The city of Seattle will pay $2.3 million to settle a lawsuit brought by employees who in 2021 helped reveal that thousands of then-Mayor Jenny Durkan’s text messages had been deleted.
Following a whistleblower complaint by the employees, additional scrutiny showed that texts of multiple other top officials were also not retained from early summer 2020, when police used tear gas against Black Lives Matter protest crowds and vacated the East Precinct.
The King County Superior Court case was resolved last month but the terms of the city’s settlement with Stacy Irwin and Kimberly Ferreiro weren’t finalized until this week. The details were released to The Seattle Times through a public disclosure request Friday.
The $2.3 million payout is in addition to money spent by the city to defend the case. As of April 3, the city had logged more than $770,000 in payments, mostly to outside, contracted attorneys.
In their lawsuit, Irwin and Ferreiro said they were compelled to resign as public-records officers in Durkan’s office rather than continue to suffer hostile conditions and retaliation.
They said they were mistreated for objecting to how the office was handling requests by reporters and others for records, including Durkan’s texts. They said they were “subjected to scorn, ridicule, abuse and hostility … and the demand to perform illegal acts.”
The settlement agreement, signed by the plaintiffs and Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell, includes $25,000 in lost wages each to Irwin and Ferreiro.
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