"The city does not have a revenue problem ‐ it has a spending efficiency problem,"
Tax 'em all and keep taxin' em.
After a weekend of high-stakes negotiations between Seattle City Council members and Mayor Jenny Durkan, the council voted unanimously Monday to tax the city's largest employers to help address homelessness.
Starting next year, the tax will be $275 per employee, per year on for-profit companies that gross at least $20 million per year in the city ‐ down from a $500-per-head proposal that Durkan threatened to veto.
The city declared a homelessness state of emergency in late 2015. A point-in-time count last year tallied more than 11,600 homeless people in King County and one in 16 Seattle Public Schools students is homeless.
"We have community members who are dying," Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda said before the 9-0 vote. "They are dying on our streets today because there is not enough shelter" and affordable housing.
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In a statement after the vote and weeks of fierce debate, demonstrations and denunciations, she said the tax "will have a meaningful impact on addressing our homelessness crisis by building housing and providing health services."
Having paused construction planning on an office tower over the larger proposal, Amazon now will move ahead with it, a spokesman said after the vote. But the company's plans to occupy a skyscraper under construction are still up the air, he said.
"We are disappointed by today's City Council decision to introduce a tax on jobs," spokesman Drew Herdener said in a statement.
"While we have resumed construction planning for Block 18, we remain very apprehensive about the future created by the council's hostile approach and rhetoric toward larger businesses, which forces us to question our growth here."
Council members were working on the deal past midnight Sunday, and council staff postponed Mother's Day plans to assist, they said. On the line: money to house struggling people, Seattle's reputation as a tech-boom town and the city's political soul.
About 3 percent of Seattle businesses will be taxed, raising about $47 million per year, according to the council.
The larger proposal would have raised $86 million annually, according to a council estimate Monday, based on updated data from the city's budget office.
The council ordinance calls for the tax to end after five years, with renewal requiring a council vote in 2023.
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With more than 45,000 employees in the city, Amazon could pay more than $10 million per year. Some proponents of the measure used the slogan "tax Amazon," arguing the e-commerce behemoth owed Seattle help with its affordability problem.
Other companies set to be taxed include Starbucks, The Seattle Times and longtime, family-owned supermarket Uwajimaya.
The tax that won approval is much smaller than the proposal that had been under consideration for many weeks and that was vehemently opposed by the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.
The compromise
For months, Durkan left council members to drive the public discussion. But a 5-4 council split over the $500-per-head proposal raised the prospect she could exercise her veto power and forced her to engage.
A new law needs six votes to override a mayoral veto.
On one side were homeless advocates, service-worker unions and voters looking for Seattle to do more to help vulnerable people. On the other were business leaders, construction-worker unions and voters critical of how City Hall has been spending money.
Amazon contributed $350,000 this past year to a business group that supported Durkan's mayoral campaign.
At Monday's council meeting, some in the crowd waved signs that read "housing first," while others countered with signs that read "results first."
In the end, Durkan pushed for the smaller tax. She plans to sign the legislation, she said Monday.
Under the original proposal, the city would have switched from a head tax to a 0.7 percent payroll tax in 2021 ‐ a change to help low-margin businesses with many modestly paid workers, such as supermarkets. Under the approved ordinance, there will be no payroll tax.
"We saw what happens when we come together, sit down together, and work together ‐ we can find common ground and get things done," Durkan said in a statement.
Activists who spent months lobbying for a head tax on large employers hailed the council's action.
"Is this bill everything we hoped for? No. Is it a major step forward? Absolutely," the Transit Riders Union said in an email to supporters.
Working Washington, a union-backed advocacy group that accused Amazon of felony intimidation last week over the company's planning pause, also applauded the vote.
"Seattle refused to knuckle under," the group said in an email.
Amazon will resume planning for its Block 18 tower and continue weighing whether to sublease the space in the Rainier Square skyscraper, Herdener said. Before the tax debate, the retail giant had been expecting the two buildings to accommodate about 7,000 employees.
In a biting statement, a Starbucks spokesman accused city leaders of failing to spend effectively on homelessness and ignoring children sleeping outside.
"If they cannot provide a warm meal and safe bed to a five-year-old child, no one believes they will be able to make housing affordable or address opiate addiction," said John Kelly, the company's top public-affairs executive.
Councilmember Kshama Sawant cast the only "no" vote Monday on an amendment that reduced the size of the tax but joined her colleagues approving the overall measure. She mentioned the immense wealth Amazon has created for CEO Jeff Bezos, who recently became the world's richest person and is worth an estimated $130 billion.
"There is no way this tax will be a burden on big businesses in Seattle," Sawant said, slamming the mayor for siding with "Amazon billionaires."
How money will be spent
Along with the tax Monday, the council approved a nonbinding resolution that calls for spending 66 percent of the new money on affordable housing, 32 percent on emergency shelter, trash pickup, raises for service workers and other needs, and 2 percent on administration.
The plan says the revenue could help build 591 units of low-income housing over five years ‐ down from 1,700 units slated under the $500-per-head tax.
An effort by Sawant to prohibit any of the revenue from being spent on sweeps of unauthorized homeless encampments was voted down 8-1.
In a news conference after the council acted, Durkan expressed dissatisfaction with the council's spending plan. The mayor wants a greater percentage of the money spent on emergency options and on addressing street encampments.
Durkan stressed the city must be transparent with Seattle residents about how the revenue is spent. She said she would create an oversight committee to monitor that.
"As a city we have to know that our strategies are going to work," the mayor said, also calling on King County and state lawmakers to "step up and shoulder their fair share" in dealing with homelessness.
Homeless-services workers and unions representing supermarket and hotel workers, among others, supported the larger tax proposal, which was sponsored by Councilmembers Mosqueda, M. Lorena González, Lisa Herbold and Mike O'Brien.
They said companies such as Amazon have contributed to homelessness because their highly paid employees have sent rents and home prices soaring.
"We could not find the votes we needed," a disappointed O'Brien said before voting for the smaller proposal.
González said she was in regular contact with Durkan over the weekend and had "a couple of work sessions with her and her staff."
The council member said she had hoped to be voting "on a different package" with more money, but "I'm glad to be able to finally move this forward."
Construction-worker unions worried about losing work building for Amazon opposed the larger tax, as did Council President Bruce Harrell, Councilmembers Sally Bagshaw, Debora Juarez and Rob Johnson. Some business leaders said the city should instead ease zoning restrictions to allow more new housing.
Though Seattle's population grew 11 percent from 2012 to 2016, its government spending rose much faster, even accounting for inflation.
The city budgeted $63 million for homeless programs and will invest more than $100 million in affordable housing this year.
"The city does not have a revenue problem ‐ it has a spending efficiency problem," Herdener said in his statement for Amazon.
Johnson called the $275-per-head tax a "reasonable compromise that will allow us to make real progress."
#1
Values, Seattle has a priority of Values. They think like Detroit and they smell like Chicago.
So they tax the people who will simply avoid doing business there in the future..and move to someplace where they CAN do business.
And you can walk in human feces with Leadership that doesn't live in the practical real world and doesn't think ahead and plan prosperity I know, lets all be hippies and smoke boo and just sit here and look at the sunset and be cool.
Let's move to Seattle and wear flowers in our hair and vote democrat. Taxes are for Scmucks , sock it to the man. The CORPORATIONS are the Enemy, dude. Down with capitalism and let's all sing Kumbaya.
#2
It's always easy to spend other people's money, until the long arm of taxation loses it reach (move East young man). Punishing the productive and rewarding the non-productive to flash your virtue will not work.
The poor are not virtuous in any by their condition. Poverty is primarily founded upon four tenets -
Doing alcohol and drugs
Procreating before you have the ability and means to put a roof over your own head, food on your own table and clothes on your own back
Blowing off whatever educational opportunities you are given
Doing the same self limited behaviors your parents, their parents and their parents did to remain poor.
Its as much a self inflicted wound as any outside factor. There is no virtue in that.
#4
In the local area a nearby hamlet was incorporated, or so I was told, by a wealthy horse breeder. He made sure that the bigger towns in the vicinity couldn't annex his ranch and start charging him sales tax on his race horse transactions -- by having his own town with a well-picked set of officials.
Maybe Amazon should "invest" in its own suburb of Seattle in easy commuting distance....
#7
"They are dying on our streets today because there is not enough shelter" and affordable housing.
I think the council member's idea of affordable housing is somewhat different from mine. I would incarcerate vagrants, put them in a tent city somewhere out in the boondocks surrounded by concertina wire. There would be food, water and porta potties but no drugs or alcohol. It would not be comfortable. Actually, you could think of it more as punishment than housing. The unfortunates would get a month long stay at this facility for their first vagrancy offense. The second offense would result in a six month stay and the third offense would get them a year.
IMHO, the good people of Seattle and their employers are not obligated to provide housing for every loser in the whole wide world who wants to live there. If you can't afford Seattle, try your luck somewhere else.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
05/15/2018 11:02 Comments ||
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#8
magpie, Disney did the same thing in Flordia. Bought up enough swampland that Disneyworld is its own county. Probably saves a fortune on the bribes in the long run.
#9
Microsoft is mostly based in Bellevue, not Seattle.
I work in Seattle and when I take the bus in I see tents after tents setup under just about every overpass. People are just camping out because they *choose* not to work. People are not 'dying on the street' that is a flat-out lie. They may be dying of overdose or assault by their fellows but they are not starving or freezing to death.
They seriously think this will help 'solve' the problem? No it will make it much, much, worse as the homeless will flock to Seattle _or_ people will simply choose not to work and live on the street (or in subsidized housing). I think their only criteria is that you can vote (legally or illegally).
#10
On Bloomberg radio this afternoon a Seattle councilperson said they plan on raising the tax after 5 years. I can only assume they expect to have a bigger homeless problem 5 years from now; otherwise, why require an increase? And maybe they will, I suspect other cities may be more than happy to greyhound their homeless and mental patients to Seattle.
#12
Avoid Seattle like the plague; between dog crap on the sidewalk and bums wall to wall, and the sugar tax (but Starsux lattes are exempt) I have no need to visit. Son #1 is city attorney for nearby town and they are following these antics very closely looking for businesses they can 'siphon' (his words) out of seattle and into their municipality.
