Seattle’s Legal Housekeeping: The City Council Decides to Clean Up Its Own Act
In 1899, Seattle’s leaders admitted their laws were a mess and hired two experts to fix it—proving that bureaucratic confusion is an old problem.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The city council has decided to codify the city ordinances. It has been 25 years since the ordinances have been published for public distribution. There is an ordinance under consideration which will be advantageous to the bill recently introduced by Hill, which provided for the printing of the city ordinances free of charge.
The members of this committee are: Corporal William H. Humphrey; Councilman C. Gill, chairman of the legal judicial committee; and Attorney W.H. White for the city.
The work on the codification will begin at once, and Corporation Counsel John Ross and Attorney W.H. White, experts, have to have the work completed in five months. They will receive $2,000 for their work.
Many ordinances have accumulated in the past year, and they will be gone over, and only those now in force will be printed.
Seattle’s current housing and zoning crises are often blamed on modern complexity, but this 1899 article reveals that 'unreadable laws' were a problem nearly 125 years ago. The city council had to hire outside experts to make their own rules legible—a reminder that transparency in governance is a perpetual struggle, not just a digital-age fix.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.