City Council, Mayor Wilson, Police

SPD Overpaid Officers By $13 Million. Now the City Wants It Back.

.SPD West Precinct

By Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle Police Department overpaid police officers, management, and civilian staff a total of more than $13 million as  part of a police contract, signed in 2025, that gave officers retroactive pay increases for two years when they were operating under a previous, expired contract.

Overall, about 900 SPD employees, most of them represented by the Seattle Police Officers Guild, received more retroactive pay—a payment that represents how much an officer would have made under a new contract during a period when no contract applied—than they were supposed to, thanks to an error by SPD’s budget or HR office. Basically, someone at SPD used 2020 rather than 2024 as a baseline to calculate what officers were owed. Because pay was much lower in 2020 than in 2024, this miscalculation produced a much larger differential between officers’ pre-contract pay and their pay under the new contract. Hence the overpayments, according to the city.

Some of the payments were in the thousands, but a large number were in the five figures. One officer received $32,000 in excess pay, while hundreds more received $10,000 or more on top of their regular “retro” payments. Around 100 SPD employees received at least $20,000 more than they were supposed to, while another 225 received between $15,000 and $20,000, according to the mayor’s office.

It’s unclear whether any officer who received a bloated retroactive paycheck reported the discrepancy to SPD. SPD referred all questions to the mayor’s office, which said they’d get back to us tomorrow.

The Seattle Police Management Association and Teamsters 117, the two unions that represent a small number of the SPD employees who were overpaid, have policies in their contracts for resolving overpayment. Employees who aren’t represented by unions will have to pay the money back, in accordance with state law on overpayments.

That leaves SPOG, whose contract is silent on what happens if SPD inadvertently pays them too much. (Officers themselves have apparently kept silent, too, since the city budget office just found out some of them got checks in June that were higher than they were supposed to be by five-figure amounts).

SPOG’s 2026-2027 contract, adopted last year, boosted starting salaries well above six figures, so the difference between an officer’s 2024 pay and their pay starting in 2026 could be significant—perhaps $20,000, based on a typical raise for an officer now making around $75 an hour. But it’s hard to imagine that none of the hundreds of officers expecting a check in that ranged noticed when their payment was $10,000, $15,000, or $25,000 higher than expected. Come on. No one?

In a statement, the mayor’s office revealed who holds the cards in this situation, and it isn’t the city. “As required by law, the City will engage in bargaining with SPOG over the method by which SPOG members will repay the overpayments,” the mayor’s office said. In other words, the city can’t just take the money back—it has to get SPOG to agree on whether and how and how much money officers will have to repay, and they could choose not to bargain at all.

Of course, “overpayments” are just money that belongs to the city and its taxpayers that the city misspent. What’s the difference between a police officer who knowingly keeps money he didn’t earn and one who grabs $10,000 he found lying around at a crime scene? That will be a question to keep in mind if SPOG argues officers should just get to keep the money.

I hoped to ask SPOG president Kent Loux about this, but he did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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SPD’s error raises questions about the department’s oversight of its budget, which is around half a billion dollars. Wilson’s office said they learned about the discrepancy in mid-July, which is shortly before Wilson asked then-chief Shon Barnes to resign.

SPOG announced a class-action lawsuit over alleged underpayments and nonpayments after the city implemented its dramatically faulty new payroll system, Workday, in 2025. According to the mayor’s office, the overpayments involved officers who were were working at the department between January 1 and August 27, 2024. Although Wilson’s office said the payment errors at SPD had nothing to do with Workday, August 27 was exactly one week before the city transitioned to the new system. I’ve asked the mayor’s office for more information about how those dates were chosen.

The mayor’s office did not identify the person or people directly responsible for SPD’s error.

The mistake, whoever made it, occurred under the watch of former police chief Shon Barnes and current Chief Operating Officer Sarah Smith, who oversees both human resources and SPD’s budget office. According to an FAQ provided by the mayor’s office, the city budget office (CBO) “learned of this error when SPD contacted CBO regarding a budget-to-actuals discrepancy in SPD’s 2026 budget related to retroactive payments.” In plain English, SPD discovered it was paying out more than it had budgeted, and asked the city budget office to take a look.

