Monster of the Week: Seattle City Light Execs

Democrats in Seattle cry crocodile tears about how they have no money for libraries, buses, trains, healthcare, or affordable housing. But at the same time, the city spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on lavish executive salaries for people with exciting and important job titles like “Executive 3” and “Executive 4”. What do these people do? Your guess is as good as mine, but apparently it’s so extremely important that they MUST make $320,000 a year in order to do it.

These executives work for every major department of the City, although one department rises above the rest in its bloated executive pay: Seattle City Light.

Seattle City Light is the city’s municipal electrical utility company. Seattle is one of a handful of major U.S. cities that has a strong publicly-owned municipal power company with a monopoly on power generation and transmission. This was won through sixty years of class struggle as a concession from the capitalists in this city in order to cut off the increasingly revolutionary aspirations of Seattle workers. 

In the 1890s, after the Great Seattle Fire in 1889 that burned down a large swath of the city — in part due to insufficient water infrastructure — a movement for publicly owned utilities started to grow. The city took control of the water supply, including hydroelectric power, and Seattle City Light was born. Partly inspired by the Russian Revolution of 1917, over 65,000 Seattle workers took control of the city in the Seattle General Strike of 1919. Private ownership of utilities became so politically toxic that in the early 1930s Seattle voters recalled the mayor after he fired the superintendent of Seattle City Light. And in 1951, the City dealt the final blow to private power by buying up the last of the private power operations.

But municipal ownership only goes so far under capitalism. With the hollowing out of the labor and socialist movements in the 75 years that followed, Democrats have overseen increasing rate hikes and bloated Seattle City Light to enrich wealthy and connected executives.

Seven of the ten highest-earning city employees are Seattle City Light executives, including the CEO. The previous long-running CEO, who left at the end of 2025, made nearly $500,000/year. Now the highest paid city employee is Dennis McLerran, the Deputy General Manager of Seattle City Light, earning almost $400,000/year. And our “socialist” Mayor Katie Wilson hired this guy!

Seattle City Light isn’t the only department with bloated executive pay, but it is the worst. If we capped city employee salaries at a measly $140,000/year, the city would save $139 million every year. The current budget deficit is $175 million, so it would almost completely solve the current budget crisis. And that $139 million in savings doesn’t take overtime pay into account, which would likely push it over $175 million.

Of that $139 million, nearly a quarter of the savings comes from Seattle City Light. That is even more saved than the infamously overpaid and overfunded Police Department. Half of all Seattle City Light employees make upwards of $140,000/year. And if we capped City salaries at $120,000/year, it nearly doubles the savings to $250 million per year.

Democrats have spent decades increasing these lavish salaries for city bureaucrats, and have been making working class people pay for it through utility increases, sales taxes, property taxes, and sugar taxes. In the last ten years, electricity rates have gone up 55%. The City Council Democrats approved another 19% increase over the next two years. And they also approved a 6-year plan that includes 7-11% rate hikes for each year after 2028. If rates increase by an average of 9% yearly for the next 5 years, rates will go up another 55% in half the time. That’s at the same time that Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc. have made record profits.

The executives of Seattle City Light have strong ties to the Democratic Party and the capitalists. They are enmeshed as lawyers, non-profit board members, consultants, lobbyists, and some even worked directly for Democratic politicians for decades!

Dennis McLerran was a lawyer who represented PSE, the largest private utility company in WA, which would like nothing more than to smash Seattle City Light and buy up all of its infrastructure.

Another senior executive, Maura Brueger, has a decades-long track record working for the Democratic Party. She was the first full-time employee of Emily’s List, a Democratic Party think tank and major fundraiser. Emily’s List exploded in influence in the early 90s when they elected California Senator Dianne Feinstein. Feinstein immediately supported Clinton’s crime bill, and went on to vote for the Iraq War.

After Emily’s List, Brueger went on to be a member of senior management for Ron Sims during his time as King County Executive from 1997 to 2009. Among other things, Sims increased the Sheriff's department budget by $26.6 million from 2003 to 2007 alone, a 27% increase. He oversaw austerity budgets, including cutting $41 million from the county budget in 2001, which included axing a childcare subsidy program. 

In 2009 Sims was appointed by Obama as the Deputy Secretary of HUD, where he helped implement the HOPE VI program which oversaw the demolition of public housing to be sold off and redeveloped by private and non-profit landlords. Brueger was one of his top staffers through all of that time, and now sucks up nearly $230,000 a year of your tax dollars.

Seattle City Light is a perfect example of why only the threat of revolution can win major concessions under capitalism, and also why we cannot stop there. We must fight for every possible reform, but with a clear aim to use those fights to build independent working-class organization capable of overthrowing capitalism. We need a workers party that can challenge the political power of the Democrats and Republicans, including their control of Seattle City Light. Workers built the power infrastructure, and we should run it.