Harrell pays consultant $280K to lobby for his Seattle light-rail positions

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell is paying a consultant up to $280,000 to provide advice and political support for his light-rail positions, which include shifting a future underground stop away from convenient Union Station in the Chinatown International District.

The no-bid contract was awarded in February 2022 to Tim Ceis, a former deputy mayor under Greg Nickels in the 2000s. The initial six months were extended through April 2023, as Sound Transit outreach and studies for the West Seattle to Ballard Link Extension stretched into a sixth year.

The scope of work in the contract calls for him to develop “positive board-level relationships that support Seattle’s goals for WSBLE and enable effective decision-making at the [Sound Transit] board.”

Ceis, who was raised in West Seattle, became known as “The Shark” for his hard-bargaining manner as deputy mayor. His contract with Harrell was first reported by Publicola.

“It’s been a great investment for the city,” Harrell said in a phone interview Friday. Ceis’ personal contacts helped push the stalled light-rail planning process forward, so leaders can deliver the brick-and-mortar megaproject, the mayor said.

Sound Transit’s 18-member board made a key decision March 23 — that a second Pioneer Square Station is the preferred alternative for further study and engineering, instead of the site at Union Station next to light rail, Amtrak, commuter lines, streetcars and stadiums. The Union Station site will be studied as a secondary option in the future 12-mile, $15 billion Seattle corridor.

“When we talk about 10 years to 12 years of construction in the CID,” Harrell said, “I don’t think they’ve given full appreciation to the destruction that could occur.”

Harrell isn’t the first mayor to spend on ST3 strategic help. Former Mayor Jenny Durkan hired Anne Fennessy, a longtime friend and former Sound Transit public-affairs consultant, for up to $180,000 per year to serve as the city’s single point of contact with transit officials.

The volunteer group Seattle Subway, which backs the Union Station hub, tweeted in late March that Harrell hired Ceis to broker “a backroom deal,” a view shared among dismayed transit activists.

Ceis and Harrell insist they made no efforts to whip up opposition to Union Station, notwithstanding that the contract calls for “addressing community concerns and shaping consensus in support of staff recommendations and ST Board actions.”

Public testimony in favor of stations north and south of the Chinatown International District was spearheaded by the social-equity group Puget Sound Sage and InterimCDA, the neighborhood’s community development nonprofit. They were outnumbered by “Move Forward on Fourth” supporters, a group that includes the Pioneer Square Alliance and Chong Wa Benevolent Association, with a late endorsement by Uwajimaya stores President Denise Moriguchi (who previously fought a station option next to the Historic Chinatown Gate at Fifth Avenue South).

Ceis said he contacted half the 18 board members to explain the mayor’s positions, and was working 20 hours a week. That includes sessions with staff and local groups in hard-to-build places like South Lake Union and Seattle Center. Hourly pay rates for his firm, Ceis, Bayne & East, were redacted from a contract copy the city posted online.

Snohomish County Executive Dave Somers, a transit board member, said he took a brief phone call in mid-March, by which time he had already warmed to the Pioneer Square version. A potential $800 million extra cost at Union Station, to construct next to BNSF Railway and replace a city viaduct, heightens Somers’ fear that Seattle’s high costs might hinder Sound Transit’s capacity to borrow for Paine Field and Everett extensions.

“Tim didn’t have to do any working on me,” Somers said. “He just let me know that’s where the mayor was heading.” Ironically the vote was 15-1, with Somers voting “nay” in protest because he wanted to scrap the Union Station site immediately.

“How do you enforce a 16-member backroom deal?” Harrell said Friday. “I don’t know how you would go about that.”

Harrell said avoiding neighborhood harm was a bigger issue to him than supporting King County Executive Dow Constantine’s proposal, issued March 7, combining a second Pioneer Square train stop with a high-rise civic campus, to replace the empty county administration building and a few rundown blocks.

The pro-Harrell consensus reflects a larger strategic trend. Political leaders have largely stopped treating Link light rail as a fast regional conduit among Everett, Bellevue, Seattle and Tacoma as conceived in the 1990s, but more like a series of shorter runs near their towns, with neighborhood infill stations and not-so-fast speeds.

If the train is going to take 70 minutes from Tacoma to downtown Seattle, suburban leaders see little value to fight for Union Station — except transit-board member Claudia Balducci of Bellevue, one of the board’s few daily transit riders and who opposes new options that add travel time.

Pierce County Executive Bruce Dammeier, in an interview last week, said he defers to Harrell on Seattle stations. Dammeier said that his own goal is ensuring Tacoma’s travelers and workers can ride Link to the airport, preferably before Sound Transit’s 2035 timeline to build the full connection.