.

On Dec. 4, Morales announced her resignation from Seattle City Council in an open letter addressed to her District 2 constituents. In the letter, Morales provides examples that accuse her fellow councilmembers of eroding checks and balances and undermining her work as a policymaker. In an interview with the Emerald, Morales elaborates on the reasoning behind her departure from the City Council.

"It was clear from the beginning of the year when I had my Connected Communities legislation. I had an individual conversation with every councilmember, some more than once. I had five committee meetings to make sure that they understood, and I had the departments and Central Staff there to walk them through the legislation and what it was going to do," said Morales. "It was just a pilot program to make it easier for mixed-use development to happen throughout the city. This was not a controversial bill, but despite my efforts to try to negotiate with everybody and try to come to agreement and address their concerns and make changes to my bill, nobody voted for it." Morales acknowledged that Strauss voted for the legislation after everyone else had already voted in opposition.

Additionally, Morales said the current council is not just working to sabotage her ability to make progressive policy that will positively impact District 2 but also democracy altogether.

"Another piece of it is, it's not just me. They are impacting the way that the legislative department as a whole works in a way that is very undemocratic, whether it's stifling First Amendment rights, scrubbing Central Staff memos, gaslighting community members who disagree with them — all of that is dangerous, and I do think the public needs to be aware of what's happening," said Morales.

When asked to elaborate on the ways in which the City Council interferes with the responsibilities of non-partisan Central Staff members, Morales answered with a story about the drafting of the SOAP and SODA legislation.

"Specifically around the SOAP and SODA legislation that was setting up exclusion zones: part of the original memo said, 'We've tried this before. There is no research that indicates that these [ordinances] are successful at decreasing the kind of crime that is being targeted here, or increasing access to services for sex workers.' There was a big hoo-ha. The memo got scrubbed, then it got put back in," explained Morales. "I think it just speaks to the interference with what is supposed to be an objective branch of our legislative department, because if there is factual evidence that shows that you know a specific legislation will not be effective if it gets passed, the public has a right to know that the council is essentially passing things off of faith, right?"

Morales also said the current council attempts to silence her constituents during public comment through the maintenance of a police presence.

"There is the quelling of dissent that happened a lot in the earlier part of the year, particularly when the different public safety bills were coming through. I send out action alerts when I think my constituents need to know about a bill that's coming, and three or four times the police were called when it is mostly Black and Brown people in chambers expressing their dissent about what the council is doing," said Morales.

On the day the council was to vote on the SOAP and SODA legislation, Morales said there were 10 police officers in the building. "We had 10 officers who were not in chambers. They were in the back hallway at City Council, waiting there. There was nothing to indicate there would be disruption, but they were called preemptively and basically sat in the hallway for five hours during a public hearing, just in case somebody got out of line," she said. "It is undemocratic to the extent that it is quelling dissent and stifling first amendment rights."

Morales also said that while sitting on the dias, there were times she observed that certain community members' concerns were valued above others.

"One of the last things Councilmember Nelson said as Councilmember Woo was leaving was, 'I really appreciate Councilmember Woo being able to bring community into chambers and share their perspective on public safety.' She was referring to a time when Councilmember Woo brought in a room full of Asian elders who were mad about the homeless shelter that was being proposed in SoDo years ago," said Morales. "I thought, 'It is really rich that certain community members are welcomed with open arms into chambers to express their dissent — and they weren't screaming, but they were mad, and that was welcome in chambers — but when other community members show up to express their dissent (also about what the council is doing around public safety), they get the police called on them.'"

According to Morales, the silencing of District 2 constituents is disenfranchising the South End. "It's not just anti-democratic, it's also disenfranchising the South End. It's one thing for me, as a duly elected member of the city's council, to not be able to get my work done on behalf of my constituents — that's one thing. It is also an issue, though, when community members show up in chambers and are also gaslit, which is what's happening," explained Morales. "There is no acknowledgment that [City Council's] behavior, their proposals, are leading to this dissatisfaction. Instead, constituents get blamed for being misinformed or just confused or disrespectful. That is the classic definition of gaslighting — manipulating [by] not acknowledging that it was [the council's] own behavior that led to this in the first place, and just blaming the public."

When asked to give an example of this, Morales brought up the public hearings regarding the use of Equitable Development Initiative (EDI) funding.

"It absolutely happened with EDI. Maritza [Rivera] was going to do what she could to gut that program, and when people showed up en masse, she had a press conference and said, 'These are the people who received the funding, who have built community centers and child care centers and senior housing projects;' she accused me of misinforming them. She accused them of being confused and not understanding her amendment," said Morales. "It was so disrespectful and absolutely gaslighted the people who were there."

Despite loving her district and serving it for the last five years, Morales said she is ready to start the next chapter of her career, "I'm really ready to close this chapter and give myself some time to decompress and figure out what's next."