Is Seattle's council less centrist than we thought?

[00:00:10] Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Seattle Nice. I'm David Hyde here, as always, with Erica C. Barnett of Publicola. Hi, Erica.

[00:00:17] Hello.

[00:00:18] And political consultant Sandeep Kaushik. Hello, Sandeep.

[00:00:21] Hey, David.

[00:00:23] Today, we're talking about the city council and the budget, and this is a shocking tie vote on a proposed capital gains tax. I'm saying shocking, I'm saying surprising, or at least somewhat surprising. Erica, what are you saying?

[00:00:37] I think it's somewhat surprising. Kathy Moore is the person who proposed the capital gains tax of 2% on capital gains above $262,000 a year.

[00:00:48] And, you know, I think that was a little bit surprising, and I think she has expressed that she surprised herself because she came in sort of talking about fiscal responsibility and the need to figure out where there's waste in the budget, etc.

[00:01:01] But she proposed this tax, and she got three people on the council supporting it. So that's four votes, four more opposed. And Tanya Wu, who is going to be off the council next week, abstained because her husband is a stock trader.

[00:01:18] So the reason that's surprising is that capital gains was sort of considered to be a non-starter on this council, which came in saying pretty strongly that we don't need any new revenue.

[00:01:29] The city has, you know, a spending problem. It doesn't have a tax problem or a revenue problem.

[00:01:34] And so for Kathy Moore to be sponsoring it in the first place, she's one of the new kind of fiscal responsibility council members, was surprising.

[00:01:41] But the fact that she got more than just Tammy Morales, the council's lone remaining progressive to support her, was, you know, I don't know about shocking, but it's pretty surprising.

[00:01:52] And when Alexis Mercedes Rink joins the council, if they have another vote and it goes the same way, then capital gains will pass.

[00:02:00] Sandeep, Kathy Moore surprised. Erica surprised. I was surprised. Then a 4-4 vote. We were doubly somewhat surprised.

[00:02:07] So that's like five, six, seven surprises right there.

[00:02:11] Quadruply surprised.

[00:02:12] How surprised were you? And where do you think this is headed?

[00:02:16] I think, look, I think everybody was a little bit surprised by that vote.

[00:02:21] I mean, the word on the street that I was hearing at the council last week was that the vote was likely to be kind of 7-2-0 with Tammy and Kathy being the only yes vote.

[00:02:30] So obviously a 4-4 vote with an abstention, it creates a very, very different vibe about it.

[00:02:36] I think there's a lot to unpack about that vote and why it ended up as 4-4 and what that portends.

[00:02:43] But I do think, you know, I said this last week on the show, there were a number of folks even last week who were saying there were no votes on this,

[00:02:51] but they were open to the concept of a municipal capital gains tax, which is why I was saying last week,

[00:02:56] I'm pretty sure it's coming back even after it gets voted down in this budget process.

[00:03:02] And I think that's exactly what's going to happen. It's coming back.

[00:03:05] Well, just to be clear, the two votes besides Tammy and Kathy were Dan Strauss and Joy Hollingsworth.

[00:03:11] And then the rest of the council voted no with the exception of Tanya Wu.

[00:03:14] So is this a divided council even currently without Alexis Mercedes Rink on there?

[00:03:20] Is it more divided than we suspected up until now, Erica?

[00:03:24] It's divided on this issue, certainly.

[00:03:26] And I think that some of the other votes did not go as predictably along those seven two lines as one might have thought.

[00:03:34] Now, I will say everything Tammy Morales proposed pretty much was a struggle for her to pass.

[00:03:39] And most of her proposals didn't pass, including some really, really minor stuff like $50,000 for a tenant work group.

[00:03:46] So, you know, there has not been a major shift of any kind on the council.

[00:03:51] But I think on this progressive revenue stuff, it is possible that they have looked at the budget

[00:03:56] and maybe their eyes have somewhat been open to the fact that it's going to rely on the jumpstart payroll tax in perpetuity.

[00:04:04] That's their plan.

[00:04:05] They don't want to make cuts.

[00:04:06] They don't want to do all the stuff that they said they were going to do about, you know, figuring out where all the waste is.

[00:04:11] Instead, they're piling on yet more programs, which is what every single city council does.

[00:04:16] And they're realizing they don't have a lot of fat to cut and there's still needs.

[00:04:21] And I think that's what Kathy Moore said, you know, when I talked to her was we saw that there's this, you know,

[00:04:28] this need for jumpstart to do all this other stuff that is important.

[00:04:31] But there's also a need for food security.

[00:04:33] There's a need for rental assistance.

[00:04:35] And I think they've been hearing that from landlords, too, which is probably also a compelling argument.

[00:04:39] It's not just coming from tenants groups.

[00:04:41] A 4-4 vote even before a Lexus Mercedes rink gets onto the council.

[00:04:46] It's kind of not the council we I thought we had in some ways.

[00:04:50] What do you think?

[00:04:51] Yeah.

[00:04:51] I mean, David, in answer to your question to Erica about does this mean, you know, the unified moderate council doesn't really exist?

[00:04:59] I think the answer to that question is yes.

[00:05:01] Right.

[00:05:01] I this isn't the first issue where the expectation was that there was going to be a majority or even a super majority to pass significant changes.

[00:05:10] We can go back to the delivery earnings standard changes that were that were proposed kind of right out of the gate in the session.

[00:05:18] Or for that matter, the tip credit, you know, minimum wage thing that Joy introduced and withdrew within a week.

[00:05:27] And sorry, just to explain that, that was where people who make tips as part of their income would be or employees would be allowed to pay them less than the minimum wage that applies to everyone else in the city.

[00:05:40] Yeah.

[00:05:41] But on all of these kind of kind of big issues, you've seen splits and divisions, you know, emerge.

[00:05:48] Right.

[00:05:49] So I do think there's a pretty good argument you made that this idea that there was some kind of monolithic, you know, fully moderate wing council that came in to office.

[00:06:01] Right.

[00:06:01] Right.

[00:06:01] We had six new was it six new council members of the nine starting this year.

[00:06:05] But that that's that's not been borne out by reality.

[00:06:08] There are actually a kind of kaleidoscope of factions and divisions within this council that emerge kind of idiosyncratically on issue by issue.

[00:06:18] Right.

[00:06:18] And, you know, there's a kind of fluidity here.

[00:06:22] But there are definitely divisions.

[00:06:23] Right.

[00:06:23] And factions within this council.

[00:06:25] And I think we saw it with this kind of some pretty surprising 4-4 vote.

[00:06:29] I would also just add a second point, though, which is that I think there is some politics involved in this vote.

[00:06:34] Right.

[00:06:34] Right.

[00:06:34] When I was saying that last week I was hearing it was 7-2, I think both Joy and Dan were kind of squishy yes votes on this.

[00:06:43] I think it's not completely beyond the pale of reason to think that they knew it was going down in this budget process, which I think for very good reasons, because this proposal wasn't cooked.

[00:06:54] And so this was a kind of throwaway yes vote they could make to sort of appease the left or kind of, you know, soften their image a little bit.

[00:07:01] But I will say once you take that yes vote, it's pretty hard to imagine when it comes back next year that they're going to flip and be a no on it.

[00:07:08] Right.

[00:07:08] I mean, I think you do put a marker down when you take that vote.

[00:07:11] So I do think this is a very live issue and it's coming back.

[00:07:14] And I'd be surprised at this point if in January, February we don't see a proposal and it doesn't pass.

[00:07:20] Sorry.

[00:07:20] Well, just point of clarification.

[00:07:22] So Saneep's talking about next year, but we're taping on Wednesday and the full council hasn't yet voted on this proposal.

[00:07:28] Correct?

[00:07:29] That's right.

[00:07:30] They're going to vote tomorrow, Thursday.

[00:07:32] And so maybe we'll have an emergency podcast on Friday.

[00:07:36] Who knows if it goes a different way?

[00:07:38] Emergency podcast.

[00:07:39] But the reason we're talking about next year is just because this is unlikely to come back up.

[00:07:44] It would have to be a reintroduction.

[00:07:46] The capital gains tax proposal or any tax proposal can happen outside the budget.

[00:07:51] And so it is widely predicted that it's going to come back next year.

[00:07:55] Right.

[00:07:55] And just a quick point in addition to that, my expectation is that when this vote happens tomorrow, it will be a 5-4 vote.

[00:08:03] I have heard that while Tanya Wu abstained in this preliminary vote that we're talking about right now, that she has subsequently received advice from, you know, I think Seattle Ethics or whoever, that she is okay to vote on this.

[00:08:18] So I think she had abstained out of caution that she was, you know, not allowed to take a vote on this because of conflicts of interest issues.

[00:08:27] But I believe that's resolved.

[00:08:29] And, you know, maybe she'll surprise me and vote yes on it.

[00:08:32] But I would guess that this would be a 5-4 vote tomorrow.

[00:08:35] I see on social media reports that Kathy Moore is asking supporters to call and email Rob Sokka and Tanya Wu to ask that they vote yes at the full council vote tomorrow.

[00:08:46] But I guess we'll see what happens.

[00:08:47] Yeah, she sent out a press release, but a press release doesn't necessarily mean anything.

[00:08:51] She definitely wants to drum up support for it.

[00:08:54] But I don't know.

[00:08:55] Maybe she can get Sokka to change his vote.

[00:08:57] He certainly changed his votes on the dais yesterday.

[00:09:00] So anything can happen.

[00:09:02] I mentioned a little earlier that, you know, I had been hearing that Joy and Dan were no votes last week.

[00:09:08] But I would also say there are a few council members like Rob Sokka or, you know, that could, you know, Rob was one of the three council members,

[00:09:17] one of the two other council members that joined with Kathy to allow this to even get introduced to the introduction and referral calendar, right?

[00:09:24] And so it's not 100% clear to me that we won't, you know, we couldn't see Rob move on this.

[00:09:29] Well, I mean, I was sort of being a little bit more flip.

[00:09:34] I think, Sandeep, you're being a little more literal.

[00:09:35] I know where you're going with this.

[00:09:37] I mean, Sokka sponsored a bunch of things that he then said he opposed and that he was sponsoring them just to get them on the calendar for discussion, essentially.

[00:09:48] I want to hear more about Rob Sokka in a minute.

[00:09:51] But, like, let's stay with you for one second, Sandeep, because I'm going to ask this of both of you.

[00:09:55] What surprised you about this budget or this budget process so far?

[00:10:00] Yeah, I think one of the things that, you know, has kind of vanished into the memory hole about this, you know, of what's happening in this budget,

[00:10:08] but kind of popped back up on my radar screen when I realized that there was some significant money getting moved around in this budget,

[00:10:15] is remember participatory budgeting, right?

[00:10:18] Remember one of the, you know, big new innovative changes in the last council and they put $30 million aside for this, you know, kind of citizen run or activist run process that was going to distribute these tens of millions of dollars.

[00:10:31] In fact, they were supposed to do $30 million every year into this participatory budgeting kitty.

[00:10:37] And participatory budgeting, I think, is now with this budget officially dead, gone and buried.

[00:10:44] What happened in this budget cycle is that Joy Hollingsworth actually pushed through a significant, of the remaining dollars.

[00:10:53] She moved $10 million of it to some of her priorities, in which she says are more directly related to the Black community.

[00:11:01] But again, all of that happened without anybody raising a peep.

[00:11:04] I'm not seeing Tammy Morales or anybody on the progressive side sort of saying, why are we killing participatory budgeting?

[00:11:09] Where'd it go?

[00:11:10] Oh, woe is us, right?

[00:11:12] I mean, it seems like everybody's happy to see the back of that thing.

[00:11:16] Well, I guess I'll get to my thing in a second, but I wanted to respond to this idea that nobody mentioned anything and everybody voted along with this.

[00:11:23] That is not true.

[00:11:24] The proposals that Joy Hollingsworth put forward eliminated funding, you know, some portion of the funding, I think about half, for mobile restrooms,

[00:11:33] which was recommended as part of the participatory budgeting process and moved that into other priorities of hers and or other priorities that she identified, I should say, not her priorities.

[00:11:46] But she also proposed and got a reallocation of funding from food assistance to homeownership programs.

[00:11:57] And both of those actually were the subject of some discussion.

[00:12:00] They were, I believe, pulled out of their consent agenda so they could talk about it because that is controversial.

[00:12:06] I mean, everybody needs restrooms.

[00:12:08] And while mobile restrooms may primarily help unsheltered people, I mean, we don't have enough bathrooms in the city.

[00:12:15] And it really is a critical need that's been identified over and over and over again.

[00:12:19] So we're going to have less of that.

[00:12:21] And food assistance is being reallocated into homeownership.

[00:12:25] And so that is a direct transfer of money from people who are more needy to people who are less needy.

[00:12:32] And so I think that those were pretty controversial things.

[00:12:36] Now, I mean, the sort of decline of participatory budgeting is a different story.

[00:12:41] And I think, Sandeep, I know you're obsessed with 2020, but I mean, that has been a process that started almost as soon as they said that they were going to allocate millions and millions of dollars to this process.

[00:12:53] I think it fell apart pretty quickly.

[00:12:57] And so I don't think that is like the main story about these funds.

[00:13:01] But I mean, it is true that, I mean, there's millions of dollars that are going to be spent differently than was recommended because of Joy Hollingsworth's amendments.

[00:13:10] Why isn't the media covering it more so Sandeep can revel in this kind of I told you so moment that he seems to be experiencing right now?

[00:13:17] It was a, it was, it was a stupid, my, my, right.

[00:13:20] My told you so moment is that it was a stupid crackpot idea like that got pushed by the previous, you know, by, by a certain set of activists who really in their initial proposal for participatory budgeting.

[00:13:34] Demanded, we're demanding that a third of the money essentially get spent on salaries for them and their friends who are going to be on this committee.

[00:13:43] And then all the other, and then they were going to disperse all the money out to all of their friends, which is sort of a huge, you know, time bomb.

[00:13:50] I mean, I think you're, you're vastly simplifying, oversimplifying, overstating the case when you're calling this idea stupid and crackpot.

[00:13:58] I mean, you know, you're on the record saying that, but, but that is that, I mean, but the way you've described it, you know, I don't want this to become a podcast about participatory budgeting.

[00:14:08] Cause I want to get to answer the same question that you just spent 10 minutes answering, um, about the budget.

[00:14:14] But I do think you are oversimplifying, um, in order to make fun of a process that you disagreed with.

[00:14:19] Let's end this there, Erica, same question for you.

[00:14:21] What are some or one thing or some of the things that has surprised you most about this budget or the process?

[00:14:28] I think this isn't, this is a slight surprise.

[00:14:32] It's not a, Oh my God, I can't believe this happened, but I was a little bit surprised by how chaos.

[00:14:38] The process was after Dan Strauss, who is the budget chair and is now, I guess, a council veteran.

[00:14:43] Cause he's, uh, just started his second term.

[00:14:46] Um, but you know, he said over and over, we are not going to have last minute amendments.

[00:14:52] Um, there is a deadline and it is this time.

[00:14:54] If you were not done writing your amendment by this minute, you need to just hit send and you can fix it later.

[00:14:59] And sort of gave all this lip service to imposing, you know, extreme discipline on this budget process.

[00:15:05] But then what ended up happening is, you know, because anybody can overrule the budget chair.

[00:15:10] He's just, you know, he's just a council member.

[00:15:12] You just need a majority.

[00:15:13] The council did exactly what he, you know, said that they shouldn't.

[00:15:17] And, you know, and that seems to me, um, evidence of sort of a lack of internal discipline on the council.

[00:15:23] Um, you know, the stuff that happens behind the scenes.

[00:15:25] So you actually ensure that council members don't do stuff like that, but it just devolved into sort of, I mean, sort of chaos at points where people were just literally bringing on amendments on paper to the dais, you know, handing them out.

[00:15:41] And then if you were in the room, you could maybe see them if you ran up to the front and got it before they voted.

[00:15:46] But I mean, there was just no transparency in this process compared to previous processes.

[00:15:52] I mean, I haven't checked today, but the votes were not even up from last Friday when they voted.

[00:15:58] So if you wanted to know how they voted, you have to go back and actually watch the meeting.

[00:16:02] So I think that it is surprising to me how little the public was able to access information about this budget unless they were physically in the room, which most people obviously can't be.

[00:16:13] And, you know, I mean, it's I don't really even know what all is in there.

[00:16:17] There's stuff that I am probably unaware of because, you know, I like went to the bathroom for a minute and they passed an amendment that, you know, that nobody has seen.

[00:16:25] That's a funny thought that nobody really knows what's in the budget.

[00:16:29] It's kind of true, though.

[00:16:31] You know, I was in council chambers when Kathy Moore proposed an amendment.

