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Friday, May 24, 2013
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SGN interviews Seattle City Councilmember Jean Godden |
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| SGN interviews Seattle City Councilmember Jean Godden | |
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by Liz Meyer -
SGN Staff Writer Seattle City Councilmember Jean Godden's re-election bid is not, as may be typical of most incumbents, shaping up to be a walk in the park. She's got an opponent in teacher Joe Szwaja and, though she garnered over 50 percent of the primary vote for City Council Position 1, Godden's been the topic of much discussion on local political blogs. Love her or hate her, all politicos seem to have, at the least, very strong opinions on the former Seattle Times columnist. If speaking to me was one more opportunity for Godden to court the Gay vote before November elections, I certainly didn't give her much of a chance to stump, speaking to her instead about some of these criticisms. As a former journalist herself, I figured she would certainly understand the need to skip pleasantries, and I jumped right into what may be some of the most particularly unpleasant topics for Godden to discuss. Take, for instance, the messy matter of police accountability, or the spike in the number of Gay bashings this summer all over the city. They're the sort of cringe-worthy topics that would make any candidate squirm, but as the Vice-Chair of Public Safety, Godden has a special vested responsibility in these matters that are, or should be, of utmost importance right now to Seattle's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community. Besides the charge perhaps most commonly leveled at Godden by opponents, that she doesn't have much to show for her time on the Council, is her opponents' accusation that she was an absent voice in this summer's discussions on police ?accountability. "I don't know that I was absent at all," Godden replied. "I actually was at the mayor's press conference when he appointed the police accountability panel. That's not absent, that's very present. I have talked with my fellow councilmembers about this, and I'm Vice-Chair of Public Safety, as a matter of fact. I thought that we must have safe streets and we must have police accountability. Until we do, that there's no reason why we might not have several committees working on police accountability. The mayor formed one and I understand Councilmember Licata is forming one as we speak, and I support him thoroughly on this." As to the first charge, Godden pointed to her role as Chair of the Energy and Technology Committee as indicative of some of her accomplishments over the past four years. "I actually started out two years before that as Chair of Energy and Environmental Policy, and did a number of things for environmental policy while I was chair of that," said Godden. "As far as energy is concerned, that meant I supervised Seattle City Light, which when I took over the committee, it was in pretty sad shape. It was badly in debt. People's rates had been raised 58 percent over a period of a couple of years, and it was not as environmentally sound as it might be. Since taking over, the new financial policies have enabled us to pay our debt down from 85 percent to 70 percent, we're right on target, and we have lowered rates 8.4 percent across the board. We're about to be, for the 3rd year, greenhouse gas neutral at Seattle City Light. As far as the environment is concerned, I've done a number of things, and most significant is passage of the critical areas ordinance, which protects wetlands and riparian streams." She also mentioned her work as Chair of Energy and Technology, and said she was proud of the work she's done around issues of cable affordability. The Seattle Metropolitan Elections Committee (SEAMEC), a local nonprofit group that rates candidates on issues of importance to the LGBT community, endorsed Godden in the primary election (they're set to make an announcement regarding their endorsement for the general election soon). However, the endorsement says little about her actual reactions to this summer's homophobic violence; so, we spoke a little about the matter. "We are very concerned about this," said Godden, "and, as a matter of fact, two of the councilmembers (the openly Gay, Tom Rasmussen, and Lesbian, Sally Clark) are working with police to see what we can do about this to decrease it. Obviously, the City Council makes laws and provides budget monies for these things, and, now that it's budget time, we will find some way that we can help. I've worked with the police chief on this, and since we all have specific involvements, like chairs of other committees, we're sort of letting them (Clark and Rasmussen) represent us on this and advise us on this." The election for Seattle City Council will take place on Tuesday, November 6. |
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