Category: Taxes

Drugs, Elections, homelessness, Morning Crank, Taxes, Transportation

Seattle Shuffles Scooter Share Deck, Library Invests in Social Services, Campaign Forms to Fight Potential Cannabis Tax

1. Bird, a scooter provider that’s already ubiquitous in cities across the country, will soon enter the Seattle market, while Spin and the venture-backed sit-down scooter company Wheels will no longer be seen on Seattle streets. In addition to Bird, Link and Lime will continue as scooter providers in Seattle.

The Seattle Department of Transportation announced the scooter shuffle on its website last week, just weeks after publishing the results of a controversial, nonscientific survey concluding that more scooter riders are injured while riding than previously reported.

The city will also permanently permit a new bikesharing company, Veo, whose low-slung bikes have vestigial pedals but function more like a sit-down scooter, with a throttle that allows riders to propel them while using the pedals as footrests.

Seattle’s relationship with scooters (and bikesharing) has long been ambivalent. In 2020, two and a half years after banning scooters entirely, the city took a baby step forward by issuing permits to three companies for 500 scooters each. Since then, the city has expanded its scooter permits to allow each of three providers to put 2,000 scooters on the streets; Lime, which provides both e-assist bikes and scooters, has a fourth permit for a total of 2,000 bikes and scooters.

According to SDOT’s scoring matrix, Spin narrowly lost out to Bird, Link, and Lime after scoring slightly lower on two measures: Parking (which includes policies the company implemented to make sure people parked correctly and how it responded to improperly parked scooters) and “operations and equity,” which included a number of factors such as how the company responds to complaints and its efforts to place scooters in “equity areas” outside the center city, including southeast and far north Seattle.

According to the city’s scooter data dashboard, Wheels scored particularly poorly compared to other companies, including Spin, at providing equitable access to its scooters.

Veo, which operates like a scooter but is classified as a bicycle, poses what SDOT spokesman Ethan Bergerson calls “interesting questions” for the city. Unlike traditional scooters, Veo devices are legal on sidewalks; because they aren’t classified as scooters, they also occupy one of just three potential bikeshare permits, which could limit the number of shared e-bikes allowed on city streets in the future, if other companies decide they want to enter the Seattle market.

“The bike/scooter share landscape is very dynamic and has shifted considerably since the bike share program began in 2017,” Bergerson said, and now includes “more companies offering devices which combine some of the features of bikes and some of the features of scooters. … If this market trend continues, it may make sense to consider how to adjust our permits to reflect the changing technology and industry trends.”

2. The Seattle Public Library is ending its contract with the Downtown Emergency Service Center, which for more than five years has provided a part-time “community resource specialist” to connect patrons to food, social services, and shelter, and hiring its own social service specialists.

The new hires include an assistant managing librarian at the downtown branch to oversee the work; a new social services librarian who will “work with information staff to maintain current information and contacts, coordinate the Bus Ticket program, and act as a link between our regular information services and our Community Resource Specialists,” according to library spokeswoman Elisa Murray; and two new in-house community resource specialists, including one who will focus on outreach to youth and young people.

“While this new model doesn’t necessarily provide patrons more time with on-site staff, we do think we can maintain more partnerships with this model, which we hope will lead to increased opportunities for patrons to access the supportive services they need,” Murray said.

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For years, libraries (including Seattle’s) have debated whether, and to what extent, library staffers should be responsible for connecting patrons not just to library materials, but to social services and resources outside the library’s direct control. By hiring staff to oversee some of this work, SPL is making a more direct investment in the the theory that libraries can and should do both.

3. A new independent expenditure group representing marijuana retailers, called People for Legal Cannabis, just filed with the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, reporting $16,000 in debt to the polling firm EMC Research. The group’s intent: To fight off potential legislation, first reported by David Hyde at KUOW, that would impose an additional sales tax on weed sales in Seattle. If the legislation, currently being floated by the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 3000, passes, the group could propose a referendum to overturn the law.

