1. Democratic Washington state attorney general Bob Ferguson is LIKING his job right now. In a flurry of high-profile cases announced this week, the ambitious AG is asking the state supreme court to reconsider its anti–charter schools ruling and is going after the liberal powerhouse union SEIU 775.

Meanwhile, the Public Disclosure Commission has sent Ferguson its case against conservative initiative hawker Tim Eyman. And Ferguson tells Fizz: “We will start our review of the Eyman matter immediately.” The PDC says it "found evidence" that Eyman shuffled campaign money around and ended up taking $170,000 for personal use. 

The mix of cases puts Ferguson in the position to challenge high-profile sacred cows from across the political spectrum and would bolster Ferguson’s reputation as an equal opportunity avenger.

While Ferguson’s spin on the charter case isn’t exactly an affront to his liberal base (his argument is that the court’s ruling simultaneously jeopardizes other extra educational programs such as Running Start and tribal education programs), he does take a dig at liberals for wanting it both ways by noting that the teachers union’s class size funding measure, I-1351, had similar legal problems:

The State asks the Court to hold that even if the funding system is invalid, the rest of I-1240 should be left intact. The Court held otherwise based on its view that the voters would have rejected I-1240 if the initiative had not specified a funding source. However, Washington voters have routinely passed education initiatives in recent years—including the initiative to reduce class sizes passed last year (I-1351)—without specifying a funding source.

As for SEIU 775, the activist union credited with spearheading the momentous $15 campaign in SeaTac, Ferguson isn’t pulling any punches.

Picking up on conservative activist group the Freedom Foundation’s complaint to the PDC that SEIU failed to report contributions, the AG writes:

PDC staff reported their findings that SEIU 775 had not violated state law on the majority of the allegations. However, it may have violated the requirement to report in-kind contributions of staff time to operate and manage its political action committee.

Following a review of the PDC’s information, the AG conducted further investigation and found evidence that SEIU 775 and SEIU 775 PAC failed to file reports of both in-kind and monetary contributions. The complaint alleges that SEIU 775 failed to file reports of monetary contributions totaling $1.39 million as well as in-kind contributions—including staff time, office space, postal and web services, and telephones—made to the SEIU 775 PAC from 2010 to 2015. While SEIU 775 PAC reported receiving the monetary contributions, the PAC failed to properly file reports of any in-kind contributions received from SEIU 775.

Ferguson told me simply: “My job is to enforce Washington state law with independence, and I take that responsibility seriously.”

2. We've had a parade of city council candidates come in to Seattle Met this week for endorsement interviews, and they ticked off a series of LIKES and DISLIKES for us.

Parting company with the de facto Sawant slate of candidates (Sawant, Lisa Herbold, Jon Grant), Michael Maddux DISLIKES reverting back to the blanket linkage fee, telling us: "I think mandatory inclusionary zoning is far more ideal than the blanket linkage fee."

Maddux told us he DISLIKED the SoDo stadium deal—though not the $200 million public financing part. Rather he didn't like that it would disrupt the maritime economy core saying: "The location is terrible...to put it in the middle of our industrial center."

At first, Reverend Sandy Brown told us he DISLIKED that 65 percent of the city is zoned exclusively single family and pointed out that Seattle is the least dense city on the West Coast citing Vancouver as a model. However, he hyped Vancouver's approach of channeling density downtown. When we said the Housing Affordability and Living Agenda committee wasn't about channeling density downtown, he concurred, and said he liked the idea of nudging density into hub urban villages and allowing those nodes to nudge into six percent of the SFZs, as HALA recommended. Okay, easy answer, but what about the rest of the SFZs?

Brown said he LIKED the HALA recommendation to remove barriers on mother-in-law apartments. But, did he like the key component of that recommendation, taking away the ownership mandate that requires one of the occupants to own the property. Brown DISLIKED that. "I agree with the restriction on the ownership requirement," he said. "It's an impediment, for sure," he acknowledge, but explained: "What I worry about is then a developer can come in and then mow down the house and put in something that's out of character with the neighborhood."

Brown was intent on the point, though, that he wasn't "a neighborhood NIMBY" and "I'm an urbanist!" and gave a big thumbs up LIKE to the 130th Street protected bike lane.

On the urbanism stuff, populist candidate Jon Grant surprised us. He LIKED a lot of it: getting rid of parking minimums, getting rid of the mother-in-law ownership requirement, and he liked changing from single family zoning around the planned 130th Street station in North Seattle to mixed-use, multifamily zoning. (That question is still out to Brown—it's a controversial matter in his district.) Grant's big footnote, though: There needed to be assurances that no affordable housing was lost, and he called for one-for-one replacement measures.

Another big footnote on his suppoesed urbanist cred: He also LIKED the new pod apartment requirements that have restricted pod apartment development, citing both health codes around needing two sinks and citing tougher floor area ratio requirements.

What Grant really really really DISLIKED (he was pounding his fist on the table at this point) was his opponent Tim Burgess's incrementalist approach. When we cited Burgess's landmark compromise to usher through the monumental paid sick leave law (the precursor the $15 legislation), Grant said: "I want to push back on the idea that determining a council member's success is by how many unanimous votes they get. I think that unanimity actually demonstrates moderation on the council...a kind of incrementalism that can beat all the good out of the bill. And then it goes to the full council and the council votes for it because there's nothing controversial. The rent stabilization bill is a good example."

In contrast, he said: "Having split votes would actually demonstrate that we're actually making progress. Having five-to-four votes would actually demonstrate that we were actually pushing for something  meaningful."

He continued:

Tim has had a few good votes. But he's had a lot of bad ones too. Around labor issues. On the preschool initiative, he went to war against raising wages for educators. [Grant was referring to the council's decision to pit its funded preschool initiative against a union backed  initiative to raise preschool teachers' wages.] I think that that is a demonstration that he's not a consistent supporter of labor. Look at the Whole Foods situation, where UFCW 21 was trying to ensure that people got paid fair wages. The city was trying to use its alley vacation authority to compel that. And Tim Burgess was there to block that too. Repealing the employee hours tax, that was not a progressive move.

Grant had other examples—the recent local control initiative on rent regulation, which Grant saw as a watered down version of one that would directly take on rent control, and, of course, Burgess's infamous panhandling crackdown, which Grant spoofed for running contrary to Burgess's own self-described "data driven approach."

"Study after study after study shows that criminalizing behavior for being poor is the way to perpetuate poverty. So, if he's claiming to be a person who's completely data driven, why is it that he forwarded a proposal that study after study shows demonstrably will make it worse?"

Finally, (suckers!) we LIKED that Maddux showed up, biker style, with his pant leg rolled up: