• Katie Wilson’s State of the City speech. (Read our story)
• An update on which bills are moving and which are dying at the Washington State Legislation.
• The Seattle Social Housing Developer’s big moves, including huge proceeds in its first year with a dedicated revenue source. (Read our story)

A recap of the Olympia coverage we referenced:

• Age verification for Big Tech.
• Washington’s Elevator Reform Bill Rises Again
• Curbing Mandates for Ground-Floor Retail Spaces Advances at Legislature
• Washington Legislature Grapples with Slew of Bills Regulating AI
• Washington State Reacts to Feared ICE Invasion, Constitutional Crisis
• State Lawmakers Move to Regulate License Plate Readers, Fearing ICE Misuse
• ICE’s Tacoma Detention Center Targeted in New Lawsuit Alleging Abuses
• 2026: The Year the Washington Legislature Catches Its Breath on Housing

And in a bonus closing segment, the three of us offer our Pike Place Market food recommendations.

This episode of The Urbanist Podcast was edited by yours truly. Episodes also air on KVRU 105.7 FM radio Thursdays at 4pm, on a once every two weeks cadence, give or take. Thank you to Crystal Fincher and Shannon Cheng of KVRU for their assistance getting our podcast off the ground. Please follow and rate us on your preferred podcast app to help us spread the word!

Transcript

[00:00:05] Ryan: Welcome to the Urbanist Podcast, a show touching on the biggest headlines at The Urbanist, and also offering a deeper look from the reporters breaking the stories as an independent reader supported publication. The Urbanist has been covering the Seattle metropolitan region since 2014. We do advocacy journalism for better cities.

You can find us at theurbanist.org. I am Ryan Packer, contributing editor here at The Urbanist, and we’ve got the rest of our newsroom here on deck. Publisher Doug Trumm.

[00:00:35] Doug: Hey Ryan. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:36] Ryan: Thanks for being here, Doug. And we’ve got our esteemed reporter, Amy Sundburg.

[00:00:41] Amy: Hi Ryan. Good to be here.

[00:00:43] Ryan: Great to have you. Well, there’s a lot happening this week. So, we’re gonna go ahead and dive right into it. Top story. Katie Wilson, Seattle Mayor gave her first State of the City address. Doug, you were there in the room at the beautiful Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center. Amy and I were both watching from our laptops, but we all watched the speech, and so we’re gonna give you our recaps and takeaways. But we’ll start with you, Doug. What was your takeaway from this speech, which Katie noted was the longest she’s ever given in her entire life.

[00:01:16] Doug: Yeah, I think if there was any doubt that she was just not gonna be able to handle the speech making side of this, I thought the speech did a good job of dispelling that. She is a good speechmaker when pressed into it, and she definitely joked that it wasn’t her main skill.

But, yeah, rolling out her affordability agenda, in a more descriptive way than in the past. She talked about the four pillars of it and hinted at programs for each, which we’ll get into a bit. But, there wasn’t like a big ‘here’s this program we’re launching now,’ but there was a lot of mention of ‘here’s these efforts that will bear fruit later in the year or next year.’

And some of these programs are just large, so you can’t just snap your fingers in seven weeks. But some folks might have wished for some big marquee thing that is immediately happening, but it’s a lot of things that are in progress.

[00:02:06] Ryan: Amy, what was your takeaway?

[00:02:08] Amy: At the time that I was listening to the speech, I thought that it wasn’t so very different than the speech I would’ve been listening to from Bruce Harrell, should he have won. And I will say upon further reflection, because now it’s been about 24 hours, I think that’s not entirely fair.

But it might also speak to the nature of these speeches because they’re so high level that they don’t really get a lot into the details of things, which tends to be what I’m interested in. And so it can be hard to distinguish one politician from another politician all, all top level stuff.

[00:02:45] Ryan: Yeah, I agree with that. And I think Mayor Wilson’s been taking some criticism for this speech in terms of Erica Barnett, at PubliCola, said she was whiffing on surveillance cameras in particular, as well as encampment sweeps. And so, I think my takeaway was kind of, I don’t understand quite why she chose to give this speech, since her inauguration was so soon ago.

I think the fact that it’s been such a short period is why there’s not a whole lot of things to announce. And so I don’t really quite get the reason, you know, I understand that everyone does a state of the city address every year, but like usually you can kind of take your first year off, you give a big inauguration speech or maybe give a big speech in the middle of the year when you have more things to announce.

There were some marquee Wilson agenda things that Denny Way bustling is a prime example of that; although, there’s not much to announce yet. SDOT’s still scoping that out. And then she kinda lumped improvements to the Route 60 that Metro was leading on in there. And I noticed that it was just something that was already in the works. And so, that’s not a criticism of her administration because as we said, it’s been seven weeks. But I think that speaks to where things are at.

