State of the Mind

Both Seattle dailies (Times, P-I) this morning carried mayoral-supplied "news" of the mayor's state-of-the-city speech set for later today. The Times also whipped out a supportive editorial and the P-I has a podcast of the spin session with Mayor Greg and Chief Gil.

The mayor says he needs more cops - he's planning to add 105 officers over five years - and will restructure the force to be, in the words of the Times, "faster, smarter, stronger."

Wow. Except nowhere in all that glowing verbiage did the press watchdogs question the need to spend an additional $12 million annually - the source of which the mayor hasn't yet pinned down.

We raise the issue because it's something the mayor himself seems to have put on the table: As we mentioned earlier, Nickels issued a press release last month calling Seattle "one of the safest cities in the country," boasting that major crimes had dropped and we could all sleep soundly at night.

But if we're that safe, why more cops? If the mayor just keeps doing the great job he says he's doing fighting crime and patting himself on the back, wouldn't that be $12 million cheaper? He could even redirect the savings to pay overruns on his new fire station program. In case you missed it, he's doing a great job fighting fires, too.