[00:16:35] And this is this is the one I was alluding to for it was sort of prescribing the use of Jumpstart in the future and limiting it to no more than 45 percent can go into the general fund.

[00:16:46] And she had proposed this before, but it was a little more.

[00:16:50] The other 55 percent was a little more prescriptive on affordable housing.

[00:16:53] And this was a little less prescriptive.

[00:16:55] And I mean, they handed it out right then and there.

[00:16:59] It was not put up online.

[00:17:01] And, you know, and posted it on Blue Sky so people could at least see it.

[00:17:05] But if I hadn't been in the room, I wouldn't have been able to do that because it's you know, it's just there's no visibility into it.

[00:17:11] And funnily enough, that was the thing that Rob Saka switched his vote on.

[00:17:14] He he gave a speech about how the first version of the amendment was bad idea because it, you know, was saying we can't spend any more than 45 percent on of Jumpstart funds on the general fund.

[00:17:26] But the second one was for some reason just fine, even though it did the exact same thing.

[00:17:31] So a little bizarre.

[00:17:32] I mean, just just stuff happening on the fly and you're not sure that the council is tracking it.

[00:17:36] I mean, you know, it just man, it was a very confusing budget process, more so than, you know, any I've seen that I can think of.

[00:17:45] I mean, certainly in recent memory.

[00:17:47] I will just to throw out another thing that I think we will see coming out of this budget process, we're obviously coming up near the end of the of the process.

[00:17:56] They're they're kind of typically the budget process goes almost till Thanksgiving.

[00:18:01] But they seem to be finishing this up a little bit earlier than usual, maybe because they, Erica, to your point, like things got kind of kind of pushed through a whole lot of process, you know, around it.

[00:18:11] But one thing I think you will hear coming from some of the council members, and I think rightfully so, you know, in the main is that they're going to argue that this was a strong pro public safety budget, that they did fully fund public safety and the sort of agenda that they wanted to fund around that.

[00:18:29] And that this is supportive of, you know, that the city is turning the corner on public safety.

[00:18:38] Right. That I think we're going to hear that this is the first year since the pandemic where we're going to end with a net increase in police officers in Seattle.

[00:18:47] I think we're going to be hearing over the next.

[00:18:49] These aren't budget things.

[00:18:50] Yeah, yeah.

[00:18:50] These are just things that you support.

[00:18:52] But I think they're going to say I think the argument is that that the that the public safety spending and investments in this budget support the range of stuff that's happened this year around soda and soap and the police contract.

[00:19:04] But none of that stuff is.

[00:19:05] And all of that kind of stuff.

[00:19:08] Yeah, I mean, I don't think you can say we've managed to hire a bunch of new cops on policies that haven't even been enacted yet.

[00:19:16] But I mean, I'm sure I'm sure that, you know, that the chamber and you and, you know, all the all the other supporters of the new council members will say that.

[00:19:25] But I think it's mostly because they started paying cops six figures to start.

[00:19:29] And, you know, people being rational, you know, on stuff like this, you know, are likely to apply for that job, whereas, you know, they were less likely before.

[00:19:38] As interim police chief Sue Rohr told you in your interview, if I remember correctly, when you interviewed her, you know, a couple months ago, you know, they've also made changes to their recruitment process.

[00:19:48] And she thinks that that helped to streamline the process and make them more successful in recruiting cops, along with the contract and the pay raise, too.

[00:19:56] I mean, that's obviously a big deal.

[00:19:58] Right. Which remember was something which was the justification the mayor's office used back earlier this year when they pushed the pay raise through without, you know, the full contract being negotiated because they said this was a key piece of turning the corner on police recruitment.

[00:20:14] And I think they can rightfully make an argument that that worked.

[00:20:17] OK, that's it for another edition of Seattle Nice.

[00:20:20] She's Erica C. Barnett.

[00:20:21] He's Sandeep Kaushik.

[00:20:23] I'm David Hyde.

[00:20:24] Our editor is Quinn Waller.

[00:20:26] And happy Thanksgiving.

[00:20:28] Oh, wait a minute.

[00:20:29] Is it too early to say that?

[00:20:30] It is.

[00:20:30] Happy week before Thanksgiving.

[00:20:32] And and happy Thanksgiving shopping or whatever you've got going on.