[00:04:00] Doug: I’m very hesitant to criticize a progressive mayor for being too out front in the media. Yeah. It’s a little bit like double dipping from the inaugural speech. Sure. But I definitely think it is a necessary thing to get some momentum, to get a narrative building when you’re dealing with so much conservative counter efforts that started immediately, even really before she took office, you know, trying to make it seem like she, the crime was already getting worse on the data’s pointing the other direction. So, it was worth trying to build her narrative and we’re policy nerds. So, it’s sort of like, we’re hammers and we’re looking for a nail.

And this speech wasn’t about those nails. It was more about the vibes thing that Harrell was so good at. And that’s not the most important part about being mayor. The most important part is actually delivering results. But I think it’s sort of a necessary step to start building that groundswell behind those ideas.

And I do think that countering Trump, strengthening the community to face that threat that cities like Minneapolis have faced, and that the president seems likely to turn his eye of Sauron towards Seattle at some point. So I think some of those steps were important to lay, even if, as far as like, well, what tangibly are we doing tomorrow is still kind of a question mark.

[00:05:16] Ryan: Yeah, I think that’s a good point, Doug. There were some great moments in the speech. I loved hope as a discipline. I think that would’ve gotten a lot of attention if it had been in a Zohran Mamdani speech or a  Zohran Mamdani video, a two minute video. I guess I do kind of think that the 30 to 40 minute State of the City address might not quite be the thing that meets the media environment that we’re in right now. Since you’re gonna end up with people kind of pulling out the parts that they don’t like or kind of were the most controversial.

[00:05:51] Amy: To be honest, I didn’t love the “hope as a discipline” part. I love that quote. It’s by famous prison abolitionist, Mariame Kaba. And it’s certainly a quote that I have referenced myself, and I think that many, many people reference. ’cause you know, it’s, it’s a very powerful quote, but to me it hit a bit of a jarring note to hear this really famous quote from a prison abolitionist who is, you know, still actively working, at the same time that Mayor Wilson was really hedging a lot on surveillance issues, for example, which I’m pretty confident no prison abolitionist is gonna be happy about.

So for me, it felt a little bit weird because I was hearing these quotes that are very leftist coded quotes, but some of what was said in the speech was not very leftist coded at all. And some of it was very directed towards the Seattle’s business community, which is fair enough. But, it just struck me as a little bit strange as a combination.

[00:06:52] Doug: Yeah. And the other thing It’s so hard for a mayor to walk that line between being thorough and considering all sides versus just letting it slide into procrastination and fear of making decisions or taking a bold step quickly. And that surveillance issue could be one of those things where she is just dragging her feet to the point of not really coming to a policy resolution or, or a shift in direction and letting the inertia carry her. And I don’t think that’s what she ran on, so hopefully that’s not the case.

[00:07:28] Amy: I think the surveillance issue is really interesting and maybe a little bit more complex than is sometimes being discussed. But I mean, it’s definitely true that that was a memorable part of her platform. I am hearing from folks who are feeling like by not acting on that now she’s breaking her promise from her campaign., There are complexities, as I mentioned, I think chief among them, we’re seeing an argument that we’ve seen many times before being brought out that the surveillance is needed for public safety and specifically due to the really tragic gun violence that happened in Rainier Beach and the CID recently.

It really reminds me of similar arguments that were made back when then Mayor Bruce Harrell was trying to adopt ShotSpotter, which is acoustic gunshot detection technology, which went through a few rounds of him trying to adopt it. And, the argument for that technology, which a lot of research shows has a a myriad of problems, right, was in fact to protect from gun violence. But what ends up happening is you have people pitted against each other from the same community. So, you know, throwing immigrants under the bus to try to help with gun violence. And I feel like it’s also a false dichotomy.

There’s plenty of things that Seattle could be doing to prevent gun violence or to reduce gun violence that we haven’t been doing a good job with. In general, I would say our gun violence prevention has been all over the map. It hasn’t been well coordinated. It’s a particular pain point for me in terms of watching what Seattle has been doing. I think we can do a lot more that has nothing to do with cameras.

[00:09:20] Ryan: Yeah. Doug, you mentioned that this was the rollout of the Wilson affordability agenda, a multi plank, multifaceted proposal, but it was a little, little bit more of a, I think, a sketch than a fully fleshed out outline. But can you talk a little bit about some of the elements that she mentioned?

[00:09:37] Doug: Definitely, yeah. It was centered around four pillars, which I think were pretty similar to what she was saying on the campaign, but, it was very clear that she had separated that into housing, which that’s pretty obvious. Childcare, food, which was a huge issue as far as where people were feeling the pinch in their pocketbook during the high inflation years of the pandemic. And then, business growth and small business support. It’s very expensive city to launch a business. That’s a number of factors. She had made those price of pizza videos during her campaign that got a lot of attention, sort of her first viral moment and those were just quick hit videos, but she’s, she’s obviously well steeped in all the complicated factors that drive up the cost of goods. That’s like the labor cost in our region, which that’s a good way to spend any money in one hand. But then there’s also just very high rents and all this regulatory burden too that sometimes Seattle heaps on businesses.