According to a presentation first posted on KUOW, which PubliCola obtained independently, the UFCW’s still-nascent proposal would impose a “cannabis equity tax” of 25 cents a gram on flower; $2.00 per half-gram of high-potency concentrates; and a penny per milligram of THC in everything else. The money would fund a paid “cannabis equity commission”; “workforce training” for cannabis workers; and a “cannabis equity fund” that would “prioritize the needs of those most impacted by the War on Drugs,” which locked up millions of Black and brown Americans for possessing and consuming weed. Continue reading “Seattle Shuffles Scooter Share Deck, Library Invests in Social Services, Campaign Forms to Fight Potential Cannabis Tax” →

City Council, Morning Fizz, Police, Taxes

Hiring Bonuses Don’t “Compensate” for Other Issues Impacting City Worker Retention; Bright Economic Forecast Won’t Zero Out Budget Gap

1. During a briefing at the city council’s public safety committee about the city’s struggle to retain qualified staff in every department, City Councilmember Sara Nelson suggested there is no need to “study the benefit of [hiring] incentives” for police, “because it’s been shown to work in other cities—pretty much most if not all cities in our region.” With public safety “such a crucial issue right now,” Nelson continued, “this is something that doesn’t need a lot more study.”

Nelson, whose legislation to fund hiring bonuses will come before the same committee later this month, was responding to a presentation by the city’s Human Resources Department about a survey that concluded the biggest barrier to retention for most city staffers is the city’s 32-year-old job classification system, which creates artificial barriers to advancement for many city workers. 

Her comments elicited immediate pushback from other council members, including committee chair Lisa Herbold, who pointed out that recent short-lived hiring bonuses did not lead to more applicants for police jobs, although they did get people to apply for jobs at the city’s new 911 call center. (After the city offered hiring bonuses for new SPD recruits in 2019, slightly fewer than one in five applicants said the hiring bonus was one factor in their decision to apply). Councilmember Andrew Lewis asked, semi-rhetorically, whether there was any city in the country that wasn’t currently struggling to retain officers right now. And Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda went further, apologizing to SDHR’s Keith Gulley “on behalf of the council” because “the work that you’ve done was impugned” by Nelson.

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So, about that work: SDHR’s analysis found that, in general, hiring incentives serve as “a one-time quick fix that may not compensate for uncompetitive wages, difficult or unsupported work conditions, lack of opportunity to develop career relevance, experience and skills, and limited promotion opportunities” at the city, Gulley said. Additionally, signing bonuses for new hires can hurt the morale of existing employees who “feel undervalued and underappreciated” because they’re doing the same work with no extra reward.”

The hardest jobs to fill, according to the department’s survey, include carpenters, plumbers, and truck drivers as well as IT programmers, senior civil engineers, and public safety auditors. 

The shortcomings of the city’s job classification system are especially troubling for mid-career employees, who frequently get stuck in mid-level positions because they lack a requirement, such as a graduate degree or specific college credits, to move up the ranks. Gulley gave the example of an accountant who had been at the city for more than 15 years but got stuck on the ladder because she hadn’t taken 24 hours of required coursework back in college. “That’s where the majority of our employees who have worked for the city for years get stuck,” Gulley said.

Of three possible scenarios, the city is using “baseline” assumptions in its forecast.

2. An economic forecast released by the city’s Economic and Revenue Council last week predicts the city will take in about $90 million more in taxes and fees this year than a similar forecast predicted six months ago, thanks to higher-than-expected revenues from sales taxes, the JumpStart payroll tax, and the tax on real estate sales.

In all, the city expects to collect about $711 million in general-fund revenues, which fund the city’s annual budget, in 2022—a 5.6 percent increase over 2021. The forecast also predicts the city will take in about $447 million in other taxes and fees that can only be spent on specific purposes, including taxes on real estate sales, which fund capital projects. Next year, the city predicts that revenues will continue to grow, but at a slightly slower rate.

