Seattle City Council votes to override Mayor Jenny Durkan's vetoes
Source: Seattle Times
The Seattle City Council voted Tuesday to override Mayor Jenny Durkan’s vetoes of council bills meant to start shrinking the police force and scaling up community solutions this year. Council members chose to stick with the 2020 budget bills instead of a substitute proposal that the mayor had said she could accept.
The veto-override votes on the three bills were preceded by more than an hour of public comments, with most speakers urging council members to “hold the line” against the mayor and demonstrate they were listening to the Black Lives Matter movement. Several council members then sharply defended the bills as reasonable first steps toward revamping public safety in Seattle.
Councilmembers Alex Pedersen and Debora Juarez dissented on one of three veto overrides; the other two overrides were unanimous.
“Countless videos of Black and brown lives lost here in Seattle and across the country shows us that not everyone feels safe in our community and not everyone is safe,” Council President M. Lorena González said, referring to people killed by police officers. “We need public safety that’s centered on harm reduction, not the status quo.”
Read more: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-city-council-votes-to-override-mayor-jenny-durkans-vetoes-of-police-public-safety-2020-budget-changes
