Tag: city budget 2026

City Council, Guest Contributor, human services

Amid Federal Cuts and State Austerity, The City Must Step Up and Pass a Budget that Puts People First

By Alexis Mercedes Rinck

In response to an openly antagonistic federal government more interested in interior decorating than keeping food on the kitchen tables of over 40 million Americans, and an austerity-minded state government, local governments are being asked up to step up more than ever to keep our communities fed, healthy, and thriving.

In the past 11 months, we have seen the Trump Regime 2.0 fundamentally rock the foundations of our country by taking a wrecking ball to nearly every federal agency. This has sabotaged federal funding streams for research and critical programs, and decimated the federal workforce. At the same time, the administration has issued a flood of hostile executive orders and administrative changes to grant applications designed to disqualify organizations and jurisdictions, like Seattle, that serve immigrants and the queer community.

This year’s state legislative session did not come to the rescue as we hoped. While House and Senate Democrats put forward legislation to enact progressive revenue with powerful coalitions rallying in support, the legislature ultimately failed to pass many of these options. This translated to austerity for many programs Seattle residents depend on, including the Encampment Resolution Program—a highly successful program focused on removing encampments on state right-of-way and getting people into housing .

These cuts are destabilizing to organizations that serve actual people. The public may not know or care if a clinic or a food bank is funded from federal, state, or local dollars—but they will feel the pain when it disappears.

Local government cannot backfill all the losses in state and federal funding. Our charge must be to prioritize the safety and wellbeing of the people living under our care. Within the 2026 city budget, I have proposed a number of amendments to do just that.

The first would provide $1.4 million to stabilize and backfill federal and state cuts to homeless youth service providers. Earlier this year, organizations providing services to LGBTQ+ and immigrant youth were unable to receive federal Runaway and Homeless Youth (RHY) funds, and more changes and cuts at both the state and federal level are anticipated  in 2026.

The number one predictor of adult homelessness is experiencing homelessness as a young person. Without intervention we could leave hundreds of young people in an even more precarious position.

Our next amendment would add $1 million to gender-based violence survivor services. Due to Trump Regime executive orders and calculated administrative changes, local domestic and sexual violence programs from organizations such as Refugee Women’s Alliance, NW Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP), and API Chaya, are facing an impossible choice: Either deny lifesaving services to queer and immigrant survivors, or risk losing federal funding In addition to the threatened federal funding, state Victims of Crime funding has been cut annually since 2018, even as providers face rising costs.

During the 2025 city budget cycle, funding for tenant services were cut by $1 million, or about 40 percent. I have introduced an amendment that would restore this funding.

Tenant services is a broad category that includes legal counsel for low-income renters facing eviction, legal clinics for individualized support to prevent eviction in the first place, as well as guidance and counseling on how to deal with common issues facing renters, including conflict mediation and payment negotiations. In 2024, King County landlords filed more than 7,000 unlawful detainer cases (evictions)—the highest number in state history.

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In a majority renter city that is grappling with an affordability crisis, we need to invest in measures that keep people housed and provide tools to protect their rights. Restoring $1 million to our tenant services programs will enable organizations such as the Tenant Law Center, Housing Justice Project, Solid Ground, and Be:Seattle to continue their work.

None of this critical human services work would be possible without the frontline workforce. The devaluation of care work has created a doom loop for the people who work in the human services field. Seattle remains one of the most expensive cities in the country, and too many human services workers are paid at wages that, in some case, qualify them for the programs they work in.

In 2023, a city-funded study found that nonprofit human-services workers make 37 percent less than private-sector workers with comparable jobs, a disparity that makes it hard to hire and keep qualified staff. Those who left nonprofit human services jobs saw an average pay boost of 14 percent, the study .

The mayor’s budget proposes a three percent wage equity increase for nonprofit service providers, but we need to move the needle further. A livable wage is fundamental to a thriving workforce, and the City Council has long recognized that basic fact when securing pay City employees. The most recent  contracts included a cumulative 10 percent pay increase over two years, while members of the Seattle Police Officers Guild received a retroactive pay increase last year of roughly 24 percent over three years.

Human services workers at the nonprofits that provide Seattle’s safety net also deserve fair pay. That’s why I’m sponsoring  an amendment to provide a 5 percent wage equity increase for human service providers. The full five percent increase fulfills promises the city  , and is critical to sustaining and uplifting the human services system our community depends on.

Over the next three weeks, the council will be considering these amendments along with many others that represent priorities in our city. We need a balanced budget that puts people first. Contact your councilmembers and make your voice heard.

Alexis Mercedes Rinck is a Seattle City Councilmember representing all Seattle residents in citywide Position 8.

City Council, Mayor Harrell, public safety, Taxes

Council Takes Up Harrell’s “Inherently Unsustainable” Budget; New Spending Includes $800,000 in Speculative AI Spending
Mayor Bruce Harrell, speaking at AI House in September

1. Your sales taxes are going up next year, thanks to a vote by the City Council Tuesday that approved a 0.1-cent increase that can, in the future, be used for any “public safety” purpose, including programs the city is already funding through its general fund.