So those are things that policymakers can do something about, particularly on the regulatory burden side and to some extent on the rent side. So she’s definitely hoping to make it an easier place to grow a business. And, spoke very glowingly about how Seattle is a city of builders and innovators, and that sounded a little bit like Harrell too, but I think she struck a tone where it’s like, this is a community, and we’re not saying we’re not gonna tax you, but we’re gonna support you in your growth and then expect you to chip in as well, as you do find success.

[00:11:08] Ryan: Yeah, I was interested to hear that she didn’t add affordable transportation as a fifth plank there, which is such a realm that the city has such a direct impact on. So, that struck me as interesting, especially given the mayor’s background. I think behind housing, transportation is the single biggest cost driver for most households in Seattle. And so, that was a notable absence. Obviously she is doing work on that, so I can’t be too harsh considering that people are working on it, but yeah, just I noticed that. 

[00:11:41] Doug: It’s somewhat a matter of how quickly the goalposts move. Not to say that we shouldn’t expect big things from our politicians, but we have a mayor who is an urbanist now and a longtime transportation advocate. So, the fact that she was even willing to bring up bus lanes being a major priority she was working on, which was reiterating something she already rolled out, but, you know, got a moment in this speech, and Vision Zero being off course, got a moment in his speech. That seemed authentic and was, you know, well, there was a tragedy that happened just, the day before in Capitol Hill where someone was struck. And, something she reacted to immediately and it seemed like it hit her pretty hard.

And, there were moments over Harrell’s tenure where he did speak to those issues, but it never felt quite like it hit him the same way as Wilson, and he was never really willing to go as far. And often would play both sides on issues like Lake Washington Boulevard and others where it’s very risky environments for people walking, rolling, and biking.

So, I think it’s a subtle thing, but definitely something that this mayor is gonna work on a lot more than predecessors. And we’re just taking it for granted, which is good, but also I guess we have to give credit where credit is due. That those things have more hope than before.

[00:12:50] Amy: I think that that wasn’t in her original speech, that the part about Vision Zero and the fatalities that had happened the night before. I think that she added that in because she personally thinks that’s important and I do think that’s an important point.

[00:13:05] Ryan: Yeah. That was an incident on Monday night at Bellevue and Pine Street. 27-year-old woman was hit and killed by a driver. Ended up being pinned under the Prius and had to be extricated. Obviously hit the mayor as well as a lot of people who live in Capitol Hill, like myself, pretty hard. So, she directly addressed that. I think I saw some reaction on social media that they would like to see more than just a speech drop in and actually take steps to quickly change the orientation of our streets following incidents like this.

There’s lots of low-hanging fruit, but we yet haven’t yet seen what Katie Wilson’s SDOT really looks like. So, I once again would be kinda curious to see what actually happens when we are able to fully see what this mayor’s vision looks like and how it can be implemented.

[00:13:57] Doug: And she’s definitely invited advocates to, you know, twist her arm. Like that’s something she said from the get go. But obviously I don’t think anyone can realistically expect someone the day after a tragedy to be like, well, here’s my plan to get pouring the concrete and putting up the bollards, or whatever the case may be. I mean, that would be nice if we get to a point where SDOT can move that quickly, and the political leaders can quickly build consensus or at least the will to do that. But, we’re not quite there yet. But I think that’s something in previous administrations you would appoint a task force and you might hear from them a year later. And I don’t think it’s gonna be that long, for when things like this are happening in the Wilson administration. Hopefully.

[00:14:38] Ryan: Well, I would just point out that we can stand up a Super Bowl parade that can accommodate a million people from Sunday to Wednesday. So I think we can do it.

[00:14:50] Amy: I think we can do it too. And I would say from a public safety perspective, people are really concerned about traffic safety. It’s actually something that people really want things to be done about. It’s one of the top concerns in the city. I saw a poll. So, listening to the people, it should be a priority, not just because we made this promise in the past, but because people now really care about it.

[00:15:11] Ryan: Yeah, well, we’re probably, I think, being a little tough on the mayor. But, she’s putting herself out there with this speech. I think there was a lot to digest. Doug, you’ll have a story on this speech by the time this podcast is out, so you can read Doug’s full breakdown. But I think we’ll be watching all these topics in the months ahead.

[00:15:32] Amy: I do wanna talk a little bit about her promise on homelessness, because that is very concrete. You know, when she ran, she said that she would stand up 4,000 new emergency shelter spots. And now she said that she’s gonna do a thousand of those in her first year, that things are on track to do that. And I think it’s an interesting dichotomy to look at, because she’s still sweeping, right? And that’s something that a lot of her base I think is not thrilled. But kind of the gambit is, well, if we can stand up enough of this emergency housing fast enough, we’re gonna get all these people into housing and we won’t have to sweep anymore, so that she can kind of make both sides of that argument happy.

