Durkan nominates three new department heads and one interim one (UPDATED)

Today Mayor Jenny Durkan announced that she has submitted nominations to the City Council to make permanent three of her interim department head appointments: Sue McNab at the Department of Human Resources, Calvin Goings at the Department of Finance and Administrative Services, and Andrés Mantilla at the Department of Neighborhoods. Durkan also announced that Linea Laird would take over for Goran Sparrman as interim Director of the Department of Transportation while the search process for a permanent SDOT director finishes up.

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Review of homeless encampment protocols gets stuck in the mud

Last fall when the City Council wrote the budget for 2018, it inserted a proviso on funding for removal and cleanup of unsanctioned homeless encampments. That proviso requires all such funding to be spent in conformance with the Multi-Department Administrative Rule (MDAR) established in January of 2017 that specified the specifics of how cleanups should be carried out. The proviso also spoke to the unease that some of the Council members feel toward that MDAR, and demanded that the executive branch review it and recommend changes by: Furthermore, the Council intends that the Executive shall review MDAR 17-01 and FAS …

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Understanding the (overbudget) Judgment and Claims Fund

The biggest piece of bad news in the proposed budget package that Mayor Burgess delivered to the City Council was a big deficit in a line-item that almost no one has heard of: the Judgment and Claims Subfund. Subsequently, it became a point of debate between the two candidates for City Attorney, incumbent Pete Holmes and insurgent Scott Lindsay, with accusations that Holmes has been mismanaging his budget for outside counsel. Let’s dig in to the Judgment and Claims Fund, look at what it is (and isn’t), and understand why it’s so far over budget this year.

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