The new tax, authorized earlier this year by the state legislature, will add $23.7 million in new funding to the budget to pay for 24 new CARE Team first responders, keep the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program going, and fund treatment, firefighters, and other non-police public safety programs. It also includes $15 million to supplant general fund spending on CARE, giving the city $15 million more to use on any purpose.

But, as a City Council central staff memo on the budget notes, there’s nothing in the state authorizing legislation that requires the city to use the new sales tax on new programs. (The original idea behind the legislation was that cities would use the tax increase to pay for police.)

According to the central staff analysis, Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed budget is unsustainable and relies heavily on fiscal sleight-of-hand to come up with a balanced budget in 2026, tumbling precipitously into massive deficits in 2027 and beyond. These tricks include relying on a one-time $141 million fund balance left over from 2025, which won’t be there to balance the budget next year; funding programs that will be necessary long-term, like food assistance for people losing federal benefits, with one-time resources, so that they don’t count toward future deficits; and assuming a $10 million “underspend” every year in the future, allowing the mayor’s budget team to chop $10 million off each year’s expenditures automatically without actually making cuts.

Referring to the fund balance, the memo notes, “The Mayor’s reliance on this $141 million one-time resource to balance his proposed spending for 2026 reflects the inherent unsustainability of the 2026 Proposed Budget, and demonstrates the basic magnitude of the mismatch between the City’s expenditures and its reliable, on-going revenues.

This damning assessment by the council’s own central staff could have implications throughout the budget, which the city council will begin discussing in detail today. What it could mean for the public safety sales tax, specifically is that, if the council passes Harrell’s unsustainable budget mostly as-is, future councils (and a potential future mayor Katie Wilson) could choose to use the money not to fund CARE and LEAD and treatment, but to pay for police, fire, and other basics that would ordinarily be paid for by the general fund.

In other words: Like the JumpStart payroll tax fund, which was supposed to pay for specific program areas (housing, small businesses, Green New Deal, and equitable development), the public safety tax could be used in the future as a slush fund to pay for programs that have historically been funded out of the city’s general budget.

The proposed budget adds about $53 million in new spending compared to the endorsed 2026 budget.

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2. One of the new initiatives Harrell’s proposed 2026 budget would fund is Permitting Accountability and Customer Trust (PACT) program—an $800,000 proposal that will purportedly “streamline the permitting application process and improve customer services using Artificial Intelligence and data integration.”

Callie Craighead, a spokeswoman for the mayor, told PubliCola the city hasn’t picked a vendor for the PACT funding yet. “The integration of AI tools is part of the City’s most concerted effort to date to reduce permitting time, making it faster and easier to build housing across Seattle,” she said.

Harrell is all-in on AI; at an event at the startup incubator AI House last month, he told the crowd, “If you’re thinking, ‘Maybe there’s an opportunity to monetize these things the city’s working on, that’s fair game, by the way. Faster permits—we know that AI can play an incredible role there. …  Time is money, and to the extent we can reduce permit processing times, this would be an added benefit for everyone involved in that process.”

Craighead said the new “AI tools” will help permit applicants catch errors before they submit applications; help “staff apply City code more consistently and efficiently, [and help] the City find opportunities to simplify and streamline policies.”

There are some companies that claim to reduce permitting times using AI chatbots and near-instant plan reviews, but it’s unclear to what extent these tools can actually supplant the human workers who currently work with developers and homeowners on permits and ensure compliance with the city’s complex codes by, for instance, talking to people and answering questions directly and inspecting conditions on the ground.

Moving away from actual employees to tools created by AI startups—a change the city’s new AI plan refers to delicately as “workforce transition”—will face strong opposition from the city’s unions (the largest of which, PROTEC17, has thrown its weight behind Harrell’s opponent Wilson), and potential opposition from the public as well. Replacing public workers with software could also have implications for the local economy, which is increasingly tilted in favor of wealthy tech-sector workers. And, of course, the current frenzy of AI hype could turn out to be just that—hype.

The city’s new AI plan says the “City’s AI Proof of Value framework ensures pilots are judged on clear objectives, business value, responsible use, and long-term supportability, not hype-fueled adoption we hear from sales staff.” Which seems, I don’t know… a little doth-protest-too much?

City Council, Mayor Harrell

Bad News for the City Budget: New Forecast Slashes $241 Million from Last Year’s Projection

By Erica C. Barnett

The city’s budget forecast is grim, Office of Economic and Revenue Forecast Council director Jan Duras told the council Thursday morning, as national economic turmoil threatens to lower tax revenues in nearly every economic sector, from construction to tourism. In an unusual move, the council adopted the “pessimistic” (as opposed to “baseline”) version of the forecast, which lowers total revenue projections by $241 million over the next two years compared to the budget the city adopted last year.

That total includes a $50 million two-year shortfall in the general fund resulting from lower sales taxes, business and occupation taxes, utility taxes, and many other revenue sources. The payroll tax alone, which depends heavily on just ten companies (nine of those in the tech sector), is now expected to bring in $142.3 million less than the current city budget anticipates.