So I’m really interested to see what happens with that.

[00:16:23] Ryan: Yeah, and so she’s pointing to her work at the Ballard encampment on Leary, which she gave a reprieve. They were able to get five additional people into a more stable shelter. Obviously, that’s not everyone in the encampment, and so it’s a tough sell in terms of not really pleasing too much of anybody.

But it is a little bit more of an intentional approach than we’ve seen in this area. When it comes to these emergency shelters, we’ve been seeing very quick movement. Very quick movement in large part because one of these sites is in West Seattle. So the West Seattle Blog has been all over the permits for this tiny house village slash RV encampment that’s gonna be on Marginal Way.

And so, it’s February 18th and we’re already talking about what this looks like, what its name is, who’s gonna operate it. That’s lightning fast. That is lightning fast. And so if we’re talking about things like that all over the city, I don’t even, we don’t have the reporters in other neighborhoods, like I said, to be able to look at these permit records for elsewhere.

But I assume that they’re moving as fast as they can on these public sites that they have pretty direct control over. This is a state lot, but it’s actually pretty quick work.

[00:17:36] Amy: And it’s a longer term fix, right? It actually goes more to the root of the problem. So if she’s able to stand up 4,000 new shelter spaces in her term, that that is a significant step forward. Obviously I’m always wait and see what happens. But it’s promising in that way. As well, the city will have to potentially consider investing more in keeping people from falling into homelessness in the first place, especially with various federal cuts that might make that more likely. 

[00:18:08] Ryan: Yeah. I think she alluded to the fact that the budget is gonna be her biggest hurdle. She’s gonna have to find funding sources, you know, she has the proviso that’s keeping a straight jacket on the funding for the Unified Care Team, and she has the housing levy with its restrictions. But, she had a long hinted during the campaign that she would look at the housing levee as a source for some of emergency dollars. Got kind of lambasted for that from the affordable housing nonprofit world. But she’s gonna have to get creative.

[00:18:40] Doug: Yeah, and I wanted to return a little bit, to a point Amy made that the Stop The Sweeps camp being her base. And I think that’s somewhat true as far as like the grassroots mobilizing the people who were volunteers at farmer’s markets and things like that, that might be true of that subset, but as far as, the last two elections or three elections, however you wanna look at it, shows that the most of the electorate, and granted, those are odd-year people, if we had even years elections, maybe it would be more representative, but, I think most of the people are not at the place where it’s either extreme of like, ‘sweep every homeless person. We don’t care if they have reliable shelter or get services.’ Or ‘no sweeps whatsoever.’

It seems like people are bristling at either approach, at least the swing voters that decide every election, which is a tough reality when you want her to pick a camp and stay in it. This subtle thing she’s doing of, ‘well, I’m not Bruce Harrell on sweeps. I’m not gonna do it as often as him, but it’s still in my tool belt.’ It’s probably the right thing politically, at least, if those election results from 2023 still have some sort of bearing.

Obviously she showed that you can talk about doing less sweeps and still get elected. So, I’m really interested to see how that plays out. But it’s tough to say that doing no sweeps is viable in the immediate term, just on both the logistical side, and the damage it could do to her. But you know, maybe I’m wrong on that. Who knows? Punditry is hard.

[00:20:10] Ryan: While zooming out from the city level to the state, Amy, you and I have both been frantically covering the legislative session, which came to a midpoint this week with the biggest deadline to date, the House of Origin cutoff. The date that every bill that’s introduced, apart from the budget that needs to get a vote in its original chamber, or is dead for the rest of the year. So, it’s been dramatic. It’s been tiring. It’s been a lot of different things, but, things are moving. So what, what have you been tracking, Amy?

[00:20:46] Amy: I’ve been trying to track as much as I can. I will say that after my experience this year, I wonder even more about the idea of having a part-time state legislature. But be that as it may, a lot of bills died this week or, or last week. A lot of bills have been dying. And, a couple of bills that died that I was particularly sad to see, the AI bill that would have stopped surveillance pricing for consumer goods. So that’s especially for grocery stores, right, which it is a basic need. The people need to eat, they need to go to grocery stores and get their food. That bill died. And I feel like it’s a very needed bill. And so I was really sad to see that. And then the other bill that died that I was sad to see was one of the bills related to immigration and specifically private detention facilities, creating a fine if the private detention facility… and to be clear, we’re talking about the Northwest ICE Processing Center, the Tacoma Immigration site– they would be fined if they didn’t allow the Department of Health to come in unannounced for inspections. Which would’ve been a huge step forward in terms of potential accountability and transparency of what’s going on in that site. And that bill also unfortunately died. I think there was some question about jurisdiction that I’m not quite clear about. So, hopefully they can figure out a way forward that will work in future years.