[Big League Politics] Dodgy barrister Michael Avenatti - the same one who owes $5 million in back taxes and worked on opposition research for Democrats Rahm Emanuel and Joe Biden - has been adamant about the source of funding for Stormy Daniels' crusade against President Donald J. Trump.
When a slime ball leftist so wholeheartedly denies that there is a man behind the curtain, usually there is a man behind the curtain.
In this case, that man is Ronald A. Klain.
Klain is a columnist at Jeff Bezos's blog, the Washington Post, and a former advisor to President Barack H. Obama. He was also a senior advisor to Hillary R. Clinton's failed 2016 presidential campaign.
He also happens to be an advisor at crowdjustice.com, the same company that is crowdfunding donations so that Stormy Daniels can pay Avenatti for his legal services.
But a conspiracy must involve at least two people, right? That is part of the definition of the word. Not to worry, another ex-Obama official is working behind the scenes at crowdjustice.com.
Kip Wainscott, also an advisor for the crowdfunding site, worked as a special counsel to the U.S. Attorney General during the Obama days.
#1
I thought Stormy was paying the lawyer with trade in-kind and the sell of future videos.
[SHRUG] Who knew that someone was willing to pay for sham justice.
[sarc off]
Team Picture at the Link
If you’ve ever wanted to know what the phrase "drain the swamp" really means, well, here you go: Robert Mueller was apparently John Kerry’s lacrosse captain in high school. And, wonder of wonders, it wasn’t at any old public school.
No, Robert Swan Mueller III went to the exclusive St. Paul’s boarding school in Concord, New Hampshire, according to the U.K. Daily Mail. Annual cost of attendance per year in 2018? Sixty-thousand dollars.
"Mueller, now 72, was part of the Missionary Society, a member of the Library Association and the vice president of the athletic association," the Daily Mail noted.
He was also the captain of the lacrosse team, as demonstrated in a photo that could practically be on the cover of a liberal textbook on white privilege were Kerry and Mueller not liberal heroes.
There’s the smarmy former secretary of state and presidential candidate in the upper left, while the former FBI director and current special counsel is in the lower center.
h/t Instapundit
In a stunning development, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner on Monday dropped her prosecution of Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens in the face of the defense team’s plan to call her as a witness.
Yet Republican legislative leaders said later that evening that Gardner's decision would have no impact whatsoever on whether the Missouri General Assembly moves forward with impeachment, a process set to begin at 6:30 p.m. Friday.
GOP leaders also renewed their call for Greitens to resign immediately.
h/t Red State
I’ve posted a couple of times on the fiasco that is brewing in federal court in Virginia where Robert Mueller’s crack team are getting ready to have to prosecute at least one, and possibly two, cases they never thought would see the light of day. To recap, under pressure to show he was doing something vaguely related to his charter, Robert Mueller engineered the indictments of three Russian companies, one of which was not even in existence during the 2016 election, and thirteen Russian nationals who we are told exist. I say "told exist" because if you can’t get the existence of a whole company right, you lose the ability to convince me you know the names of individual Russian hackers and have me not laugh.
The first fly in the ointment appeared when one of the defendants, Concord Management and Consulting, retained US counsel. Then the counsel showed up in court and they were not overawed by Mueller. In fact, they had an extensive list of items they were demanding under discovery. This will probably, in the fullness of time, place Mueller in the unenviable position of either producing classified information for the defense or dropping the case.
#4
You have to ask yourself ( and we all do ) just what will Mueller DO when this is all over ( and it WILL be, it always is ) ? What will Mueller be doing for the rest of his glorious Career?
Brilliant man that he is. And strapping the weight ( the entire weight ) of hs future to the wheel of "Russian Collusion" ( rhymes with colossal ILLUSION ) and the faithful alliance to Hillary Clinton (excuses ) and her prospects ( such as they are).
And the faithful servitor of the Democratic party, what will he DO in the years to come when his memory is tied ( nose to buut hole ) with the General Cornpone's Disaster of his witch hunt /
Desperation is when you can't think of anything except what will happen to you when you go down the drain and its dark down there and the toilet flushing is all that fills your ears
#7
What will Mueller be doing for the rest of his glorious Career? Working Positioned at some Think Tank with his 6-figure salary being covered by Soros...
#11
I wonder if Mueller realized he had nothing and so arranged this as a way to bust up the case that will give the conspiracy left something to cling with after the case is gone.
#12
There was no collusion and there was no obstruction of justice. He has to show something for this clown show so he's going after Trump people.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
05/15/2018 14:57 Comments ||
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#13
DB, it is starting to look that Mueller is running on the theory that "...if you throw enough dynamite in a pond you'll get some fish."
With our current astronomical number of administrative happy horsepuckey regulations there is always something to charge someone if you want a victim.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Big League Politics] Dodgy barrister Michael Avenatti - the same one who owes $5 million in back taxes and worked on opposition research for Democrats Rahm Emanuel and Joe Biden - has been adamant about the source of funding for Stormy Daniels' crusade against President Donald J. Trump.
