Mayor Mike McGinn delivered a lengthy---46 minute!---State of the City speech this afternoon, which ran 20 pages and touched on a wide range of topics including broadband, police accountability, jobs jobs jobs, and the families and education levy.

Sorry this post is a little late, but I wanted to first get up the news that McGinn conspicuously failed to mention his campaign promise to put light rail on the ballot by this year. (He talked about the Transit Master Plan, a general blueprint for the city's future capital investments in transit corridors, instead).

Now, here's my 1,900-word take on the rest of McGinn's speech.

Prepared, if not concise

After last year's widely panned debacle , McGinn wasn't going to show up unprepared this time. Prior to the speech, his aides handed copies of the speech out to members of the press (clustered, for the first time in my memory, in a special reserved area to stage-right of council chambers), that was fully 20 pages long in print form (McGinn read it from his iPad).

His delivery was a little stiff---"professorial," as one city staffer put it afterward---but he didn't stumble over his words or shuffle through his notes. He did make several seemingly impromptu changes to the printed script, replacing the word "cops" with "police officers," and the phrase "things worth fighting about" with "things worth having vigorous discussions about," for example.

In another telling contrast to last year, McGinn brought out the troops---nearly every city department head was in attendance, along with most of the mayor's staff, a strong contingent of police officers (they took up the front row), and a number of environmental and community activists. Compared to last year's two-thirds-empty council chambers, this year's audience was standing-room-only. "He was definitely more organized than last year," council president Richard Conlin noted wryly after the speech. However, Conlin, a frequent McGinn adversary, couldn't resist getting in a dig: "I think he would have done better if he'd kept it shorter."

A broad-ranging agenda

Unlike traditional State of the City speeches, McGinn's focused primarily on what he plans to do in the future, rather than what he has accomplished to date. The mayor laid out a wide-ranging agenda that made up in breadth what it lacked in specifics. His agenda items included improving Seattle schools ("right now, we are failing our students"), improving relationships between citizens and the police ("We cannot keep our community safe without building and maintaining the trust between officers and the people they serve"); jobs ("Our Seattle Jobs Plan has delivered $32.5 million in new financing to 79 businesses, retaining or creating 630 jobs"); and Tim Eyman, whom McGinn blamed for "set[ting] this state on a path that will let our schools collapse and our children fail."

He continued: "Mr. Eyman, you may have talked the rest of the state into destroying what we hold dear. But we are drawing a line around Seattle, right at the city limit, and we're saying it won't happen here. We’re not going to stand by and watch public education fail in Seattle. That’s why we’re doubling the Families and Education Levy and that's why I'm asking the council to put this on the ballot."

Obama, broadband, and the future


McGinn immediately wrapped himself in the mantle of Obama, returning repeatedly to the president's awkward phrase "win the future" (kinda reminds me of Stephen Colbert's book I Am America and So Can You) as a clarion call to the city to promote economic development, create jobs, connect cities with high-speed rail, improve the city's educational system with initiatives like the Families and Education Levy, and build a high-speed broadband network that serves the whole city, particularly low-income neighborhoods.

Citing a game studio, Undead Labs, that may have to leave Pioneer Square because of lousy broadband access, McGinn said, "I think we can say that Seattle is pretty close to the Internet capital of the world, and we're going to have a company leave because the Internet isn't fast enough. ... If the private providers won't [provide fast service], then we're going to have to figure out how to do it ourselves," boldly hinting that the city should change the law to allow it to compete with providers like Comcast, which it currently can't do.

A sunny start, a cloudy finish

Although McGinn started his speech by praising city council members for their accomplishments ("It's no secret that we disagree on things, but what I think the public doesn't know is how much we work together"), he ended it with dark warnings about "the old politics," "power brokers," and "logrolling."

"The old politics was the power brokers and the elites going behind closed doors to decide what's best for us. They decided things for the special interests and not the public interest. The new politics asks all of you to participate," McGinn said.

McGinn wasn't specific about what "behind closed doors" decisions he was referring to---the tunnel? the decision to accept a budget-saving loan from the Museum of History and Industry"?---but the message was clear: The council is still engaged in the corrupt, closed-door politics of the past, while he will bring the city to the transparent, open politics of the future.

Needless to say, the targets of his criticism were skeptical. "The only time I've heard him talk like that is when he's criticizing a decision that's already been made," council member Tom Rasmussen said. "It seems like any time there's a decision he doesn't like, it's a back-room deal or logrolling."

Conlin echoed: "I always find [talk like McGinn's] rather ironic coming from executive branch officials, when they make all their decisions behind closed doors and we have to do all our dirty work in public. He talked about the 'new politics,' but the thing is, I've been hearing about the 'new politics' for the last 40 years."

