After weeks of beating across the bush, Council Members Maritza Rivera, Cathy Moore, Bob Kettle, and Tanya Woo proposed a competing measure to the citizen-run initiative, I-137, which might fund social housing with a brand new tax on companies that pay any worker greater than $1 million. As a substitute, the council desires to keep away from imposing new taxes on large enterprise, the curiosity group that paid for his or her seats on the council, by raiding the Metropolis’s JumpStart payroll expense tax.
The transfer marks the newest instance of the brand new council disregarding the priorities the Metropolis legally obligated JumpStart income to pay for—reasonably priced housing, Inexperienced New Deal initiatives, and equitable improvement. Not solely would their various pit completely different sorts of non-market-rate housing towards one another on the February poll throughout a housing disaster, it foreshadows the council’s intent to steadiness the looming $260 million funds shortfall by attacking packages that profit the working class somewhat than by additional taxing firms or the rich.
Home Our Neighbors! (HON) gathered greater than 26,000 verified signatures in favor of I-137, which might impose a 5 p.c tax on corporations for each greenback over 1,000,000 they pay to a Seattle worker yearly. The income, a projected $50 million per yr, would fund the Public Growth Authority (PDA) that 57 p.c of voters accepted in HON’s 2023 marketing campaign. In response to reasonably priced housing developer Ben Maritz’s math, the PDA might pay for two,000 models of housing over 10 years with such a tax.
The council thought of I-137 on Aug 6, hours earlier than the deadline to place the measure on the November poll, which might doubtless see a bigger, extra progressive turnout. The council had three choices: Go the initiative outright, put it on the poll, or put it on the poll with a competing measure. Citing unspecified authorized considerations, the council voted 7 to 1 to delay motion, dooming the initiative to a lower-turnout election in February.
For weeks, advocates speculated that the council might prepare dinner up another on the request of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, the Seattle Occasions Editorial Board, and the Mayor. However nobody fessed up—Woo even denied her intention to take action.
Lastly, on Monday the council unveiled another that may use $10 million in annual income from JumpStart–a unstable pot of $230 to $300 million a yr–to fund the PDA for a five-year pilot interval. Maritz estimated the choice would pay for 250 to 375 models in its five-year lifetime.
In a press launch Monday evening, supporters of the choice offered their measure because the pragmatic alternative. Kettle stated the council various would supply “safeguards for taxpayer funds.”
However the various truly reveals the council’s intent to strip current safeguards that stipulate how the Metropolis should use JumpStart, turning it right into a slush fund for the final fund. These safeguards happened partially to guard the intention of the tax and to appease company pursuits that criticized the Metropolis for not mapping out a plan for the income. Moreover, the “taxpayer” who Kettle and his colleagues advocated for within the press launch isn’t the identical taxpayer that shoulders the disproportionate burden of Washington’s regressive tax code.
“The Metropolis Council would somewhat take cash from low-income packages than from millionaires and billionaires,” says HON Coverage and Advocacy Director Tiffani McCoy.
Within the press launch, Rivera stated the choice forces the event authority to “reveal proof of idea, somewhat than the Metropolis merely handing over a clean verify to one more new company with no observe file of making housing.”
McCoy blamed the PDA’s “observe file” on the Metropolis for delaying its start-up funds. Limiting funding with the brand new various might equally destine the PDA for failure.
“Pilot packages with shoestring budgets do not work while you’re in a housing disaster of this magnitude,” McCoy says. “And in the event that they need to see a proof of idea, they need to look out their rattling home windows at Montgomery County, Maryland. They need to have a look at Chattanooga, Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, California, Hawaii… [Social housing] isn’t radical. That is everywhere in the world, and this concept that we have to do a ‘proof of idea’ simply reveals an incapability to do math.”
Apart from, the choice wouldn’t show the idea of social housing. The council’s various would decrease the cap on renters’ incomes from 120% of the realm median revenue (AMI) to 80% AMI, undermining the cross-subsidization mannequin of social housing that voters accepted in 2023. This transfer makes this system one more reasonably priced housing developer, McCoy stated.
In actual fact, in response to HON’s attorneys’ evaluation, the choice might not match the usual of an acceptable competing measure as a result of the town council might theoretically enact each initiatives.
That’s not the one authorized hassle that might head the council’s approach.
Former Metropolis Lawyer Pete Holmes says that the Metropolis Constitution, which is analogous to the US Structure for Seattle, requires the council’s consideration of initiatives to take priority over every part apart from appropriations and emergencies.
“With polling suggesting sturdy voter assist for I-137, Council’s failure to submit it to a vote within the high-turnout Normal Election begs the query whether or not the delay constitutes a voter suppression tactic in violation of the Constitution,” Holmes stated in a message to The Stranger. “Council ought to no less than clarify what has prevented well timed consideration of this citizen initiative.”
If HON can’t struggle the choice on its legality, McCoy says she’s assured they’ll manage towards it. Tonight, HON will maintain a Q&A session in regards to the various, they’ll voice their dissent on the council’s vote on Thursday, and so they’ll finally make their case to the voters that their initiative brings in regards to the imaginative and prescient of social housing that Seattle already accepted. The council’s model, they’ll argue, does little greater than defend the wallets of the ultra-wealthy.
