As the nation watched New York City’s mayor get literally indicted this week for bribery, today people across Seattle thanked their lucky stars that their mayor, Bruce Harrell, is clearly such an ethical, grift-free and transparent public servant.
“Mayor Harrell isn’t anything like that—I mean, sure he almost immediately shut down a beloved public nude beach without any public engagement because of one text on his phone from multimillionaire U-Village owner Stuart Sloan, but I’m sure he would have done the same for any other constituent in this city,” said Laurelhurst resident Laurel Hearst. “Unlike Eric Adams, he’s a big fan of transparency and totally would have eventually told us all about that if KUOW hadn’t broken the story on it six months after everyone wondered why the hell the city was suddenly allowing a private donor to put a children’s playground next to a queer nude beach.”
Fans of Mayor Harrell agreed that he’s such a champion and proponent of public transparency and engagement that there’s honestly too much of it sometimes.
“You can have too much of a good thing—that’s why I’m glad the budget Mayor Harrell released this week basically completely cuts all funding for the Seattle Channel, which for years has been a key source of too much free public information about the city’s public policies and culture for local voters and reporters,” said local big fan of living in 1984, Tim Ward. “Why blow money on that when all you need are press releases on the Seattle City Council blog—they report plenty already on things like approving an expensive privately-run jail contract with real headlines like ‘Council passes legislation to diversify jail options.’ And before you say this kind of budget cut seems a lot like when Republicans try to eliminate all public funding for programs like Sesame Street and NPR, it’s not because Harrell on paper is a Democrat.”
A female reporter for The Needling was unable to get further comment from Mayor Harrell about how brilliant he is for swiping 60% of JumpStart affordable housing funds to cover the city’s budget shortfall because he was busy inside of a private men’s only club he chaired for six years before getting them $800,000 in city grants as mayor.
At press time, she was told she may only enter if hired as a server who’s okay with wage theft and not submitting a labor ethics complaint to the city about it that Harrell would threaten through more city department budget cuts to have squashed anyway.