But, it’s not gonna happen this year. It seems very urgent for it to happen this year, so that’s unfortunate. That being said, there still is one bill that is still alive about private detention facilities. And this bill requires them to report allegations of abuse, death, and suicide.

Law enforcement agencies in the jurisdiction would also have to report as to what kind of calls they’re getting from that detention center. And it also has a whole section on improving food quality and access. So, that bill is still moving forward, which is great. I will say that while I think sentiment of the bill is wonderful, like it’s hard to know how much the Tacoma Detention Center will follow it in practice. Right. It’s one thing to pass these bills, it’s another one to enforce them. So that’s an open question.

[00:23:03] Doug: Yeah, and you pointed out how much GEO, as the company that runs these detention centers across the country, how much their profits has spiked in the Big Beautiful Bill era. Yeah, I don’t know how beautiful that is. But, it went from, I forget, it was like somewhere 50 million-ish profit in 2024 I think it was. And then suddenly it spikes to like 10 times as much in the following year. And that’s, that’s all these contracts for ICE that’s lining their pockets. It’s a big business. It’s people profiteering off this. It’s kind of disgusting.

[00:23:37] Amy: They’re making a ton of money, and I’ll say there was another bill that also died that would require Washington State to not invest in those companies that are making money on, on private detention and the torture of immigrants. And like I said, it’s dead, so Washington State can still make money that way. But, again, hopefully that’s something that can be revisited.

[00:23:59] Ryan: Yeah. It’s also been hard to cover the legislature this year without talking about the millionaires tax, which is the signature tax reform proposal from the Democrats that the governor has a lot of thoughts about. We did see a vote this week in the Senate: 22 votes against 27 in favor of a I think it’s 9.9% tax on income over a million.

This is, you know, a big step for tax reform in Washington, finally, getting our tax code a little bit more progressive in terms of its impact on upper earners in the state. But it’s not clear that the governor is gonna get a proposal that he actually likes and will sign.

[00:24:44] Amy: Indeed.

[00:24:44] Ryan: What do you think about this, Amy?

[00:24:47] Amy: It was really funny to watch Governor Ferguson in the press conference because he was kind of weaving around that question. He wouldn’t directly answer the question as to whether he would veto this tax if it wasn’t sufficiently changed. But he somehow still made it pretty clear that that’s really on the table. So, he’s, he’s being tough on this one. And he laid out a laundry list of changes that he wants to see in the bill. Even though he didn’t say it directly, it felt to me watching the press conference that it was kind of like, you better include most of these things, or, we’ll see.

His point is that he’s very concerned about the affordability crisis for Washingtonians and he wants to see the bill spend a lot more of the proceeds from this millionaires tax to provide tax relief as opposed to now where most of the money would go straight into the general fund, so it could fund any expenses the state might have.

[00:25:53] Ryan: Yeah, it’s a little bit of a philosophical disagreement, I would say between Ferguson and, and the leaders in the House and Senate, which is that Ferguson thinks that this new tax really should just go right back into Washingtonian’s pockets and doesn’t seem very concerned about a lack of structural reform to allow the state to have a pathway to providing services over the long term. ‘Cause, our tax system is incredibly dependent on a very small number of funding sources that are pretty volatile. And so that’s why we end up in these situations where we have these huge budget deficits. And the governor doesn’t seem too concerned about having a strong state government, I would say. He’s more concerned about having a state sales tax holiday, which I think is very flashy, but not super high impact.

[00:26:50] Doug: Yeah, it’s kind of a pathetic debate, when he’s saying, ‘well, no one’s going to feel this little discount you’re giving them on like toothpaste and things like that,’ which is probably true. But then he is saying they will feel a slightly larger subset of sales tax relief. And I just don’t see there’s a big of distinction there that people are gonna go, ‘oh, I didn’t feel that quarter off my toothpaste tube, but I am gonna feel some slightly larger amount over a broader set. Like, I mean, I guess there is a breaking point, but it, it goes to speak that he doesn’t really have a more of a long term or deeper ideological bend about, okay, like we can actually believe in the government to spend this money well and do more for the good of the working people of the state than just simply a little bit of sales tax money back in their pocket.

And you know, that’s not inspiring. I’m much more inspired by the politicians who do believe we can do big things and implement programs and shift the trajectory of people’s lives. Investing in education is gonna help a lot more as far as down the road than some small sales tax gift.

[00:27:55] Amy: He really wants to expand the working family’s tax credit, like a significant amount, which I thought was interesting. And so I looked into it a little bit more, because I feel like in general people are pretty positive about that program. What I realized though, looking into it, I was like, well, you know, what would be better would be some kind of guaranteed basic income program. Which would do similar things but would do them better, which you could fund from the general fund if you wanted to. I feel like it’s defining affordability as only being about less sales tax. Sales tax is very regressive. But I do think it’s more complicated than that.