According to the mayor’s office, the city council first learned about the overpayments in early August. The mayor’s office said they don’t know when they might recover the overpayments, since they have to negotiate with SPOG for that to happen. In the meantime, the overpayments will become a new problem for this year’s budget, as the city looks an extra $13 million to avoid throwing the budget out of balance.

In the future, Wilson’s office said, the city budget office and the Office of City Finance will have to sign off on all retroactive payments before they go forward. “The Office of City Finance is also updating the payroll manual to provide guidance to department staff on this new approval requirement,” according to the FAQ.

The city council has known about SPD’s overpayment problem since late August, according to Wilson’s office. It won’t impact next year’s budget, which the council is currently hashing out. We reached out to public safety committee chair Bob Kettle, who wants to find money to hire more officers next year, but have not heard back.

Civil Rights, LGBTQ+, Police

Interim Police Chief Based Complaint Against Detective on Right-Wing Characterization of Anti-Trans Initiative
Now-interim Police Chief Andre Sayles at a press conference earlier this year with Mayor Katie Wilson.

In his interview with a city investigator, interim Chief Sayles said he still hadn’t read the initiative and appeared unfamiliar with SPD’s policy on political speech.

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle’s interim police chief, Andre Sayles, acknowledged that his misconduct complaint against a veteran detective was based, at least in part, on right-wing podcaster Brandi Kruse’s characterization of a statewide initiative that would ban trans girls from playing girls’ sports. The detective, Beth Wareing, faced a backlash from Kruse and other right-wing activists after she spoke at a press conference opposing two anti-LGBTQ initiatives.

Sayles, who was deputy police chief when he filed his complaint, also confirmed that he didn’t read the initiative or seek out other sources of information about it before or after accusing the detective, Beth Wareing of dishonesty and insubordination—both potentially career-ending allegations.

The new revelations come from a recording of Sayles’ interview with an Office of Police Accountability staffer investigating his complaint, which OPA dismissed as unfounded. PubliCola obtained the recording through a records request.

As we reported last month, Wareing retired from SPD over Sayles’ complaint against her, calling it a “poorly considered, unprofessional, and an attempted violation of my First Amendment rights.”

After hearing the details of Sayles’ interview with OPA, Wareing said it was that “Interim Chief Sayles retaliated against me at the direction of a far-right podcaster to damage my hard-earned professional reputation, despite my nearly 30 years investigating child abuse, domestic violence, hate crimes, and other threats.

“He did not read the policies, the language of the initiatives, or endeavor to understand my comments prior to filing what was effectively a career ending complaint. A simple Google search would have revealed the broad availability of analysis regarding these initiatives, which are likely to have extraordinary collateral impacts on children. I am deeply concerned for the LGBTQ+ community and for SPD’s diverse workforce under his leadership. SPD and the City of Seattle can and should do better.”

Kruse, whose claims about the initiatives Sayles parroted in his complaint, is actively involved with the campaign for two initiatives from billionaire Brian Heywood’s group Let’s Go Washington. As a campaign volunteer, Kruse has headlined campaign rallies and raised money for the campaign and used her podcast as a campaign platform

Wareing spoke, with SPD’s permission, at a rally for No Hate in WA State, which is opposing the two Let’s Go Washington initiatives. The first would require school employees, such as counselors, to turn over notes on confidential conversations with students to their parents, raising concerns that students will no longer be able to confide in trusted adults at school about issues like sexuality, gender, and reproductive health care.

The second would ban trans girls from playing girls’ sports. To verify that girls meet the criteria, the initiative would require either proof of an athlete’s sex from a girl’s “personal physician” or—for girls who lack a personal physician—a genital exam or DNA test. Initiative supporters have claimed that girls already have to prove their biological sex to participate in sports, but that isn’t true; the initiative would add proof of sex to the state’s sports physical requirements for girls.

Wareing, a former hate crimes detective who worked on cases involving child sexual abuse, said at the press conference that “sexual predators often set themselves up as authority figures to give themselves more power and access to their victims. I believe this initiative would increase the risk of sexual abuse for girls participating in sports.”

