Category: State of Washington

Density, homelessness, housing, human services, State of Washington

Inslee Proposes $800 Million Housing, Homelessness Plan
Gov. Inslee’s supplemental budget proposal includes funding for new tiny-house village shelters.

By John Stang

On Wednesday, Gov. Jay Inslee announced $815 million supplemental budget proposal to respond to homelessness across the state. His announcement came one day before King County planned to release a new count of the region’s homeless population, based on data obtained from homeless service providers through a database called the Homeless Management Information System, that is expected to be significantly higher than previous “point in time” counts.

Inslee’s proposal did not include detailed information about how much funding Seattle and King County stood to receive.

While it isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, the Washington Department of Commerce typically divides capital projects in thirds, with one third going to Seattle and King County, one third going to other cities and one third going to rural areas, Inslee spokeswoman Tara Lee told PubliCola. The commerce department would handle more than $700 million of the $815 million package in its capital and operations budgets.

If approved, the package would help build tiny-house villages, provide help for people to pay their utility bills, expand behavioral health facilities for the homeless, and speed up efforts to find places for the homeless living in tents on public right-of-ways.

Inslee announced the package Wednesday at the Copper Pines Habitat For Humanity complex in Ballard, which will include seven three-bedroom units for families making 80 percent or less of Seattle’s median income.

Inslee also announced legislation that would allow what low-rise apartments, split lots, duplexes, and other types of low-impact density on all residential lots within a half-mile of a major transit stop in cities with populations greater than 25,000 people. The legislation would effectively override laws dictating suburban-style single-family development in cities.

“We cannot wait years and decades to get people out of the rain,” Inslee said, adding that the state’s population growth has created a shortage of roughly 250,000 homes. “It is unacceptable to us to have people living under bridges and not have solutions.”

He said the state’s population growth has created a shortage of roughly 250,000 homes in Washington. His proposals addresses a range from the extremely poor to renting families in danger of losing their homes because of rising bills. Inslee said his proposals would build 1,500 new permanent housing units and fund acquisition of existing properties to add another 2,400 shelter beds, tiny house village units, and permanent housing units, including short-term shelter for people living in encampments across the state.

A document outlining Inslee’s proposal estimated that about 30 of every 10,000 state residents were homeless before the pandemic, a number the state believes has increased by about 2 percent. Statewide, 80,000 families said they could soon face eviction or foreclosure, according to the US Census Bureau. Continue reading “Inslee Proposes $800 Million Housing, Homelessness Plan” →

legislature, State of Washington, Taxes, Transit, Transportation

Advocates Say It’s Time to Ditch the Old Transportation Funding Process
Anna Zivarts, Disability Rights Washington

by Leo Brine

Transportation advocates were actually pleased when lawmakers ended the most recent legislative session without passing a new transportation package.

After the transportation committees released their proposed revenue packages late in the session, transportation accessibility groups and environmentalists were disappointed by the outdated investment priorities. Wanting a more equitable transportation package, advocates repeated a line of critique they’ve been making for years: The state needs to find new transportation revenue sources and free up revenue that is otherwise restricted to highway spending.

However, and perhaps because their recommendations have gone unheeded for a decade, a new, more sweeping critique emerged in 2021: It’s time to dump the whole politicized “transportation package” model and create a new framework that assesses and prioritizes the state’s actual transportation needs.

Anna Zivarts, Director of the Disability Mobility Initiative for Disability Rights Washington, said the current system is a “pork model,” where legislators pick projects for their districts rather than investing in projects that make the whole state transportation system function better.

“A transportation system has to work across the state,” she said. “If you have everyone competing, that’s not going to create the best system overall.”

Advocates say lawmakers have too much power over which projects get funded and have political incentivizes to fund major highway expansion projects rather than expand transit services or improve pedestrian infrastructure. Featuring friction over projects, funding, regionalism, mode split, and maintenance versus new construction, the legislative ritual, akin to passing a kidney stone, played out in 2003, 2005, and 2015.

A new, more sweeping critique emerged in 2021: It’s time to dump the whole politicized “transportation package” model and create a new framework that assesses and prioritizes the state’s actual transportation needs.

