King County Equity Now Archives - Seattle City Council Insight

State Auditor publishes findings on Black Brilliance contract

On 08/23/2021 By Kevin Schofield In audit

This morning the Washington State Auditor released its annual accountability audit of the Seattle city government. It’s a short, pro-forma report saying that mostly everything is fine. But it does call out “certain matters related to procurement of consultant services” that it addressed in detail in a separate letter to Mayor and the City Council last week.

Black Brilliance Research Project wraps up with allegations, recriminations, but no city investigation

On 03/08/2021 By Kevin Schofield In legal, letters, public safety

In the final days of the $3 million Black Brilliance Research Project, the wheels came off the wagon. King County Equity Now, the organization that fought for and spearheaded the project, found itself on the outside looking in, and despite making allegations that its fiscal sponsor had committed financial improprieties and contract violations, it was unable to convince the City Council to intervene before the clock ran out.

Black Brilliance Research final report delivered; attention turns to rolling out Participatory Budgeting

On 03/07/2021 By Kevin Schofield In budget, public health, public safety

Last Friday the final report of the Black Brilliance Research Project was delivered to the Seattle City Council. As with the preliminary report delivered a few weeks ago (from which there are only a few substantive changes), it contains some interesting insights and has several shortcomings. It does, however, fill out more details in the project organizers’ recommendations for launching the next phase: a $30 million “participatory budgeting” program for the city.

Catching up with the Mayor’s task force and the Black Brilliance research project

On 12/03/2020 By Kevin Schofield In police, public safety

As you may recall, over the past few months two parallel efforts were created to guide multi-million dollar investments in community safety: the Mayor’s Equitable Communities Initiative (ECI) task force to guide $30 million of investments; and King County Equity Now’s “Black Brilliance” research project, commissioned by the City Council, to identify priorities for community investments and make recommendations for a participatory budgeting process to allocate another $30 million of investments. There have been some recent developments, so it’s time to check in on both efforts. (I also encourage you to read PubliCola’s recent coverage of the Black Brilliance research …