November's electoral sweep by progressive candidates of the three open seats on Seattle's City Council left many hopeful that--despite the election of an ex-developer as mayor--the days of closed, downtown- dominated, corporate-happy politics were over. They were wrong.

On at least a half-dozen different key issues, events in the last two weeks have underscored just how entrenched the status quo is, and how slow change will be. Licata, Steinbrueck, and Conlin may well all be outstanding council members--especially if they're supported on the issues by a vocal, insistent public. But they are only three of nine votes in only one of several institutions that desperately needs shaking up.

The sharpest indicator of the magnitude of the task came on March 4, when the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission agreed, in a 9-0 decision, that, in the words of the Seattle Times, "...even though the city broke federal, state, and city laws when it took steps to buy a new downtown parking garage and repoen the old Frederick & Nelson building [for Nordstrom's], it did not violate its Code of Ethics."

This raises an obvious question: what the hell would it take to violate the city's Code of Ethics? International law? Nuremberg?

Prosecution of the broken laws would have to come from City Attorney Mark Sidran's office; Sidran himself signed off on many of the crimes and continues to both defend them and take money from the beneficiaries. Thus, the ruling, by the closest thing city government has to an independent watchdog, virtually precludes any local accountability on this sordid scandal. Investigations by the state auditor and federal HUD agents both cover only portions of the ugliness, if they go anywhere at all. Meanwhile, back on council, Nick Licata has gotten mostly silence for his call for the city to withhold payment of the $73 million the city agreed to pay for Nordstrom's private garage. The deal's biggest council backer and apologist, Sue Donaldson, is now the new Council President.

Under Donaldson's leadership, the council has stopped cold reform of two of the most visible social issues in the fall campaign; the poster ban and the Teen Dance Ordinance (TDO). The TDO has, for over a decade, held that freedom of assembly doesn't apply if you're under 21; the poster ban, as enforced, is in turn a clear assault on freedom of speech. (Apparently posters for lost kittens pose less of a "hazard to utility pole workers"-- the preposterous red herring still invoked by ban proponents despite the lack of a single such documented worker incident, ever)--than the hazard presented by flyers for political events or band shows.) Critical to stymieing the efforts of the reform trio was the reversal of a fourth vote, Tina Podlodowski. The Pod, like Margaret Pageler and others before her, has, immediately upon getting the Public Safety committee chair, become an eager arm of the cop lobby, renouncing whatever commitments and principles she might have had along the way. (The paperwork must've been incredible.)

Over at the mayor's office, more deals like the Nordstrom's fiasco are undoubtably cooking. Paul Schell's much-touted "visionary" qualities, when applied to the three highest-visibility issues he has addressed thus far, boil down to more of the same, only worse. After much noise about summits and inclusive processes, solutions for the city's soaring housing costs have devolved to giving tax dollars to (who else?) developers, with more "public-private partnerships" for more upscale new buildings--exactly what's causing the problem to begin with. Schell's transportation vision essentially is to shrug, claiming, in these financially flush times, to have no money to address one of the city's most vexing problems. (Hey, I know where we can get $73 million...) And siting for a new downtown library has devolved to debates over rushing onto the fall ballot an expensive, as- yet-undesigned proposal on the existing site (read: cost overruns for friends). No word on what happens to the library while the old one's torn down and the new one's being built.

Taken as a whole, it's an ugly lesson, one electoral politics coughs up rather regularly: a few good elected officials cannot cure a corrupt system. Only the public can do that. Since November 1996, four open council seats have resulted in the election of four reform candidates (Chong, Licata, Steinbrueck, Conlin) over more establishment-oriented opponents. The message--that the public is sick of clubhouse politics--could hardly be clearer. Now, it will simply have to be louder, more persistent, better organized, and more direct.--Geov Parrish