[00:28:36] Ryan: Yeah, once again, I just go back to the fact that the cuts that have to get made to our state government that go mostly unreported on a lot of the time are also heavily regressive. And so we just don’t talk about that. And, you know, cutting education. So directly after the Senate passed the millionaires tax, they turned to a different bill, which is the estate tax cut, which a lot of people were kind of blindsided by. There actually had been a hearing in Senate Ways and Means a couple weeks ago that no one testified at, on this bill that would, uh, essentially lower the top tier estate tax rates in Washington, reversing a increase that the legislature passed last year, I believe.

Were you surprised to see this moving forward? Amy?

[00:29:23] Amy: It wasn’t on my radar. So in that way I was surprised. I do think the state legislature has something of a history of, of rolling back things pretty quickly after they passed them. You know, I think the argument was that the highest tax rate on estate tax in Washington State is now much higher than other states. So, it might actually have bearing on how people do their estate planning or where they live out their retirement years. And I think Democrats got spooked and, and that’s what we’re seeing play out. I feel like what’s interesting to me about all this tax talk, right, like, the millionaire’s tax won’t even go into effect until 2029 if it survives all the legal challenges and everything.

And now if we’re cutting this other money from this estate tax, as you reference, what about the long-term health of the budget, but particularly in light of the federal cuts that we know are coming down the pike, right? Like at this point, I don’t think that’s a big question mark. Maybe the amount could change, but it’s going to be significant.

[00:30:28] Doug: That’s the thing that was so jarring is that the official excuses that are out there for why they have to do that are not very well laid out. It seems like everyone’s dancing around the real thing is that they made some sort of deal. It seems to be an implication that, in order to get the millionaires tax, they wanted to get this largest estate tax in the country rolled back.

And if you were guaranteed to pass the millionaires tax, which it’s this huge hurdle to finally tax the highest incomes in our state when we have zero income tax. I mean, I think maybe some people would make that trade, but no one’s actually saying, well, that’s why we’re doing that.

Why are all these progressive people trying to, you know, hand a paycheck to some of the wealthiest families in the state? So, I think on as far as messaging to your base and even the swing voters who, who’ve generally supported an estate tax, like it’s almost political malpractice. But I, I know it’s hard to just be like, ‘well, we made a backroom deal.’

That’s a hard foot to put forward. And, to be clear, I don’t know that that in fact is going on, or if they really just legitimately were lobbied by a bunch of people who offer services or rely on business from folks who were threatening to leave the state, that that scared them enough.

I could live with it, but no one’s actually laid out that we’re doing this ’cause we, that’s how we get the millionaires tax passed. It could blow up in their face both from a, this trade if they back out the millionaires tax with governor vetoes it or something. They’ll look pretty foolish. And also blow up just from the, ‘okay, well we thought you were about redistributing wealth, not letting this extreme accumulation of wealth’ that is just absolutely taking off with the 1%, having so much of the wealth. Well, it’s not very consistent to take from one hand and give back with the other.

[00:32:04] Amy: It does have the appearance of some type of compromise. I mean, in another part of that compromise appears to be that the payroll expense tax statewide, that was proposed by Representative Shaun Scott seems not to be moving. Again, would tax large corporations. And what’s interesting about that tax is that it could potentially be implemented sooner and there was literally a in public spat between Representative Shaun Scott and Senator Jamie Peterson, who, who represent the same district, funnily enough, in a Stranger article in which Shaun Scott was like, ‘look, we can implement this tax faster than the millionaires tax, and it’s really important because we have all these federal cuts coming up.’

And then The Stranger checked in with Senator Peterson who was like, ‘that’s just not true. It can’t be implemented faster.’ So they went to the office that actually would implement these taxes and has the actual knowledge about it, and they said, ‘no, we can implement this faster. So, that was a little bit of a public brouhaha that I thought was interesting to watch.

[00:33:11] Doug: I’m curious, Amy, did they say if the governor was right about how long it would take to set up the Millionaire Tax? Because he was saying it was basically be a second term thing for him.

[00:33:21] Amy: I don’t think the article fact checked that in particular, although I think the governor has laid out a certain path for this tax and the path that he has laid out will take the time that it takes. I’m not certain if another path would’ve been possible if we had a different governor.

[00:33:36] Ryan: Yeah, I think this is definitely exposing some divides among the Democrats this session. It’s kind of been unavoidable to talk about the millionaires tax and all of its related issues so far. There’s another number of bills that I think a lot of urbanists would be interested in that we’ve been covering. On Monday, the house passed the Mosquito Fleet Act, which would empower local governments up and down Puget Sound, to create their own passenger ferry districts. Some of the new routes that could potentially get expanded under this authority could be Everett to Whidbey Island, Friday Harbor to Bellingham, and Olympia to Tacoma, maybe some other places from Olympia as well.

