(The Center Square) – Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown celebrated her administration’s first year in office on Thursday, touting a list of accomplishments after a trying 12 months.
Brown previously served in both chambers of the Legislature, including as the first Democratic female Senate majority leader and director of the Washington State Department of Commerce.
She took office last January after a contentious campaign against former conservative Mayor Nadine Woodward. Although, unlike Woodward, Brown aligns politically with the progressive Spokane City Council, a critical alliance amid a lengthy and ongoing transition.
Over the past year, she inherited and bridged a $25 million deficit that could have surpassed $50 million by 2027. She also paved the way with others to cement the city’s multimodal future and took steps to transition Spokane toward a scattered-site homeless shelter model.
“Serving as mayor is an incredible honor,” Brown wrote in a Thursday news release. “The progress we have made this past year is the result of the collective effort of the City Council, civic leaders, dedicated City staff, and an engaged community.”
The document “outlining these accomplishments” included 90 bullet points describing the accomplishments Brown, her cabinet and staff “delivered” since taking office. Nearly half were related to recommendations from Brown’s five transitional committees.
The most prominent included hiring new police and fire chiefs, passing Brown’s proposed sales tax increase, and supporting the homeless while closing Spokane’s largest congregate shelter.
Others included a CORE plan that only resulted in 13 service referrals among 190 contacts, allocating funding for cleaning up downtown while responding to a record amount of Code Enforcement cases and conducting a “full audit of the region’s shelter system.”
However, many of those triumphs are also a source of pain for Brown’s critics, who question her leadership. Councilmember Michael Cathcart told The Center Square that the list “creates an illusion of progress while leaving critical questions about efficacy and sustainability unanswered.”
He called the accomplishments misleading, specifically around the claim of conducting a “full audit” of the city’s shelter system. Cathcart said it only included bed counts and failed to provide an in-depth financial analysis, which he and others have repeatedly requested.
“This is particularly concerning given the mayor’s public safety sales tax campaign,” Cathcart said, “[which] included promises of independent audits for that revenue, raising the question of why a comprehensive financial audit of our spending on these critical services has yet to be conducted.”
As the administration tries to pull back spending while addressing homelessness, downtown continues to falter despite reports showing crime is down. Some critics say it’s not worth calling the Spokane Police Department anymore, citing slow response times and a lack of impact.
While Brown’s list did include numerous successes, she’ll likely continue to face an uphill battle as she leads a blue dot in the red half of the state. Recent surveys show that quality of life and public safety are falling behind, a trend that Brown will need to combat over the rest of her term.
“The report highlights various launches, allocations, and partnerships mostly advocated for by Mayor Brown but provides little evidence of accountability, such as mechanisms to track effectiveness or evaluate outcomes,” Cathcart told The Center Square. “Instead, it underscores the administration’s focus on activity over accountability, offering detailed descriptions of actions taken but paying little to no attention to measurable results or clear benchmarks for success.”