In April, during the last weeks of the session, the House and Senate transportation committee chairs, Rep. Jake Fey (D-27, Tacoma) and Sen. Steve Hobbs (D-44, Lake Stevens), shared their transportation revenue proposals. The House proposal would have spent $22 billion over 16 years, earmarking the majority of the dollars for highway projects, with about 20 percent going to multimodal projects. The Senate’s proposal would have spent $18 billion over the same period, with less than 10 percent going to multimodal projects.

Leah Missik, transportation policy manager for Climate Solutions, said lawmakers’ proposed investments in multimodal projects were a major step up from previous packages, but “continuously investing in road expansions is certainly not the way we want to go.”

In order to fix the state’s transportation system, Paulo Nunes-Ueno of Front and Centered, a BIPOC environmental group, said, “this package process needs to go.”  Transportation packages never meet people’s needs and are a hodgepodge of project ideas from legislators, he said. Instead, Nunes-Ueno says lawmakers should establish climate, infrastructure, and safety goals, and allocate funding to state and local agencies that would decide how to allocate funding on projects.

Hester Serebrin, policy director for the Transportation Choices Coalition, said politics play too great a role when lawmakers craft transportation packages. She said lawmakers are more likely to invest in large projects, like highway expansions or major road repairs, because they garner more attention than smaller multimodal projects. “This process doesn’t incentivize … projects that help people travel between places,” Serebrin said. “Instead it incentivizes larger, geographically isolated projects.”

Other advocates agree that politics should play less of a role in the state’s transportation system. Vlad Gutman, Climate Solutions’ Washington director, like Nunes-Ueno, wants legislators to devise a set of goals and values for Washington’s transportation infrastructure and allocate funding to state agencies who can come up with projects and programs to accomplish the goals.

In order to fix the state’s transportation system, Paulo Nunes-Ueno said, “this package process needs to go.”  Instead, Nunes-Ueno wants lawmakers to set climate, infrastructure, and safety goals and allocate funding to state and local agencies.

“We need to be selecting projects and investing and designing our transportation system in a sort of objective, metric-based way that also recognizes and inputs the needs of communities and people who are impacted and stakeholders of transportation,” he said.

To do so, he argued, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) should study the needs of the state and select projects based on those needs, “instead of [lawmakers] sort of piecemealing it by selecting projects one at a time,” Gutman said.

This participatory approach to transportation planning doesn’t make sense to Senate Transportation Chair Hobbs. “We’re in a democracy and legislators have a right to say how their districts should be supported by government,” he said.

Continue reading “Advocates Say It’s Time to Ditch the Old Transportation Funding Process” →

Affordability, Courts, Density, housing, Morning Fizz, Renters, State of Washington, Taxes

Olympia Fizz: More Calls for Inslee to Reject Weakened ADU Bill; State Rejects Eyman’s Anti-Capital Gains Tax Efforts

1. A pro-renter outcry against watered-down state legislation emerged this week when two dozen organizations and businesses signed on to a letter, originally drafted by the progressive Sightline think tank; the Sightline letter, which we reported on last week, asks Gov. Jay Inslee to issue a partial veto of accessory dwelling unit legislation that state representatives amended with anti-renter provisions.

Joining Sightline in a mini-rebellion against the House Democrats’ changes? The AARP of Washington, Climate Solutions, 350 Seattle, Amazon, the Washington State Labor Council, SEIU 775, and the Sierra Club, among others.

As we reported, the initial proposal, by state Sen. Marko Liias (D-21, Edmonds), would have banned owner-occupancy for secondary units, such as backyard cottages, allowing renters to live in both single-family houses and their accessory units—opening up exclusive single-family neighborhoods to more people. However, state Rep. Gerry Pollet (D-46, North Seattle) kicked off a House process that led to a radical rewrite, allowing owner occupancy mandates and imposing new restrictions designed to prevent homeowners from renting out their secondary units as Airbnbs.

Joining Sightline in a mini-rebellion against the House Democrats’ changes? 350 Seattle, AARP Washington, Climate Solutions, the Washington State Labor Council, and the Sierra Club, among many others.

“ADUs alone will not solve the state’s housing shortage,” the letter says. “But they are the gentlest way communities can add relatively affordable homes that offer lower income families more choices and allow seniors to age in place.”