Port of Olympia is very interested in looking at this, and so that one’s getting a lot of excitement. Our reporting from over the weekend noted that the prime sponsor, Greg Nance from Bainbridge Island, was coming out hard against Senate Transportation Committee Chair Marko Liias for quietly killing the bill last year, and he’s coming out guns blazing this year, wants a big turnout in the Senate Transportation Committee, but it’s also rare to see a representative go so hard at one individual senator. So that was interesting.

We’ll see if we have a repeat performance of that bill in 2026. There was a pretty overwhelming vote on the house floor. Any other bills that you’re watching for Doug right now? Any bills you’ve been finding particularly uplifting.

[00:35:09] Doug: It feels like it’s a little bit of a session of cleaning up, and not doing anything as big as previous sessions. If they do pass a millionaires tax, I think that would be the thing the session is remembered for. But, you know, we’ve talked about some of the housing bills and some of those could have a marginal effect and some it could be significant. Some more minor impacts that could, could build up over time. I do wanna see the reform of vertical circulation, both in the single stair and elevator reform front. So I’m hopeful for those.

[00:35:41] Ryan: Well, that’s what I was putting down, the uplifting bills. Yeah, so the elevator bill’s very exciting. A lot of national attention for this one. I don’t think any other state has introduced such a bill. Got a little bit watered down between this year and last year, but I think it’s still pretty much intact allowing smaller elevators in buildings, up to six stories or 24 units, which is kind of that sweet spot for middle housing to be able to make single stair buildings have a smaller elevator, maybe even two for redundancy. And so, there’s a hearing this week. I think the only person to be commenting opposed is from the national elevator lobbying group. We’ll see how that one goes. Yeah, there were some housing bills that didn’t make it past cutoff.

I think mobile dwelling units was one that people were watching to see if they would move on. But there’s been a lot of local government opposition to that one. Like we mentioned. The governor’s big housing bill we’ve talked about on this podcast that would require cities to legalize housing in commercial zones, including getting rid of some of their ground floor commercial requirements. There’s been some opposition to that, particularly on Eastside where retail spaces in these quickly redeveloping cities are getting scarce. I think it’s an interesting bill that kind of puts urbanism against housing a little bit in terms of creating these vibrant mixed use districts.

Obviously we know we have empty retail space in some of our cities, but I think it’s a product of the churn and, and not necessarily a static state. And so, yeah, I think it’s gonna be interesting to see how that one balances out.

Overall, a session very focused on tax reform, not a lot on big policies.

[00:37:23] Amy: There is the big ALPR bill or automatic license plate reader bill, which is still moving along. It passed out of the Senate a few weeks ago, actually, and just had its first hearing. I think it was his first hearing in the House today, this morning. We’ll see what happens with that, because I feel like there’s a lot of debate as to how long the data retention time should be, and, and that doesn’t seem to be anywhere close to being settled.

Right now it’s 21 days. Originally the bill was 72 hours. New Hampshire has a three minute retention rate, but obviously law enforcement wants much longer. It’s really interesting to see how this technology has evolved over time because it used to be that it was just about looking up a hot list of license plates, right, stolen cars and stuff like that.

But now law enforcement wants the opportunity to retain this data so it can go back through it when it wants, if there’s anything relevant, which is definitely more of a surveillance state type of vibe to it. There’s questions about access that the vendor, not, not the agency, but the vendor would have with the data, which could be a data privacy issue, especially related to immigration right now, of course.

And then we have a, a little Seattle wrinkle in that council member Bob Kettle is very concerned about there being an exemption for these license plate reader systems that aren’t fixed. Some of them are like fixed to polls and stuff like that, and they always look at the same place all the time. And others of them are installed into cars.

In Seattle, they’re all installed in cars. So, there are elements of this bill that would make that really hard to implement technologically, because they’re not supposed to be recording, according to the bill. They wouldn’t be supposed to be recording certain sensitive locations like places of worship, for example. And it’s really hard to do that if you’re just, you know, driving around in your police cruiser, how are you gonna know when to stop recording whenever you’re passing a church or a mosque or whenever you’re passing a Planned Parenthood, that kind of thing. So, Councilmember Kettle is very concerned about this.

Obviously to make that large an exemption would really weaken the bill. So, it’s gonna be really interesting to watch the next couple weeks, where they land, if they’re able to land. And, I’ll be keeping an eye on it.

[00:39:47] Doug: Yeah, another set of legislation that I am interested in — we haven’t written about it much on our site, but I’ve heard some coverage from others — is election security bills because that to me feels like it’s gonna be the issue this November. And the primaries too. We have consistent polling showing the Trump party is very, uh, unpopular.

So the only recourse they have to retain control of the House and various state legislatures around the country, where they’re on the line, close enough to have to defend it is to, you know, monkey with the elections. And we’ve already seen that’s in the playbook. But, one bill that seeks to tackle that in our state is making it a lot harder to challenge ballots. And I think that’s a good idea. Like it would require an affidavit, a signed affidavit to challenge a ballot. So if you’re just doing that spuriously and lying, there could be recourse for you ’cause you’d be perjuring yourself. And you’d actually have to physically go sign rather than electronically sign.