Tunnel? What tunnel?

McGinn largely shied away from the issue of the tunnel, noting only---near the end of his speech---that "when we are talking about a project of this magnitude, this expense, and this risk, the public deserves to make the choice." Surprisingly---despite the presence of a large contingent of tunnel opponents (including Move Seattle Smarter head Drew Paxton and Streets for All Seattle co-chair Craig Benjamin---the call for a vote on the tunnel was met with dead silence.)

Nick Licata, a late convert to the tunnel cause (he originally supported a retrofit) speculated that McGinn's supporters realized "he's beating a dead horse in many ways," adding that if McGinn really opposes the tunnel, "he should lead the effort in Olympia to get a billion dollars to build the surface option" instead of calling for vote after vote.

A "stoic" police presence

Police officers, who filled the front row of seats in council chambers, stared "stoically," in the words of council member Licata, who, like all nine council members, was on the dais facing the cops, as McGinn launched into a sternly worded critique of  the "hateful words and tragic actions of some of our police officers" in recent months. "There is no place in the Seattle Police Department for those who do not share our values."

Licata said he was impressed by McGinn's candor. "He did something other mayors have not, which is take the union to task that they have to be responsible" for their actions, Licata said.

However, some council members seemed disappointed in the way McGinn worded his next proposal, which involved ensuring that SPD officers "share our values" by recruiting officers who live inside the city, rather than in the suburbs. (Officers tend to prefer living outside the jurisdiction where they work to avoid the awkwardness---and potential danger---of encountering people they've arrested or had run-ins with in their day-to-day lives). "It's hard to have a good local police force that isn't local," McGinn said. "We want a Seattle police force that looks like Seattle."

Irony alert: A police force that "looks like Seattle" would be less diverse than a police force that "looks like" a suburb like Renton. Thirty-two percent of Renton's residents are racial minorities (and 8 percent are ethnic-minority Hispanics), compared to Seattle's 25-percent minority population (and six-percent Hispanic makeup).

Is he for tolling, or is he against it?


McGinn reiterated his concerns that the proposed new 520 bridge won't be "light rail ready," a claim state transportation officials, who showed up for the speech, and some city council members disputed immediately after his speech. More provocatively, McGinn claimed the new bridge would be "a bridge for rich people" because it would, he (erroneously) claimed, cost  as much as "$7 or $8 each way." (The real number is up to $3.50 each way; McGinn's office subsequently corrected the number in the online version of his speech.) "If they're going to charge $8 to cross the bridge, we need to give people a low-cost transit choice," McGinn said.

McGinn's anti-tolling comments raise an interesting question: Is he for tolling, or is he against it? Most environmentalists, including McGinn, generally support tolling because it encourages people to use transit. By calling the 520 bridge a "bridge for rich people," McGinn appears to be trying to have it both ways---against high tolls (because they hurt poor people who drive) but for transit (because it's environmentally friendly).

What he didn't talk about

There weren't many elephants in the room during McGinn's speech---he touched on nearly every imaginable issue, including the tunnel, at least briefly---but here are a few things I would have liked to hear him address in greater detail.

• Seattle's relationship with Olympia. Seattle is seeking a lot from the state legislature, and by all indications, they're having a tough time of it---from a $30 fee for transit to support for a commercial parking tax to augment the city's general fund, legislators have been reluctant to give the city what it wants. McGinn himself has been down to Olympia just once this legislative session, raising the question: How badly does he want Olympia's support?

• Education reform. McGinn launched his campaign professing an openness to radical reform of the city's school system, including the possibility that the city take over control of the schools. Lately, however, his educational rhetoric has been reduced to tepid sound bites about renewing the Families and Education Levy, which pays for programs that support, but are outside of, the school system. Does he still think Seattle schools need radical change? In his speech and in response to press questions on the subject, McGinn (who has said he's open to the idea of charter schools ) has been mum. This is a bit odd given that council member Tim Burgess, a big education reformer, has praised McGinn for siding with him on the Arne Duncan-style education reform agenda the city took to Olympia this year.

• Youth violence. Urgent issues of police accountability have largely eclipsed the city's problems with youth violence, which McGinn made a cornerstone of his Youth and Families Initiative. It may be time to revisit those questions.

• A real broadband solution. Talking about the need to connect Seattle neighborhoods to broadband is one thing; making a real push to change the law is another. Although McGinn did suggest that the city should be allowed to compete with the likes of Comcast, another, more radical, solution suggested by Licata---turning broadband into a public utility like City Light or Seattle Public Utilities---would enable the city to take broadband into its own hands and establish it as a top priority.