Is the Seattle City Council more progressive than we thought?
By Erica C. Barnett
On the most recent episode of Seattle Nice, we talked about the Seattle City Council’s vote on the capital gains tax, which was still upcoming when we recorded last Wednesday afternoon.
At the time, we knew the tax, proposed by Councilmember Cathy Moore, was doomed to fail; the 2 percent tax on annual investment profits above $262,000 lost on a 5-4 vote in the budget committee, which includes all nine council members. I noted that with progressive Alexis Mercedes Rinck replacing next year, “if they have another vote and it goes the same way, then capital gains will pass.”
But that, it turned out, was a big “if”—a fact that became obvious later on the day we recorded, when Joy Hollingsworth flipped her vote and voted “no” on the tax, giving the anti-tax side a six-vote supermajority. Strauss and Hollingsworth, Sandeep noted, were both “squishy” yes votes—he’d heard the week before that they were both opposed—which means that the loss of Woo’s no vote won’t be enough to flip the council in favor of progressive revenue.
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The council’s five recently elected members, now entering the second year of their terms, have voted largely as a bloc, with some exceptions—Joy Hollingsworth and Rob Saka sometimes vote with Morales, the council’s one consistent progressive, on legislation related to equity, and Moore has been unpredictably idiosyncratic, supporting police surveillance and crackdowns on sex workers and drug users while . The addition of one more progressive council member won’t change that mix, on capital gains or any other issue.
This council majority has made clear that their goal is to reverse many of the policies and spending priorities of the previous council, and their budget certainly accomplishes that—lavishing money on police, jails, encampment removals, and downtown beautification while cutting funding for tenant services, parks, workplace equity, and food assistance.
As someone who has voted with the majority on all of these priorities and more, Moore would seem to be well-placed to talk her centrist-to-conservative colleagues into supporting a popular tax. But this inexperienced new council, though sometimes unpredictable (who could have guessed that Rob Saka would vote against a JumpStart tax amendment he co-sponsored, then turn around and vote for a substantively identical amendment a few minutes later?) got elected with support from the mayor, and have voted mostly in lockstep with Harrell’s agenda. So far, only Moore has shown signs of independence on the revenue issue; for most of the council, it remains an article of faith that the city can fix all its problems, from the housing shortage to the fentanyl crisis, without more money.