Mayor McGinn, Outmuscled by MOHAI, Has His Medicine Marched In

Two weeks ago, I wrote about "Mayor McGinn's No Good, Very Bad Week," sensing that both his shakedown of MOHAI and deflection of the John T. Williams shooting were going to dog him, in tandem, for some time.

Yesterday, the same day the City Council overruled the Mayor's attempt to withhold $7 million in city assistance for MOHAI's move to Lake Union, and a group of protesters marched on City Hall, unmollified by Chief Diaz's musical-chairs reorganization in response to the killing of Williams. They sang McGinn a song, reports the Seattle Times, "intended to be medicine for his spirit."

The net result is that the Los Angeles Times has gratefully taken a break from reporting on LAPD abuses to cover Seattle's "turmoil over police-involved shootings," and the Mayor is faced with the option of a veto that the Council can easily override.

The MOHAI muddle, despite the Mayor's valiant attempts to play the fiscal conservatism card, is gaining little traction. Carl Marquardt, McGinn's legal advisor and not, despite what you may think, an unemployed collection agent, posted a rationale to the Mayor's blog that includes the assertion, "Given that MOHAI already has $80 million...," which, if you think $80 million refers to money in the bank, is untrue. What MOHAI has is $20 million in donations, a lot of promises, and a large neon "R." Be sure to read the comment in response to Marquardt's post.

There's an Alice-in-Wonderland quality to a scenario in which the Mayor, facing a $67-million deficit, tries to weasel out of a $7-million agreement ("tentative agreement!" says the Mayor's office) because the State, facing a $520-million deficit, promised MOHAI that at some point in the future the museum could have $40 million. I can't think that anyone at the State level knows precisely where that money is going to come from.

"This is strike two," says the Council's Tom Rasmussen, referring to McGinn's seeming penchant for revisiting agreements. "A deal is a deal, and, as a City, we need to negotiate all agreements in good faith," says the Council's Sally Bagshaw. The Seattle Times has the Mayor's reaction:

"We have a really hard budget in front of us, and the City Council is going to have to make some hard choices," McGinn said. "They can't even make an easy choice."

At Crosscut, Jordan Royer explains the complicated backstory of the MOHAI move to the Armory, and reminds the Mayor that MOHAI's agreement to maintain and operate the Armory in fact removes a costly white elephant from the City's expenses, that the City can't afford. That is the real rub. MOHAI may have cried wolf about needing to close for lack of $7 million, but the facts are that it must vacate its building so the State can begin work on the half-funded 520 bridge replacement. If this move to South Lake Union fails, both the City and MOHAI stand to lose.

Real Change reports that that the Mayor was asked during the Williams protest to fund a place for Native Americans to sell their art and carvings. Dallas Singhurst asked, "We got an agreement?"

"We will talk," McGinn said, shaking Singhurst's hand. "We will talk about how to do this."