The state says it can’t track where forty-five million dollars went. Sound Transit’s board chair is walking into Thursday with a thirty-four-point-five-billion-dollar hole. And Seattle’s answer to the restroom crisis is a one-year pilot with a company called Throne Labs. This is Seattle Politics and Urbanism Daily — Monday. And, yeah, every thread we’ve been tugging on this week just came back with receipts: transit funding, homelessness accounting, and whatever you want to call this infrastructure experiment in Pioneer Square. I’ve been saying the KCRHA books were a disaster since May 13th. Now the state auditors have said it in writing. So no, we’re not in “allegations” territory anymore — this is a finding. And that ST3 board vote is Thursday. Dave Somers is bringing the resolution, so we’re about to see whether any of this week’s outrage actually turns into anything binding. This one's from Seattle Transit Blog:
On Thursday, Sound Transit Board Chair Dave Somers will share a resolution to update the Sound Transit 3 system plan. This update will help align the agency’s future Link extensions with the available funding.
Following up on Friday’s ST3 reckoning, Somers has an actual resolution on the table now. It spells out what gets built, what gets designed, and what gets deferred. And this is the first time “deferred” shows up as official board language instead of just a rumor out of a planning meeting. That same question I had Friday is still hanging there: does a board chair resolution actually bind anything? Because “deferred until additional funding becomes available” is doing a lot of work. Additional funding from where, Dave? The Urbanist framed the $34.5 billion gap pretty plainly: who actually has the power to change the plan now? And the honest answer from today’s materials is the board can shuffle things between columns, but voters approved a system — not a triage chart. Three weeks ago, community groups were demanding Sound Transit build what was promised. Now it’s a resolution sorting projects into tiers without going back to those voters. I said tripling the cost and quietly filling the gap was how you blow up public trust in transit — that’s not a warning anymore. That’s what’s happening. Okay, so voters said yes to ST3 back in 2016 — the taxes, the bonds, all of it. How does Sound Transit end up nearly $35 billion short, and where did that money go? The short answer is: it didn’t go anywhere. It just never showed up at the scale the 2016 plan assumed. Sound Transit says capital and operating costs have risen sharply since voters approved ST3, and they’re climbing faster than anyone projected even five years ago. The Seattle Times reported the expansion plans have ballooned by up to $35 billion, and by early 2026 the agency was formally putting the gap at $34.5 billion — money it needs to close over roughly the next two decades to finish what voters were promised. Part of that is plain inflation in construction and materials; part of it is that mega-project estimates made a decade out are usually too rosy. So no, the money wasn’t stolen — the agency is collecting the taxes voters approved — but those dollars just don’t stretch the way the 2016 spreadsheets said they would. Per Sound Transit’s own affordability framing, if the agency does nothing, the full expansion program becomes unaffordable. So who actually gets to decide what gets built and what gets cut — is this Sound Transit staff calling the shots, or are elected officials? It’s the Sound Transit Board, and it’s made up of elected officials from across the region — mayors, county executives, state legislators — so the politics are very real. Board chair Dave Somers has put forward a proposal that would protect the light-rail spine to Everett and Tacoma, advance West Seattle Link, but defer the three northernmost Ballard stations with no firm completion date, and push the South Kirkland-to-Issaquah line to 2050. The board was moving toward a formal vote on that “affordable ST3” framework at the end of May 2026, and Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell has already been publicly pushing to keep West Seattle and Ballard prioritized — which The Urbanist says has ruffled feathers among suburban board members. Watch that vote, because whatever framework they adopt sets the ceiling for what any of these corridors can be over the next decade. Joel Moreno, writing in KOMO News:
The King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office filed 46 felony drug-dealing cases during the first quarter of 2026, according to data released this week. More than a third of those cases were connected to three Seattle hotspots, which include 3rd Avenue and Pine Street, parts of Belltown, and the intersection of 12th Avenue S and S Jackson Street in Little Saigon.
The King County PA filed 46 felony drug-dealing cases in Q1 — and more than a third of them were tied to three hotspots: Third and Pine, parts of Belltown, and 12th and Jackson in Little Saigon. KOMO’s Joel Moreno has the story, and the immediate reaction from people actually living in those neighborhoods is pretty simple: it’s still a mess out there. Forty-six cases in a quarter — I want to know if that’s a meaningful dent or just a press conference number. Because the story also says there have been 191 fatal overdoses this year, and those two figures do not feel like they’re in the same universe. Worth flagging the contrast sitting right under that: the PA’s office is also, quietly, raising the felony threshold for property crimes. So the charging posture isn’t just tougher across the board — it’s selective. That’s a policy choice, not just an enforcement trend. Jeremy Portnoy, writing in RealClear Politics:
Topline: The homelessness agency in King County, Wash., has a $45 million deficit, but auditors can’t fully figure out why, according to a state audit publicly released this April. Its accounting records are so poor that it’s impossible to track where portions of its money are being spent.
The state audit came out in April, and this isn’t Wilson’s internal review — these are external auditors saying KCRHA’s books are so bad they literally can’t track where portions of forty-five million dollars went. That’s a different category of finding. Two weeks ago it was thirteen million unaccounted for and a five-page memo. Now the state auditors are in, and the number is forty-five million with no paper trail. Same agency, same pattern, bigger receipts. The Salesforce purchase is its own story: bought without county approval, budgeted at five hundred sixty-three thousand, ended up costing more than two million. And the CFO slot? Eleven months through Robert Half at four hundred forty-nine thousand, then that same contractor became a full-time employee. That’s not a rounding error — that’s a procurement culture. They’re running shelters for thirty-nine cities and they can’t explain eight million dollars of what those cities supposedly owe them. At what point does King County just pull the plug and rebuild from scratch instead of laundering the same dysfunction with new branding? Ethan Bergerson, writing in SDOT Blog:
Mayor Katie B. Wilson is taking a step to deliver on her promise to create more clean, accessible, and safe public restrooms. We are partnering with Throne Labs to install four new public bathrooms in Pioneer Square. The new solar-powered facilities are free to access, cost-efficient for the City to install, and will be cleaned several times a day by Throne.
SDOT is partnering with a private company called Throne Labs to put four public restrooms in Pioneer Square. It’s a one-year pilot, free to use, and you either scan a QR code or download the Throne app to get in. The city says if it works, they might add more elsewhere. I’ll note this city has a long history of piloting things that never scale. And requiring a smartphone or a QR code to use a public restroom is a sentence I’m just going to let sit there. Four restrooms. One neighborhood. One year. Meanwhile KCRHA can’t account for forty-five million dollars, and we’re applauding a startup toilet pilot as a Wilson deliverable. To be clear, I want public restrooms — the lack of them is a real problem downtown. But “Throne is training Downtown Ambassadors to help people without cell phones use them” is not infrastructure. That’s a workaround for a workaround. If Seattle Politics and Urbanism Daily helps you stay oriented, take a moment to subscribe or leave a review wherever you’re listening. It really helps other people find the show and join the conversation.
You’ll find links to every story we covered today in the show notes. If one of them grabbed your attention, that’s the easiest place to dig in a little deeper.
That’s Seattle Politics and Urbanism Daily for this Monday. This is a Lantern Podcast.