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In his interview, Sayles strongly disputed this, saying that he has three boys who played sports and “I know [that] having to take a physical doesn’t expose you to a high potential for sexual abuse. I think that was an inaccurate statement, and I believe that statement, obviously, it created some angst among people in our community.” Wareing, Sayles continued, was “saying these things without actual factual proof.” (The initiative would not apply to boys’ sports, and the high prevalence of sexual abuse in girls’ sports is not a matter of  serious debate.)

Sayles confirmed in the interview that his concerns about Wareing’s “accuracy” and “stance” were initially sparked by an email containing questions from Kruse about Wareing’s comments in which Kruse characterized Wareing’s statements as inaccurate. Kruse (who calls herself a “real girl” and refers to trans girls as “boys”) followed up on these questions with a barrage of podcasts and social media posts calling Wareing a “liar” promoting an “insane ideology” and demanding that SPD fire her.

Sayles filed his complaint against Wareing a few days after Kruse sent over her questions. By then, SPD was receiving more complaints, according to Sayles.

In his interview, Sayles initially called the pro-LGBTQ rally “not my cup of tea” before clarifying, “I didn’t know what it was about.” Once he “skimmed” a transcript of Wareing’s comments, however, he believed her remarks were “basically fearmongering” about “people’s sexual orientation and potentially being exposed to sexual assault due to potentially having to do physicals to participate in sports.”

If she had wanted to be “accurate,” Sayles said, Wareing should have included specific data points in her remarks.

“[She said] there’s ‘high potential'” for sexual assault, Sayles said. “Is [that] 10 cases, and seven of those 10 cases you can identify that because a person had to do a physical with an adult, that sexual abuse occurred for that child, or that person who identifies as LGBTQ plus or whatever a person may identify?” Sayles said. “And then, when she said, ‘increases the risk of sexual abuse for girls participating in sports,’ how is that accurate? Does it increase it just for girls, or can it increase sexual abuse for boys as well,  or whatever they may identify as? So, I think those statements and those comments were inaccurate.”

The OPA investigator also asked Sayles about the other allegation in his complaint—that Wareing had disobeyed a direct order by representing herself as an SPD officer after agreeing in advance not to do so, in compliance with SPD rules for political advocacy. Sayles acknowledged that Wareing never identified herself as a Seattle police officer, but said that was a “tricky line” to navigate in the modern world when anyone can look up information online, and where a member of the media might have asked Wareing where she works.

“There’s probably someone here at this police department or in the city that probably says the police department should have never let her [speak],” Sayles said. “I’m not going to tell people what they should be doing on their off duty time. But my thing is, if we’re gonna speak and we’re gonna say that we’re law enforcement, knowing that somebody can just Google our name unless we paid the money to have our stuff scrubbed on the internet, we have to give them factual information because they’re going to take it and people are going to run with it.”

Wareing, Sayles elaborated, should have been more careful about expressing such a strong political “stance” because people tend to believe anything a police officer says. “I think a majority of our country cherish the work that we do, and they take what we say and they take it, they take it as as gospel.,” Sayles said. “So they … are going to say, ‘Holy smokes! … This person is an expert in this, and what they’re saying is what’s going to occur.'”

Sayles’ complaint was dismissed after the OPA found that Wareing had not violated any policy  and was expressing her right to express her opinions as a private citizen, which is protected by both the Constitution and SPD’s internal policies. At one point, the investigator asked if Sayles, who was previously police chief in Beloit, Wisconsin, whether he had read SPD’s policy on political participation. Sayles said, “I have not.”

After reading the policy and saying Wareing seemed to have followed it, Sayles appeared to backtrack. “It’s that sticky and uneven line that we have to walk,” Sayles said. “Just as much as she’s giving her opinion… with this OPA complaint, is it me giving my opinion as well?” When weighing whether to submit the complaint, he said, it came down to “Well, I think some of the comments were not objective.”

City Council, Elections, LGBTQ+, Mayor Wilson

Council Learns What “One-Time Funding” Means; Podcaster’s Advocacy for Anti-Trans Campaign Didn’t Violate Election Law

1. City council members who funded an unsustainable budget last year by using one-time dollars to fund tens of millions in new spending are finding out this year what “one-time funding” means.