“The City of Seattle was already dealing with the effects of high inflation,” the council’s budget committee chair, Dan Strauss, told PubliCola after the briefing. Strauss, along with Council President Sara Nelson, represents the council on the four-member forecast council. “Now, we are beginning to see the real impact indiscriminate tariffs, increased market volatility, and federal funding cuts could have on Seattle’s budget.

?Since federal trade policy is rapidly changing, it is difficult to project the impact it will have on our economy. We adopted the pessimistic forecast today so we are able to plan for the worst, while still hoping for the best.”

The revenue forecast council, which was established in 2021, includes two representative each from the city council and mayor’s office; prior to 2021, the City Budget Office was in charge of revenue forecasts. Today’s vote marked the second time the city has adopted the pessimistic forecast, rather than the “baseline” forecast, since COVID shut down the economy in April 2021.

As you might expect, Trump’s tariffs, stock-market volatility, inflation, and the looming recession are having a significant impact on Seattle—and when the economy is uncertain, people spend less money and businesses pay less in local taxes. This year, forecast council staff said, travel to Seattle (including visits from Canadians) is expected to take a hit, along with housing construction, attendance at venues that charge admission tax, and revenue from parking taxes and parking meter fees.

Job data also suggests that in response to rising payroll tax rates (which went up in 2023 and will rise again this year to pay for student mental health and social housing, respectively), large companies subject to the tax have been moving or adding jobs outside Seattle, a trend that could be contributing to lower tax revenues from JumpStart.

This is a problem not only for the programs JumpStart was created to fund, but for the general-fund programs to which it has been steadily repurposed. For years, the city has increasingly relied on the tax to pay for general city purposes, and last year, the council eliminated any requirement that it follow the original JumpStart spending plan, which allocated the funds primarily to affordable housing construction. But as they recently discovered, JumpStart is not an endless money faucet, but a volatile revenue stream that can swing dramatically depending on the decisions of a single company.

Wall-o-numbers: The relevant (scary) ones are in red.

Keep in mind that this is just the April forecast; the city will get two more forecasts before adopting a budgetin the fall. But unless the national and local economy suddenly start to trend in a positive direction, the likelihood is that things will get worse, not better, before then.

Simply put, it probably isn’t possible—and definitely isn’t prudent—for the mayor and council to continue to ignore growing, ongoing budget shortfalls by relying on the JumpStart fund to patch over deep structural issues year after year.  As I reported last year, the city’s current budget is only balanced (thanks to JumpStart) through 2026; after that, even before Trump’s policies threw the global economic order into chaos, the city projected a shortfall of of $78 million in 2027, growing to $158 million in 2028.

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Those numbers were already looking shaky, because they assumed JumpStart revenues would continue to rise and rise, bringing in more revenue every year and forestalling difficult budget choices. The city’s existing budget assumes the JumpStart tax will bring in $440 million this year, $466 million in 2026, $483 million in 2027, and $505 million in 2028. The new revenue forecast, which covers two years, downgrades the 2025 and 2026 numbers to $359 million and $380 million, respectively, a cumulative drop of $167 million from what the city was assuming.

This means that the mayor and council have a bigger budget problem than they thought they would last year, when they larded the budget with $100 million in brand-new programs, including some (like live CCTV surveillance by SPD’s new “real time crime center”) that will now require ongoing funds in every budget.

The city could decide to finally new revenues, such as a capital gains tax or tax on excessive compensation for corporate CEOs—unlikely, but possible. There are good arguments for new taxes, but none of the proposals on the table would bring in enough to address shortfalls in the hundreds of millions; the high-end estimate for last year’s proposed capital gains tax, probably the most feasible and lucrative option, was $51 million a year.

They could also decide to dip into the city’s emergency reserves, but that still won’t solve the problem, and would leave the city short on cash in future years, when the budget deficit is expected to grow.

Or they could make cuts. This seems like the least likely option in 2025, since there have been no signs the mayor or council are particularly panicked about the forecasts they’ve been seeing. Hell, the council just took time out of their busy schedules to pass a resolution decrying the very concept of removing a penny from the police department, so it’s hard to imagine they’re asking tough questions yet about what happens if they suddenly need to cut $300 million from the budget. In addition, it’s an election year for Mayor Bruce Harrell and Council President Sara Nelson, and neither wants to be known as the “austerity” candidate.

If the situation didn’t seem dire enough already, remember that Trump’s dismantling of the federal social safety net has already hit Seattle, cutting funds for agencies that provide vital services to children, immigrants, people who can’t afford health care, and those experiencing homelessness or housing instability, to name just a few. Last week, for instance, the director of the Downtown Emergency Service Center told a council committee that DESC gets about $35 million, or a quarter of its operating budget, from federal sources; if those funds aren’t replaced by other sources, many of the 8,000 people the shelter and housing agency serves annually could end up back on the streets.

And they’re just one agency. Others, like the Kids In Need of Legal Defense program, which helps immigrant children who would otherwise have to represent themselves in court, are already winding down their work—they lost their federal funding, and they can’t function without it. These problems go beyond anything the city can address on its own, but every government in the state has an obligation to do what it can. Will this council and mayor be up for the challenge? We’ll know soon enough.