Moran quits council as anti-development power shrinks

The second to do so in the past two days, city council member Karen Moran announced her resignation on Thursday, following the exit of Mayor Christie Malchow.

The resignation will be effective June 15, ending Moran’s term four years early. She was only reelected during the last election in November.

Moran was first elected in 2017 and served as mayor from 2020 to 2021.

Moran’s resignation leaves Councilmember Kent Treen as the lone member of the anti-development faction remaining on the council.

The reasons behind the resignation, as outlined in Moran’s letter, revolved around recent losses in the anti-development agenda and dismay that her power on city council has shrunk.

Moran increasingly found herself on the losing side of many votes this year.

She listed the June 7 council’s vote to withdraw its court appeal against the state’s Growth Management Hearing (GMHB) as one example. The city was fighting a ruling by the GMHB that Sammamish had violated state law by arbitrarily tightening traffic concurrency requirements to block development.

She failed to block the city’s separation with former city manager Dave Rudat in March after an ethics investigation found that Rudat had allowed his daughter to access confidential city information.

She was also unsuccessful in blocking Pam Stuart from being appointed to city council. King County Council stepped in and appointed Stuart unanimously in May after the city council deadlocked multiple times on her appointment.

After Stuart joined the council, Moran found herself on the losing side once again when the new council majority voted on May 17 to release the full Rudat ethics report to the public, which she opposed.

“The vision that King County and the current Council majority have for our future is not one that I can be party to,” Moran wrote in her resignation letter.

The council will have until Sept. 13 to appoint Moran’s replacement.