In a press briefing last week, ERC director Ben Noble cautioned that the actual value of city tax dollars—the bang the city can get for its buck—will be reduced this year because of high inflation. And he noted that job growth has been distributed unequally: While tech and other white-collar jobs have more than bounced back, hiring in hotels and the hospitality industry, as well as manufacturing, is still far below pre-pandemic levels. Continue reading “Hiring Bonuses Don’t “Compensate” for Other Issues Impacting City Worker Retention; Bright Economic Forecast Won’t Zero Out Budget Gap” →

Environment, homelessness, housing, legislature, Renters, Taxes, Transportation

Olympia Wrapup: Democratic Majority Falls Short on Core Democratic Agenda
Despite Democratic control in both houses, Washington state’s tax code remains deeply inequitable.

By Leo Brine

Last Thursday marked the end of the 2022 legislative session. Lawmakers only had 60 days to pass legislation, write and pass two supplemental budgets, and pass a transportation spending package. At the outset of the session, Democrats, who have a 57-seat majority in the house and a 29-seat majority in the senate, said they wanted to pass bills to help with housing affordability, homelessness, environmental sustainability, and the economy.

When it comes to housing, Rep. Nicole Macri (D-43, Seattle) told PubliCola, “it was not a great year in terms of policy.” Macri pointed out that Democrats killed Rep. Jessica Bateman’s (D-22, Olympia) bill to allow denser housing statewide (HB 1782) and Rep. Sharon Shewmake’s (D-42, Bellingham) accessory dwelling unit (ADU) bill (HB 1660), both of which could have helped the state increase its housing stock. Bateman’s bill would have required all Washington cities to include denser housing options, like fourplexes and courtyard apartments, in neighborhoods zoned for single-family housing, while Shewmake’s would have permitted mother-in-law apartments and backyard cottages in all types of residential neighborhoods.

When it comes to housing, Rep. Nicole Macri (D-43, Seattle) said “it was not a great year in terms of policy.”

The legislature also killed Rep. Strom Peterson’s (D-21, Lynnwood) tenant protections bill (HB 1904), failing to vote on it by the first legislative deadline.  Michele Thomas from the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance said it was “one of the biggest losses of the session,” adding, “Democrats in the House shouldn’t have been afraid to vote on that bill.” The bill would have required landlords to give tenants six months’ notice before increasing rent; capped fees for late rent payments at $75; and provided tenants who could not afford a rent increase assistance moving somewhere they could afford. Thomas said the bill was tame and didn’t propose any kind of rent control, typically a third rail for legislators.

Democrats did manage to pass some homelessness bills that will provide temporary help to people living on the streets. The house and senate passed Rep. Frank Chopp’s (D-43, Seattle) bill that attempts to connect people under the state’s Apple Health (Medicaid) program with permanent supportive housing (HB 1866). Although the bill initially passed without funding, Democrats secured $60 million for the program in the capital budget. Macri saw the provision as a necessary upgrade. “Being on the budget team, I tried to focus on making sure we had strong investments because we didn’t have the strong policy I wanted to see pass,” she said.

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To respond to the ongoing climate crisis, which is only getting worse, Democrats used their transportation package to try and reduce the state’s overall emissions by investing in electrified ferries, expanded transit services and better bike and pedestrian infrastructure.

Climate Solutions Washington Director Kelly Hall said she was pleased with the investments Democrats made with the transportation package and hopes they will allocate more of the funding from the transportation package toward electrifying heavy-duty machinery, like long-haul trucks and construction vehicles, between now and the 2023 legislative session.

While Hall supports the transportation package, she said the legislature failed to pass bills that would reduce emissions from the state’s gas-heated buildings and from other common polluters people don’t often think of. Hall pointed out Rep. Macri’s bill (HB 1918) would have exempted the purchase of energy efficient lawn equipment from the state’s sales tax and encouraged more people to ditch their gas-powered leaf blowers and lawnmowers for zero-emission models. Gas-powered lawn tools “emit a lot of toxic air pollution right in our communities,” Hall said. Continue reading “Olympia Wrapup: Democratic Majority Falls Short on Core Democratic Agenda” →

Courts, legislature, Taxes

Capital Gains Ruling Threatens Legislative Victory for Progressives

A Douglas County Judge ruled on Tuesday that the statewide capital gains tax, which progressive legislators passed last year, is unconstitutional. The ruling concerned two lawsuits that were consolidated into one—one by the conservative Freedom Foundation, the other by Republican former state attorney general Rob McKenna.

