Mayor Jenny Durkan is facing a homeless crisis, residents and business owners questioning Seattle’s spending, and City Council members pushing a tax on large employers that would raise $75 million a year for housing and homeless services. In running for Seattle mayor last year, Jenny Durkan promised to unite a ruptured political community and work to bridge a gaping divide between rich and poor. The former U.S. attorney scored support from both business and labor, and she won the November election decisively. Under her predecessor, voters had coalesced behind tax increases to help City Hall keep up with Seattle’s surging population and economy. "We can only do this if we do it together. Let’s do it together," Durkan said in her first State of the City address in February, drawing applause at Rainier Beach High School. Just a few months later, Durkan finds herself caught between a homeless crisis showing no signs of abating, residents and business owners increasingly questioning Seattle’s spending and City Council members pushing for a new tax on large employers that would raise $75 million a year for housing and homeless services.
Amazon raised the stakes last week with a very public warning, pausing planning for an office tower over the $500-per-worker tax, declaring that the company might sublease a skyscraper and raising the possibility it could curb a jobs expansion that’s helped Seattle prosper. Debates are now raging, with homeowners screaming at council members in Ballard and iron workers confronting socialists in the Denny Triangle. Seattle is at a "point of inflection," due to economic change and rapid growth, Durkan said during an interview Thursday with The Seattle Times editorial board. The mayor has choices, each with political consequences. She could usher the tax into law, underlining her commitment to helping vulnerable people, but alienating Amazon and voters who don’t trust City Hall to spend wisely. Or Durkan could try to block the tax with a veto, responding to pressure from the council’s critics but leaving low-income- housing dollars on the table and exposing herself to those who would accuse her of shilling for big business.
During months of talk over the so-called "head tax," Durkan mostly stayed out. Now she’s calling for tempers to cool and vowing to seek common ground. "I’m not a person who’s going to make threats or ultimatums," she said. An Amazon-related slowdown in development could drain money from a city treasury heavily reliant on tax revenues tied to a yearslong building boom, the mayor says. The e-commerce behemoth has declined to comment since announcing it would put on hold its plan for a 17-story tower on property where it has been letting a nonprofit use an old hotel as a homeless shelter. Yet opposing the tax would mean siding with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, who recently bragged about spending some of his $130 billion fortune on space travel. Tech-company hiring has contributed to the housing-cost hikes knocking many residents out of Seattle, where they can’t enjoy the fruits of the city’s success. "Amazon is using its enormous power to dissuade the city of Seattle from passing a modest tax on profitable corporations," Vermont senator and left-wing icon Bernie Sanders wrote on Twitter.
It’s a test for Durkan. Though the mayor has signed a pact with King County to improve coordination on homeless services, she believes extra dollars also are needed. "Efficiencies alone won’t solve this problem," Durkan said. She could angle for a cheaper or different tax but would need to convince the council members who have been driving the conversation. They’re not backing down. The mayor could instead pursue a property- or sales-tax increase, perhaps with the county, but many voters would balk at a plan to tax them directly rather than Amazon. Call it Durkan’s dilemma. A battle has been brewing since November, when the council voted 5-4 to reject a different head tax and instead set up a citizen task force to study the issue, beginning with a look at the problem - nearly 23,000 very poor households are paying more than half of their income on rent and more than 11,600 homeless people were tallied by a countywide point-in-time count last year (over a third of them black or Native American). A rticle w as c reated with the he lp of G SA Content Gen erat or Demoversion!
The Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce - which represents Amazon and more than 2,000 other businesses - was invited but declined to take part. Councilmembers Lisa Herbold, M. Lorena González, Mike O’Brien and snackdeals.shop Teresa Mosqueda are the sponsors, with Kshama Sawant also a supporter. Staff estimate the tax would apply to fewer than 600 city businesses. With about 45,000 workers here, Amazon would shoulder more than $20 million of the annual total. In 2021, the city would move to a 0.7 percent payroll tax. Because Amazon has many highly paid employees in Seattle, its annual liability likely would increase. The city’s budget for homeless programs has soared from $39 million a few years ago to $63 million this year. In 2016, voters replaced an expiring property-tax levy for affordable housing with a new levy twice the size, worth $290 million over seven years. Tax opponents accuse the city of squandering the money, while proponents argue the continued crisis demonstrates how great the need is.