For years, the council has used a combination of one-time spending and magical thinking to approve new budget adds every year, without creating any kind of plan to pay for them in the future. Last year alone, the council added $78 million in one-time spending to a budget that was already deeply unsustainable. (If you search the budget they approved, you’ll see that the phrase “one-time funding” appears no fewer than 107 times!)

One-time does not mean “actually forever, but we’ll find money for it later (wink).” It means one-time—as city budget director Aly Pennucci repeatedly had to remind outraged councilmembers, who complained that programs they failed to fund for more than one or two years had somehow vanished in Wilson’s budget. These included subsidies for private inpatient rehab, a “district fund” for each councilmember, and a long list of small-business assistance programs. (The budget does include between $10 million and $15 million to make some of the council’s 2026 additions permanent.)

Well into the third day of departmental budget presentations, Rob Saka wanted to know why Wilson was not funding a homeownership program the council funded with one-time dollars last year. Pennucci gave the same explanation she’d been giving for days. Saka, using his oratorical shouting voice (if you watch council meetings, you know the one), responded: “So I hear you saying, it’s not technically a cut, because it was a one-time add!”

To his credit, unlike other councilmembers, Saka did not follow up this comment by continuing to refer to the reduction in one-time funds as a cut.

There was one instance when a council member objected not to the end of one-time funding, but to Wilson’s decision to find money for a priority the council and Harrell previously paid for with one-time funds. Dan Strauss zeroed in on $$4 million for food banks and hot meal programs the council funded on a one-time basis this year. These funds, Strauss said, should be closely scrutinized, because unlike public safety, “providing food is not a charter responsibility.”

Bob Kettle brought up a similar objection when he suggested that the Office of Housing could address some of its own significant budget shortfall by building less affordable housing and counting projects built by the Seattle Social Housing developer, which is separate from city government, toward Seattle’s total number of affordable housing units.

Thinking of affordable housing in the city as one big thing, Kettle said, could help the council “ameliorate” some of Wilson’s “wrong choices”—like setting theoretical caps on police hiring after 2028—by freeing up funding for other council priorities. Counting those units as Seattle affordable housing “could provide some flexibility in the budgeting process because, hey, you know, [the social housing developer has] also got their shoulder in and they’re working hard to contribute to the overall process,” Kettle said. 

Social housing (which the council’s centrists tried to stop) is funded by a dedicated payroll tax, and was designed to create a new kind of mixed-income public housing in which higher-income renters subsidize lower-income renters. It is quite different than the subsidized affordable housing OH funds and builds, and the two aren’t fungible. Getting rid of some low-income subsidized housing would actually eliminate housing for low-income people,

(As an side: Elected officials who support more funding for police often raise this claim about “charter responsibilities,” as in “public safety is our number one charter responsibility.” But actually, the charter lays many other basic responsibilities city government is supposed to address, and “health” actually comes before “safety,” followed by “environment” and “general welfare.”)

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There was also a lot of—what’s the technical term?—nonsense and grandstanding from the council, particular when the Seattle Department of Transportation presented its budget. Struass, in particular, took the opportunity to gripe about hyperlocal issues in his neighborhood, including the fact that King County Metro cut hours on his bus route, which he has consistently characterized as the only bus route from Ballard to downtown Seattle. (It is not). You can read about more of those on my Bluesky.

One other exchange I do want to highlight is Strauss’ suggestion that the city is wasting money by allowing the King County Regional Homelessness Authority to serve as the Continuum of Care for the region. “A bureaucratic system from the county” is “creating inefficiencies for us,” Strauss asserted, adding “I don’t think we have time for that.”

While there have obviously been massive financial problems at the KCRHA—which is why the city is reasserting control over the homelessness contracts it funds—the continuum of care is a federally mandated system that oversees applications for federal funding for programs across King County and its 39 cities. It has never been at the city of Seattle, and a recent forensic audit did not identify it as a source of financial issues.