2. Coming off yet another major legal loss, anti-tax activist Tim Eyman has stumbled again. The Republican Washington Secretary of State’s office threw out all four of Eyman’s anti-capital gains tax (SB 5096) referendum proposals.

The capital gains tax bill, which passed this year, would impose a 7 percent tax on capital gains of $250,000 or more, but conservatives are already champing at the bit to stop it from taking effect. Earlier this week, two conservative groups filed lawsuits against the bill, arguing that it constitutes an unconstitutional income tax.

Rejecting the measures, Washington State Director of Elections Lori Augino cited the bill’s necessity clause, an amendment added by Rep. Noel Frame (D-36, Seattle), which says that the tax is “is necessary for the support of the state government and its existing public institutions.” This places it outside the scope of citizens’ referendum power, Augino wrote.

Eyman’s referendum method would have been the safest option for conservatives to stop the bill. The other options are a lawsuit or a voter initiative, which requires twice as many signatures—about 325,000, or 8 percent of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election.

While the lawsuits could also upend the Democrats’ plans, they may also backfire on the conservatives. The Washington State Supreme Court could uphold the tax by ruling that it’s an excise tax, not an income tax. Or they could overturn a 1933 decision that defined income as property, which, under the state constitution, must be taxed at a 1 percent uniform tax rate. If the court overturns that ruling, Democratic lawmakers would finally have the opportunity to pass a graduated income tax in the state.

criminal justice, legislature, Police, State of Washington

What Became of the Legislature’s Big Plans for Police Reform?
Washington State Capitol (Creative Commons)

By Paul Kiefer

At the beginning of the legislative session in January, police accountability appeared to be front and center on many legislators’ agendas. By the time the session ended last Sunday, lawmakers had narrowed a broad array of police reform proposals to a core list of bills that expands the state’s role in police oversight and tactics, although some efforts to address gaps in police oversight—particularly police union contracts—fell short.

The agency that will play an enforcement role in the legislature’s police reform efforts is the state’s Criminal Justice Training Commission (CJTC), a group of civilians and law enforcement officers appointed by the governor that has the power to issue—and revoke—licenses to work as a law enforcement officer in Washington. On Sunday, the legislature sent a bill to Gov. Jay Inslee that will expand the CJTC’s authority to investigate officers for misconduct and suspend or revoke their licenses, a process known as decertification.

The legislation, originally sponsored by Senators Jamie Pedersen (D-43, Seattle) and Manka Dhingra (D-45, Bellevue), empowers the commission to discipline officers at their own discretion; under prior state law, the CJTC had to wait until a law enforcement agency fired an officer before considering whether to revoke the officer’s license, which allowed problematic officers to transfer to new agencies to escape consequences for misconduct.

Lawmakers passed new restrictions barring police officers from firing at moving vehicles, prohibiting judges from issuing so-called “no-knock warrants,” and limiting the contexts in which officers can initiate car chases or use off-leash police dogs.

The law will also require law enforcement agencies to report any serious use-of-force incidents to the commission, as well as any misconduct allegations or criminal charges of which their officers are found guilty. The commission would use that information to identify officers whose misconduct is serious enough to merit disciplinary action, including decertification.

Notably, the bill will alter the CJTC’s makeup, reducing the number of law enforcement representatives on the commission from ten to six and increasing the number of community representatives from two to seven. In total, the commission will grow from 16 to 21 members; other additions include a civilian police oversight expert. Members of the public will also be able to search a new CJTC database to track officers’ disciplinary and employment history. Continue reading “What Became of the Legislature’s Big Plans for Police Reform?” →

legislature, State of Washington, Taxes

State Wealth Tax Proposal Derailed in Olympia
State Rep. Noel Frame
State Rep. Noel Frame

by Leo Brine

With Democrats firmly in control of all three branches of state government, lefty tax reform advocates hoped for bold legislation this year. Indeed, with newly-elected President Joe Biden—and the crushing COVID-19 recession—making old-fashioned liberal tax policy viable for the first time in a generation, progressive taxation is in vogue in the state legislature.

Kinda. While both the House and Senate included the capital gains tax (SB 5096), a longstanding progressive goal, in their operating budget proposals, a proposed wealth tax (HB 1406), the first of its kind in the nation, is not on track to pass this session.

