Curiously, something I did fixed it for one restart, but it's broken again. I've done a bunch of stuff so it's going to take some narrowing down.
I did see this in some of the RPT logs, but again may be related to my changes:
"Initializing Steam Manager
unable to load subscribed content list. list will be updated from steam
unable to load published content list. list will be updated from steam
unable to load cached items meta info. save and update functionality will be broken
Steam Manager initialized."
and also a reduced version:
"Initializing Steam Manager
unable to load published content list. list will be updated from steam
Steam Manager initialized."