2. As a few others reported last week (when I was out of town), the state Public Disclosure Commission dismissed a complaint against Let’s Go Washington, the group behind two initiatives targeting children’s rights at school, on September 23. The complaint was filed by Washingtonians for Ethical Government, a nonprofit established in 2015. I reported on the initial complaint back in May

The first initiative would ban trans girls from playing sports in school and require children to prove their sex assigned at birth, through a medically unnecessary physical exam if they don’t have a longtime pediatrician willing to attest that they possess a vagina. The second would give parents access to any notes teachers or counselors make about conversations with students, including conversations about sensitive topics they may feel uncomfortable or unsafe broaching at home, like gender, abortion and birth control, and sexuality.

The complaint alleged that right-wing podcaster Brandi Kruse, who has served as a de facto spokesperson for the campaign, was doing official campaign work when she spoke on the campaign’s behalf. In short, WEG argued that Kruse’s speeches at campaign rallies and fundraisers constituted work on behalf of the campaign, and the campaign should have either compensated her for that work or reported it as an in-kind contribution. The PDC disagreed, agreeing with Kruse and the campaign that the podcaster is just a regular campaign volunteer expressing her personal opinions, and distinguishing her “keynote” speeches to Republican Party groups from her campaign speeches because she does “significant advance planning” for the former.

Kruse argued that the promotion does for the campaign on her own podcast isn’t political advertising either, because the campaign does not directly “control” what she says there. (In theory, she could say something that cast the campaign in a poor light, though she never has). The PDC didn’t address that defense.

Police, Privacy, Tech

Seattle Cop Used Chinese AI Smart Glasses to Film Inside SPD Facilities, Creating Video for Company

By Erica C. Barnett

A Seattle Police Department officer, Adam Sun, is on administrative leave after using a pair of AI smart glasses to record a promotional video for a Chinese company, Rokid Global. The film, taken from Sun’s POV while wearing the glasses, showed scenes inside of a police precinct, at a police investigation, in and around the department’s weapons lockers, and inside Sun’s police car while he’s driving, among other locations. The footage is frenetic and Sun hypes the glasses throughout. At one point, Sun daps a man holding a tiny goat.

Rokid posted the video next to other promotional videos on its Facebook page and other social media sites earlier this month. Since then, the post has been removed, and I was unable to locate another version of it online; my description is based on my own recollection from multiple viewings. On September 10, someone filed a complaint against Sun with the city’s Office of Police Accountability and SPD put him on administrative leave—a reaction that shows SPD considers the incident serious.

Security experts have identified specific concerns about Chinese smart glasses (as well as those produced in the US by companies like Meta.) If a police officer in the US received money to promote a Chinese company, that could raise additional concerns. China, politically a US adversary, heavily surveils its citizens in what has been described as a surveillance and digital “police state.”

Rokid has hyped the glasses’ thermal facial recognition function as an important tool for police, allowing cops to identify offenders almost instantly. State law currently prohibits this use of facial recognition, but it’s an integral element of how police use the glasses in China, and a big selling point for Rokid, which previously pitched the glasses and their thermal capabilities to US companies and consumers as a COVID detection tool.

Several city and SPD policies appear to collectively prohibit police officers from using smart glasses to film nonpublic areas of police precincts and posting those videos online. These include a policy that says “Sworn employees may not wear any personally owned camera device.” restrictions on what officers can post on their own social media, and citywide prohibition on the use of unapproved AI.

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SPD’s policy manual prohibits the use of smart glasses to record “enforcement activity while on duty.” Nonetheless, department management felt the need to clarify. Within days, Assistant Chief Robert Brown sent out this edict to SPD staff:

Effective immediately, no Seattle Police Department personnel will utilize any type of personally owned recording devices (such as Meta glasses, Rokid glasses, digital recorders, etc.) to record video and/or audio while on duty. Posting of any video or audio clips obtained in this manner is prohibited. Any such posts that currently exist must be removed immediately.

Exceptions may be granted at the executive level (assistant chief or above) for a specific need to use such a device for a legitimate law enforcement purpose where the use of Body Worn Video would not suffice. This order does not alter the use of recording devices routinely used to conduct Investigations.

SPD did not answer our questions other than confirming that Sun is on administrative leave. They referred us to the Office of Police Accountability, which confirmed the existence of the complaint against Sun.