The wealth tax would require any state resident with more than $1 billion in intangible financial assets, such as stocks and bonds, to pay a one percent tax on their worldwide wealth. The Department of Revenue estimates only 100 Washington taxpayers would pay the tax, which would generate $2.5 billion annually.

Rep. Noel Frame (D-36, Seattle), the wealth tax’s prime sponsor and chair of the house finance committee, said if Republicans don’t agree to move the bill, she doesn’t want to waste the committee’s time with political theater on a bill that still has a long way to go. 

House Democrats passed the bill out of the Finance Committee on March 31 and sent it to the Appropriations Committee.

Republicans have made it clear they do not support the tax and some Democrats have shown opposition to the bill –two Democratic representatives voted against the bill in House Finance Committee on March 31. While Democrats may still have the votes to move the bill out of Appropriations committee, they’re not sure they’ve got the time, given that it’s this far behind in the process and the committee has Senate bills to consider.

Rep. Noel Frame (D-36, Seattle), the wealth tax’s prime sponsor and chair of the house finance committee, said if Republicans don’t agree to move the bill, she doesn’t want to waste the committee’s time with political theater on a bill that still has a long way to go.  “We’ve asked a lot of our staff, and I’m not inclined to ask them to do more in service of a bill that I don’t, at this moment in time, with 13 days left, see getting across the finish line this session,” Rep. Frame said.

Support PubliCola

If you’re reading this, we know you’re someone who appreciates deeply sourced breaking news, features, and analysis—along with guest columns from local opinion leaders, ongoing coverage of the kind of stories that get short shrift in mainstream media, and informed, incisive opinion writing about issues that matter.

We know there are a lot of publications competing for your dollars and attention, but PubliCola truly is different. We cover Seattle and King County on a budget that is funded entirely by reader contributions—no ads, no paywalls, ever.

Being fully independent means that we cover the stories we consider most interesting and newsworthy, based on our own news judgment and feedback from readers about what matters to them, not what advertisers or corporate funders want us to write about. It also means that we need your support. So if you get something out of this site, consider giving something back by kicking in a few dollars a month, or making a one-time contribution, to help us keep doing this work. If you prefer to Venmo or write a check, our Support page includes information about those options. Thank you for your ongoing readership and support.

Rep. Timm Ormsby (D-3, Spokane), the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said that at this point, bills “are going to need to be agreed to by both sides in order to make it through the process, so we don’t have a show hearing, as opposed to using our time most efficiently for bills that will pass.”

Misha Werschkul, the executive director of the Washington State Budget and Policy Center, said the legislature likely prioritized the capital gains tax because the bill was “developed over several years to have that strong support to move forward.” Continue reading “State Wealth Tax Proposal Derailed in Olympia” →

Affordability, housing, legislature, State of Washington

Pandemic Renter Protections on the Line in State Senate
Image via Nicole Macri’s campaign page.

By Leo Brine

UPDATE: House Bill 1236 passed the House Thursday on a mostly party-line vote of 28-21, without the three Republican amendments. The version that passed was a substitute, or striker, by moderate Democratic Senator Mark Mullet (D-5, Issaquah).

Senator Patty Kuderer (D-48, Bellevue) told PubliCola that Sen. Mullet’s striker amendment was necessary to get the bill passed and did not damage the overall integrity of the bill. The amendment didn’t alter the list of 16 reasons a landlord could give for evicting a tenant.

The bill, Kuderer said, “will ensure we transition away from the eviction moratorium using an off-ramp and not a cliff.”

ORIGINAL POST:

A bill that would bring an end to no-cause evictions in Washington (HB 1236) had a confusing day on the Senate floor on Monday. Republicans managed to get three amendments added to the bill, stripping away its protections for tenants facing no-cause evictions and exempting small rental properties from the bill entirely, before it was eventually taken off the floor.

An updated version of the bill is heading to a senate floor vote today.

The legislation lists 16 possible causes for a landlord to evict a tenant. “They’re very expansive,” Representative Nicole Macri (D-43, Seattle), the bill’s primary sponsor, said. “You just need to give a tenant a reason when you ask them to move out.” The causes range from tenants not paying rent, to tenants registering as sex offenders during their tenancy, to the landlord having a “legitimate economic or business reason” for the eviction.

