Mayor takes a drubbing in latest WTO report

The Seattle City Council calls its final review of the World Trade Organization debacle an "umbrella" report. But this barbed bumbershoot provides precious little cover for anyone, least of all Mayor Paul Schell.

"Mayor Schell advanced the interests of the business and international trade community with more energy than he protected the interests of the city and its taxpayers," the WTO Accountability Review Committee's overview correctly concludes. "His enthusiasm for WTO was not tempered by careful consideration of costs and consequences for the city itself, and his staff did not exercise due financial or legal diligence in protecting Seattle's interests."

Responding yesterday afternoon, Schell said, "I deeply regret" that the WTO event "took the turn it did in our city" and that the best way to "heal from those events is to move forward constructively and aggressively to put into effect the lessons we have learned."

The City Council doesn't escape criticism in the report, which says "the council failed in its oversight responsibility."

But the council's exercise of its oversight was thwarted, the report alleges, by the mayor's office, which did not respond to a request for a "memoranda of agreement that would assign in advance responsibility for security and security cost overruns."

The overview report also criticizes Seattle Police Department management, both for poor planning before the event and for overreacting to the crisis that the poor planning created.

The resulting inability to control the disruptive demonstrators and law enforcement's overly zealous response combined to deny basic civil rights to protesters and to bystanders.

And the mayor takes a drubbing on the police issue too.

The review committee "finds that the desire to contain rising budget projections led the executive to deprive police of vital resources."

From the exhaustive reviews of the WTO disaster we conclude that the following changes must be made:

Events that tax government services, whether sponsors are public or private, must be subject to City Council approval. Financial obligations of private and corporate sponsors must be spelled out in written commitments and enforced through litigation if necessary.

The mayor and City Council should act in concert -- not at odds -- in the invitation of and preparations for future events.

Law enforcement preparations must meet a "worst case scenario" standard and sufficient resources must be available to deal with such a scenario should it develop. Elected officials must be informed of and confident of those preparations.

Sufficient resources -- including law enforcement personnel -- should allow the use of mass arrests, rather than the use of physical and chemical weapons, to clear unlawful demonstrations from public areas.

Top police officials who abdicate their leadership responsibilities should be dealt with before that abdication can prove disastrous.

The preservation and protection of the constitutional rights of free speech, assembly and going about one's daily life should be an essential goal in planning for and controlling public demonstrations.