 

City Council, homelessness

KCRHA Consultant Finds the “Missing” $8 Million; Strauss’ RV Ban Moves Forward (But Won’t Ban Sprinters, to Saka’s Dismay)

1. Earlier this month, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority dropped a bombshell: That “missing” $8 million the financially battered homelessness agency couldn’t account for in a recent forensic audit? Turns out it never actually went anywhere. Instead, according to recently promoted KCRHA Chief Operating Officer William Towey, the money amounted to a “one-time” ledger error by an unidentified person or people.

Towey spilled the details—eventually—during an update on the corrective action plan that’s being implemented by the consultant Turning Point Strategies at the city council’s human services committee meeting September 18. I was on vacation, but reported the news on Bluesky, thinking other media outlets that reported breathlessly on the missing money would be just as interested in reporting that it showed back up. Strangely, no one covered it, so I’m doing it again here.

As Towey initially (and confusingly) explained the situation, of “the approximately $8 million in receivables identified in the forensic evaluation as not reconcilable from the records available at that time, Turning Point has substantially advanced the balance sheet reconciliation and identified historical accounting entries and reporting practices that contributed to that balance.” 

After another minute or so of impenetrable accountant-speak, committee chair Alexis Mercedes Rinck jumped to the public’s rescue, dragging it out of Towey that—contrary to his previous, alarming assertions—the city does not  actually”owe” KCRHA any money. It took some more tooth-pulling (and several terse answers from Towey) for Rinck to get a somewhat clarifying explanation. Basically the money looked like it was missing because of a one-time “transactional entry error in our financial accounting system,” Towey said.

It’s possible, Towey continued, that while “that particular item was discovered and resolved successfully,” there still might be “other transactions of a similar nature.” 

For now, though, the $8 million question has been answered.

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2. The council’s public safety committee passed a package of bills from Dan Strauss last week that would, over time, prohibit people from parking an RV for more than two hours on any public street in Seattle, including in the industrial areas where they can currently park for up to 72 hours.

The legislation, as PubliCola reported in August, would require everyone currently living in an RV in Seattle to get a special license and agree to participate in homeless services. Eventually, each licensee would be required to leave their RV behind and accept “appropriate shelter” (a term the legislation does not define; anyone living in a licensed RV who fails to comply with “all laws” could lose their vehicle sooner.

A key element of Strauss’ plan is that the city would only count existing RVs a single time, and anyone who arrives in Seattle after that census, or was living in an RV when it took place but wasn’t counted, would be ticketed and towed. To allow any leeway for current but uncounted residents, or to do another census in the future, would be tantamount to telling every homeless RV dweller in “Western Washington, Oregon, [and] Idaho that they should come to the city of Seattle because we will allow you to stay here,” Strauss said last week.

Without a strict, forward-looking RV ban, Strauss argued, Seattle will become a magnet for a particularly visible kind of homeless person.

Each of the six bills and accompanying resolution passed out of committee unanimously or nearly so, with Maritza Rivera voting against one bill that allocated capital funding for the proposal.

One amendment that didn’t move forward was a proposal from Rob Saka to expand the RV ban to Mercedes Sprinters and other large vans that can be tricked out for long, #Vanlife-style road trips. Saka called his amendment both a “modest” and “hyper-technical” change, arguing that a ban on RVs but not Sprinter vans could “create a market” for people to “circumvent” the RV ban by tricking out a Sprinter instead and living on the street.

“Having done this work extensively alongside our Unified Care Team”—the city’s encampment removal and outreach team—Saka said he was confident plenty of people were living in Sprinter vans in his district. Apparently, there’s at least one such van perennially parked not far from Saka’s house.

The rest of the council didn’t buy it—Bob Kettle noted that in his district, most people who park Sprinters on the street are well-off road-trippers— and rejected Saka’s amendment before voting for Strauss’ overall RV banishment plan.

Business, Development, Economy, housing, Mayor Wilson

Greater Seattle: Inclusionary Zoning, Part 2; Amazon as a Percentage of the Budget; Permitted, but Struggling

By Josh Feit

Last week, I featured Seattle City Councilmember Dionne Foster in an item headlined “Inclusionary Zoning > No Inclusionary Zoning” to reflect her progressive affordable housing stance. However, according to a comprehensive new academic study, she has it backward.