The decision marks a win for Washington’s ultra-wealthy, like Steve Gordon of Gordon Trucking and hedge fund manager Brian Heywood, who each contributed $20,000 to an initiative campaign to repeal the tax; former Starbucks CEO Howard Beher, contributed $5,000. Unsurprisingly, the Attorney General Bob Ferguson, a Democrat, said he would appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court.

Douglas County Superior Court Judge Brian Huber wrote in his ruling that the 7 percent tax on the sale of intangible financial assets, such as stocks and bonds, violates Washington’s constitution’s “uniformity clause” because it imposes “zero tax on capital gains below that $250,000 threshold.” The uniformity clause prohibits the state from taxing different property at different rates.

Democrats have argued that the tax is constitutional because it doesn’t assess property, but rather, the sale of property, making it an excise tax, not an income tax. Huber rejected that argument, saying the plaintiffs “properly characterized [the capital gains tax] as an income tax” in their lawsuit. And since Washington considers income to be a form of property, any income tax would need to meet the state constitution’s uniformity clause.

Washington is one of the few state’s in the country without an income tax. The state instead relies heavily on business and sales taxes to generate revenue. Democratic lawmakers have frequently criticized this model as regressive, because it means that people who earn less pay a larger percentage of their income in taxes than wealthy people pay. Democrats saw the capital gains tax as a way to reverse this regressive .

Following the judge’s decision, State Attorney General Bob Ferguson said  if the tax were ultimately struck down, the state could lose hundreds of millions in funding for childcare programs, early learning, and school construction projects. “Consequently, we will continue defending this law enacted by the peoples’ representatives in the legislature. All the parties recognize this case will ultimately be decided by the State Supreme Court. We respectfully disagree with this ruling, and we will appeal.”

—Leo Brine

legislature, State of Washington, Taxes

Amid Court Battle Over Capital Gains Tax, House Finance Chair Previews Future Reforms
State Rep. Noel Frame (D-36)
State Rep. Noel Frame (D-36)

By Clara Coyote

Following up on last year’s capital gains tax—a major legislative win for progressives during the 2021 session that puts a 7 percent tax on profits greater than $250,000 from the sales of assets, such as stocks and bonds—state Rep. Noel Frame (D-36) has her eye on comprehensive structural change for Washington’s upside-down tax code. The poorest fifth of Washington state residents pay, on average, 16.8 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes while the richest 1 percent of Washingtonians pay an average of just 2.4 percent.

A key piece of that larger agenda for Frame, the House finance chair, is a wealth tax; she introduced a version last year,  HB 1406, which the state department of revenue estimated would bring in $2.5 billion a year. Frame passed the bill out of her Finance Committee last year before it stalled in House Appropriations. Frame said she sees the senate version, SB 5426, as this year’s vehicle, and hopes the Senate Ways and Means Committee will hold a hearing on the legislation. 

Additionally, Rep. Frame said there will be smaller but meaningful bills during this year’s short (60-day) legislative session to clarify the implementation of existing legislation—for example, refining the 2023 rollout of the Working Families Tax Credit, a program Democrats passed last year, that will provide payments ranging from $300 to $1,200 to low-to-moderate-income people. Frame’s committee may also consider progressive modifications to the existing estate tax, by lowering taxes on small and medium estates while increasing taxes on the largest. This is work that first began with HB 1465, introduced (but not passed) last year.

Frame said that larger, systemic reform is emerge from the work of the multi-year bipartisan Tax Structure Work Group, which Frame chairs. Frame told PubliCola that she hopes to see bills as soon as 2023 refining an anti-displacement property tax exemption proposal meant to protect housing for mid-to-low income Washingtonians. In its final draft, Frame said, the legislation will incorporate feedback from town hall meetings where participants said renters as well as homeowners should benefit from the exemption. Frame said the work group will also figure out the details of her proposed wealth tax. 