Macri said the bill was informed by various just cause eviction laws and ordinances including the city of Seattle’s, as well as newer ordinances such as Federal Way’s and Auburn’s.

When the bill was introduced on the Senate floor, Republicans introduced three amendments, which all passed the majority-Democratic chamber. Because of the large number of bills the legislature debates at the end of the session, committee chairs and bill sponsors generally caucus with their party members on each amendment, enabling legislators to vote without keeping track of every single amendment. Senator Patty Kuderer (D-48, Bellevue) is the chair of the Senate Housing and Local Government committee and was in charge of informing her colleagues how to vote on the amendments.

“Without just cause [protections], there’s a huge loophole in how pandemic related rent assistance would work. You would just assist landlords in protecting their financial investments”—by paying them back rent—”but it would do nothing to protect housing stability.”—State Rep. Nicole Macri

Senator Marko Liias (D-21, Everett) told PubliCola in a text message that senators discussed all the amendments in caucus, “but with the volume of bills we are debating and the volume of amendments, things can get mixed up.” He said his colleagues would not have voted for the amendments they passed on Monday had they known what they were.

Liias asked for the bill to be taken off the floor, but not before Republicans managed to pass three amendments, including two that were substantive. Senator Chris Gildon (R-25, Puyallup) added an amendment giving landlords the right to evict tenants with “fixed-term leases”—those that do not renew or convert to month-to-month leases after the lease ends— without cause at the end of their lease. Senator Judy Warnick (R-13, Moses Lake) added an amendment that allows landlords to issue no-cause evictions to tenants living in properties with four dwelling units or fewer.

Democrats are trying to forestall a wave of evictions after the state’s eviction moratorium ends on June 30. The House Democrats’ budget proposal includes more than $1 billion for rental assistance to pay back landlords for rent debt that tenants have accrued during the moratorium.

Macri said she has been fighting with Republicans in order to get tenant protection bills passed, but they continue to propose amendments to limit and narrow those protections. She said one reason some lawmakers are not interested in passing comprehensive tenant protection bills is “because many lawmakers have personal experience as small-time landlords.” Lawmakers tend to personalize the policies in the bills because of their landlord experiences, using personal anecdotes to substantiate their opinions that tenant protection bills are harmful,  Macri said.

Support PubliCola

If you’re reading this, we know you’re someone who appreciates deeply sourced breaking news, features, and analysis—along with guest columns from local opinion leaders, ongoing coverage of the kind of stories that get short shrift in mainstream media, and informed, incisive opinion writing about issues that matter.

We know there are a lot of publications competing for your dollars and attention, but PubliCola truly is different. We cover Seattle and King County on a budget that is funded entirely by reader contributions—no ads, no paywalls, ever.

Being fully independent means that we cover the stories we consider most interesting and newsworthy, based on our own news judgment and feedback from readers about what matters to them, not what advertisers or corporate funders want us to write about. It also means that we need your support. So if you get something out of this site, consider giving something back by kicking in a few dollars a month, or making a one-time contribution, to help us keep doing this work. If you prefer to Venmo or write a check, our Support page includes information about those options. Thank you for your ongoing readership and support.

Warnick’s amendment to exempt small rental properties from the bill would be devastating to renters outside cities, Macri said, because “basically nobody in rural Washington would have protection.” Outside of major metropolitan areas along the I-5 corridor, she said, rental properties tend to be smaller—more like houses that have been converted to apartments. Even in Seattle, there are more than 26,000 properties with four dwelling units or fewer, according to Edmund Witter at the King County Bar Association’s Housing Justice Project, while there are fewer than 5,000 properties with five units or more.

Gildon’s amendment eliminating protections for people on six-month fixed-term leases is a more far-reaching than moderate Democratic Senator Mark Mullet’s (D-5, Issaquah) striker amendment, which would preserve protections for people on fixed-term leases shorter than 12 months. Mullet worked groups representing housing providers and landlords to negotiate a striker amendment (which incorporates multiple amendments into a single proposal) that waters down the effects of the bill in some of the same ways the Republicans’ amendments passed on Monday did. Continue reading “Pandemic Renter Protections on the Line in State Senate” →