No Inclusionary Zoning > Inclusionary Zoning

So says the study released this summer by an economist at UC Irvine about inclusionary zoning (IZ), a policy that requires builders to couple any market-rate housing they build with affordable housing. Seattle’s version of this—as in Foster’s resolution calling for inclusionary zoning requirements in residential areas where the policy doesn’t currently apply—uses a “fee in lieu” model where developers can pay into an affordable housing fund instead of including the affordable housing in their own projects.

Unlike other (inconclusive) research on IZ, the UC Irvine study had a clean before-and-after look at the policy, thanks to California’s unique history of going through a period when inclusionary zoning (including the fee-in-lieu model) was legal, illegal, and then legal again.

The study indicates inclusionary zoning does the opposite of what it’s intended to do, finding that IZ makes it more expensive to rent. California renters paid approximately $6.97 billion in additional rent in areas with IZ mandates. So, even as IZ funds some affordable units, it comes at a steep cost to renters, including low-income renters, who aren’t “lucky enough to get an IZ unit,” according to the study.

But the real zinger: The study then compared that rent increase to the number of affordable units created and found that it wasn’t worth the tradeoff. As the author bluntly states in the opening summary: “I estimate the cost of generating an affordable unit with inclusionary zoning to be approximately $800,000 [per the 8,990 units created] in ‘excess rents’ paid by market rate renters as a result of the policy’s constraint on supply. This exceeds the cost of directly incentivizing the creation of low-income housing [~$441,00 per unit] in California through existing programs.”

Seattle’s Budget = Amazon’s Stock Price

Speaking of being blunt, Erica didn’t hold back in her report on Mayor Wilson’s $2.5 billion budget proposal last week. And I quote: “JumpStart is Basically Just a Slush Fund Now.”

JumpStart, of course, is the 2020 tax on high-end salaries proposed and passed by former lefty city councilmember Teresa Mosqueda to pay for affordable housing and other progressive priorities. Now, according to a recent economic study commissioned by Seattle’s own Office of Economic Development, it increasingly covers the city’s regular budget shortfalls. Since 2024, when a newly elected city council majority changed the law to eliminate the original JumpStart spending plan, more than half of JumpStart revenues are used to cover the gap between city budget expenditures and general fund revenue.

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I’m not here to cry about that. True believers like me have lost that fight. But here’s a problem with  budgeting-by- JumpStart that everyone should note: The report found that “Seventy-five percent of JumpStart revenue comes from just 10 companies.”

This is emblematic of Seattle’s worrisome status as a one-crop town (big tech). “In summary,” the report states, “the city’s fiscal health now depends on the marginal location and compensation decisions of a handful of employers. It also depends, indirectly, on the stock prices of those employers.”

Zeroing in on the city’s largest company, the report continues: “When Amazon’s stock rises, Seattle’s tax base rises with it; when it falls, the base contracts. (Amazon’s stock price alone has ranged from roughly $85 to $245 over the past three years.) But it means that a fiscal base already concentrated in a few firms is further exposed to the single most volatile attribute of these firms—one the city has no ability to forecast or influence.”

Existing Third Places > New Startups

Wilson explicitly acknowledges the challenge by incorporating her recent “Resilient Economy” executive order  into her budget proposal. Seattle has “become increasingly concentrated on the tech sector,” the EO states. It commits the city to convene a task force “to develop and implement strategies for diversifying and growing Seattle’s economy.”

And while the specifics of the order focus on making it easier to permit and establish startups in tech-adjacent fields, that strikes me as being more top-down than middle-out. As I noted a few weeks ago, the thing that makes Seattle attractive to the talent needed for new startups are third spaces—i.e., existing businesses.

I wish Wilson’s proposal did more for the bars and restaurants and coffeeshops that are already permitted, but increasingly struggling: 67 percent of brick-and-mortar, small, independent businesses told OED they are under more financial stress than during the pandemic. “[Seventy-one] percent reported lower foot traffic than a year earlier, and only 12 percent said customer demand was sufficient to cover their cost structure.”

Josh@Publicola.com