Frame believes small businesses also need help. “We have the business and occupation (B&O) tax passed in the 1930s as a temporary measure that never went away,” Frame said. The B&O tax applies to all revenues a business takes in, regardless of whether a business turns a profit. “This disproportionately harms small businesses,” Frame said. “A central goal of the working group is finding a better alternative.”

Frame said she’s well aware that the progressive capital gains tax is already facing a court challenge but said she’s undeterred about moving forward with additional reforms that could draw more lawsuits. “Just because the rich and the powerful will threaten us every single time with a lawsuit doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ask them to pay their fair share,” she said. 

City Council, homelessness, housing, Mayor Durkan, Police, Taxes, Transportation

Durkan Budget Would Gut JumpStart Spending Plan, Increase Funding for Encampment Response

By Erica C. Barnett

Mayor Jenny Durkan released the final budget of her term yesterday, outlining the proposal at a very high level in a six-minute speech from North Seattle College. In the coming weeks, the proposal will be debated, analyzed, and rewritten by the Seattle City Council (the addition of 35 net new police officers is an obvious target for their red pens), and PubliCola will be covering every aspect of those upcoming discussions. For now, though, here are a few initial notes on the plan, which reflects better-than-expected revenues and incorporates a lot of ongoing federal funding for COVID relief.

• The budget proposes taking $148 million from the city’s payroll tax fund, a repository for revenues from the JumpStart payroll tax, and moving it into the general fund to pay for Durkan’s other priorities. Legislation the mayor will transmit to the council would also empower future mayors to use JumpStart revenues for virtually any purpose, including the “[m]aintenance of existing essential City services.” The mayor’s proposal would remove language from existing law stipulating that the tax can’t be used to “supplant existing funding from any City fund or revenue source.”

The council adopted the payroll tax specifically to fund programs addressing housing, homelessness, and equity, and created a separate fund for JumpStart revenues with the intention that they couldn’t be used for other purposes—which is precisely what Durkan is proposing to do.

“The proposed changes are necessary in order to reconcile the priorities identified in [the JumpStart bill] with Council actions in support of other critical funding needs, including homelessness, community safety, BIPOC investments, domestic violence prevention and victim services, appropriate compensation for City employees, and the ongoing shortfall in some City revenues,” the mayor’s budget proposal says.

The city estimates that JumpStart will bring in about $235 million next year, so Durkan’s plan would use up the majority of JumpStart funding for non-JumpStart purposes.

Durkan attempted to reallocate JumpStart revenues last year as well.

A summary of the bill by the City Budget Office notes that Durkan didn’t sign the JumpStart bill, “expressing many of the same concerns about earmarking certain revenue streams at a time when the City was making significant investments using one-time funding received from the federal government as a response to the COVID-19 public health emergency.” She also vetoed legislation last year that used JumpStart revenues to fund COVID relief, a veto the council narrowly overturned.

The city estimates that JumpStart will bring in about $235 million next year, so Durkan’s plan would use up the majority of JumpStart funding for non-JumpStart purposes. The budget would use one-time federal emergency dollars to backfill the gap in the JumpStart fund, but because those funds only last one year, the budget creates a future funding cliff for the next mayor and council. If the council adopts this plan, it will have to either cut the programs Durkan funded using a tax meant for other purposes, or continue to dip into JumpStart revenues while cutting back on programs funded this year with one-time funds. It seems unlikely that the council will allow this part of the budget proposal to stand as is.

This is hardly the first time Durkan has proposed dipping into funds earmarked by legislation for a specific purpose in order to fund her own unrelated priorities. In 2018, she started using funds from the sweetened beverage tax—a tax that was supposed to fund healthy food programs in areas most impacted by the tax—to pay for programs that had historically been funded through the city’s general fund, creating “extra” money for her office to allocate elsewhere.

Mayoral spokeswoman Kamaria Hightower said the higher-than-expected contribution to the regional homelessness authority “represents increased spending on homelessness projected 2022. The [agreement] was written in 2019 and did not contemplate the pandemic or the massive infusion of funds to help our most vulnerable neighbors stay safe.”

