City elected officials submit their annual financial disclosure forms

Every year the City of Seattle’s elected officials are required to submit a financial disclosure form by April 15, so that we can better understand financial investments, pressures, and potential conflicts of interest they may have. Below are this year’s submissions, with some notes.

Here’s my traditional preface to this annual post:

… I will admit that spending an evening reading the Council members’ financial disclosure forms is sort of creepy, and at times feels downright invasive. Even with confidence that my own finances are above reproach, I would be hesitant to run for public office knowing that I would have to disclose this much information. Nevertheless, they did choose to run for City Council… And they won, and now so do we all because of the transparency this grants us. But let’s be grownups about this, throw some respect their way for giving up some of their privacy in the name of good government, and treat these disclosures with the seriousness they deserve.

Mayor Jenny Durkan

City Attorney Pete Holmes

Council President Lorena Gonzalez

Councilmember Lisa Herbold – no changes since last year

Councilmember Debora Juarez – no changes since her 2019 filing

Councilmember Andrew Lewis

Councilmember Tammy Morales

Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda – minor changes from last year

Councilmember Alex Pedersen – minor changes from last year

Councilmember Kshama Sawant

Councilmember Dan Strauss

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Notes:

• Four of the eleven elected officials are millionaires: Durkan with a net worth of $5.6 million; Morales with $3 million; Holmes with $2.2 million; and Juarez with $2 million. At the other end of the spectrum is Councilmember Lewis (also the youngest of the group) with $53,000 — though he lists no debts.
• Strauss lists income from a legal settlement after being hit by a car.
• Gonzalez lists among her creditors monthly $250 payments to the IRS under a payment plan for a tax liability somewhere between $25,000 and $99,999.
• Sawant’s husband, Calvin Priest, had paid employment last year with Socialist Alternative, the Tax Amazon campaign, and the “Kshama Solidarity” campaign opposing the recall of Sawant. According to reports filed with the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, Priest is paid about $2,360 per month by the Kshama Solidarity campaign, approximately the same rate he was paid for work on the Tax Amazon campaign and on Sawant’s re-election campaign in 2019.  Sawant’s financial disclosure form also lists about $2,000 of travel expenses that Socialist Alternative paid to send her to conferences in Brussels and Boston.
• For reference, here are the financial disclosure forms for 2020, 2019, and 2018.

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