When the council attempted to reverse this sleight-of-hand and use the tax revenues for their designated purpose, Durkan accused them of “cutting” programs that she was using the tax to fund, setting off a nasty battle that resulted in the council creating a designated fund for soda tax revenues—much like the designated JumpStart fund.

• Durkan wants to add another 35 (net) new police officers to the force—a fairly modest goal, but one directly in conflict with many council members’ stated commitment to reduce the size of the police department and invest the savings into community-based public safety alternatives. Last year, Durkan vetoed the entire city budget because the council amended it to reduce the size of the police force, a veto the council subsequently overturned.

Although the budget proposal includes funding for new and continued alternatives to policing and police response, such as Health One and Triage One, and funding for the Regional Peacekeepers Collective, a gun-violence prevention program, it also commits to “restoring SPD staffing to previous levels” by hiring new officers. To that end, Durkan’s budget also includes $1.1 million to pay for hiring incentives for new recruits and officers who make lateral transfers from other departments.

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The city council just rejected a series of proposals from Councilmember Alex Pedersen that would have set aside as much as $3 million to retain existing officers and recruit new ones to the department.

• The budget proposes sending more money than the city originally agreed to provide—$104.2 million, compared to $75 million the city agreed to provide in the interlocal agreement adopted in 2019—to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, which is supposed to take over (almost) all the homelessness programs previously managed by the city at the end of this year. The homelessness authority is funded by the city and King County; suburban cities, which hold three seats on the authority’s governing board, don’t contribute financially to the authority.

Mayoral spokeswoman Kamaria Hightower said the higher-than-expected contribution “represents increased spending on homelessness projected 2022. The [agreement] was written in 2019 and did not contemplate the pandemic or the massive infusion of funds to help our most vulnerable neighbors stay safe.”

The new funds include $2.4 million in state and local funds for “tiny home villages,” coincidentally the same amount of state and local dollars the council has been trying to get the mayor to release to pay for three new tiny house villages this year. The mayor’s proposed $2.4 million would pay for ongoing “operations, maintenance, and services s for three tiny home villages (estimated 120 units) or other noncongregate emergency shelter or temporary housing options,” leaving open the possibility that the regional authority might fund a different shelter option.

However, because the money is supposed to “operationalize” funding in the state capital budget that was explicitly for “tiny homes,” it’s likely that advocates for tiny house villages would object strongly to using the money for some other kind of shelter. Authority CEO Marc Dones has expressed skepticism about tiny houses as a form of temporary shelter, noting that people tend to stay in villages far longer than the city’s own goals for the program.

There’s also funding in the proposal for a new men’s shelter run by Africatown at a former nursing home in the Central District; ongoing support for the Salvation Army’s mass shelter in SoDo; and about $190 million for new housing, paid for through the voter-adopted housing levy, federal dollars, and other funding sources.

Durkan’s proposed budget increases funding for Parks’ encampment work by almost a million dollars, adding 6.5 full-time equivalent employees to respond to “the increased demand on [Seattle Parks and Recreation] to address impacts of unmanaged encampments, such as litter removal, storage of personal belongings, and data collection & reporting in compliance with Multi-Department Rules (MDAR).”

The budget also proposes $6 million for services to help people who receive federal emergency housing vouchers maintain their housing when the vouchers run out. Some of this money, according to the budget summary, could come from rapid rehousing funds. As we’ve reported, the city’s plan to move people quickly from two shelter-based hotels into apartments using rapid rehousing subsidies has failed to place many people in housing, largely because the people moving into the hotels tend to be poor candidates for rapid rehousing programs, which generally require tenants to pay full market rent within a few months to a year.

• Although Durkan’s budget plan relinquishes control of most homelessness work, it still assumes that the city, not the regional authority, will maintain its role removing encampments and, to some extent, doing outreach to unsheltered people, although the form that role will take is unclear. Budget director Ben Noble told PubliCola yesterday that although “the shelter contracts and related pieces are all going to the regional authority… the feeling was that folks who are on the street and not in a sanctioned encampment but living outside are sill the primary responsibility of the city.” Continue reading “Durkan Budget Would Gut JumpStart Spending Plan, Increase Funding for Encampment Response” →