Like do challenge ballots from a different state or something like that, or challenge a whole bunch of ballots in the city of Seattle, even if you lived, you know, three, four hours away. So I think that’s a nice security to put in place, especially considering the way we vote in our state. So, that people don’t abuse that system and try to swing close elections that way.

[00:41:04] Ryan: Yeah. We are less than a month away from the end of session. Pretty soon it’s gonna be budget, budget, budget. And that will be interesting to watch. And some big issues are gonna come back up, including how to use a bunch of Climate Commitment Act dollars that the governor wants to divert over to the working families tax credit that we talked about earlier. It’s a contentious proposal among environmentalists and people who wanna see climate action, so that’s gonna be interesting.

[00:41:41] Ryan: So let’s go ahead and wrap up, returning to the City of Seattle, talking about a big issue that a lot of people are tracking, which is social housing. So, this week we got some references to social housing in the Mayor’s speech, largely building on some announcements from last week. Doug, you’ve been tracking what’s happening in social housing at the city level. So what’s going on?

[00:42:05] Doug: A lot is happening. So many things. I think the biggest news recently is that they just pulled in way more money than they thought they would. And that’s really exciting news for everyone who fought for social housing. They went with the projections that the city budget office gave them, and they were conservative, I guess, because instead of pulling in somewhere in around $50 million like they predicted, they ended up getting $115 million in the first year, which goes to show how good of a year it was for folks with high incomes in Seattle, despite the spate of layoffs…

[00:42:37] Ryan: Doug, where does that money come from again?

[00:42:40] Doug: So, yeah, we should go back to the beginning for folks who haven’t followed along. But, the Seattle Social Housing Developer that was authorized in 2023 didn’t have a funding source initially. So they came back last year and passed one in February of 2025, and that tax was called an excess compensation tax. And, it’s similar to the state millionaires tax in one sense, but it’s not actually an income tax. But, it’s levied on the companies, for compensation that is above $1 million. That includes like benefits, stocks, and other retirement plan perks, stuff like that.

Once you hit that million mark, it’s I believe, 5% after that point. So, it’s only hitting people who are doing really well and maybe a stock windfall impacts that. I mean, it would’ve to be income, so it’d only be the stock you were provided that year.

But anyways, that they thought would be about 50 million, that’s how much they expected people to make over that million mark in Seattle that year. But it turned out it was over twice that. So, yeah, they have a lot more money to work with than they anticipated.

So that’s one thing that’s going on. And that led to them going to update the city council early February. They laid out their plans, and they intend to actually start buying property soon by the end of the year.

The other big news is there’s a big leadership transition. They removed their CEO kind of dramatically at the beginning of the year. His name was Roberto Jimenez and he had a lot of experience in the Sacramento Bay area. But, the various entities, including the board that runs the social housing developer, grew dissatisfied enough to remove him. That was a little bit of a shock. They did kind of hint in December that they were frustrated. One of the things they brought up was that allegedly, he doesn’t actually live in Seattle yet.

He’s still maintaining his primary residence back in the Sacramento area. So there was frustration with that. And then it could also go to some philosophical differences. There was allegations that he didn’t actually want to do the social housing model per se, but wanted to do more of the traditional, all affordable model, which is more tried and true.

And what the advocates behind the social housing measure wanted to do was actually prove out this new model. That’s the whole point. So that’s a pretty deep philosophical divide insofar that that was actually a line in the sand. And Jimenez has defended himself. He didn’t want to be removed, thought it was incorrect.

But obviously that’s been done. And they have an interim director now who is Tiffany McCoy, who you may recall was the person spearheading this measure from House Our Neighbors, the advocacy group that cooked up this idea and then ran the funding measure two years later. She’s taking over in an interim capacity. She says she doesn’t wanna become like the permanent head of this organization. For one, she doesn’t have development experience directly, but she says they’re gonna start a national search in six months. So it’s gonna be a temporary thing until they find a new director for this agency.

But in the meantime, they’re also gonna staff up. They’ve hired a development officer to be the point person on all the details with the property agreements and all of that. They hired someone from the Seattle Housing Authority to do that, with a lot of experience, and they also hired a comms person for the first time. So that definitely goes to show that they’re trying to ramp up.

[00:46:05] Amy: I have a question. It sounded like from what you were saying that the old CEO that was ousted didn’t believe in social housing as a model. He wanted to do more traditional, affordable housing. As you said, the whole point of this was to build social housing. So how does that happen that the social housing developer hires a CEO who doesn’t believe in social housing? Like that doesn’t make sense to me.

[00:46:33] Doug: I mean, we’re getting one side of the story. Jimenez did defend himself and, and I don’t know if he brought up that specific point, but I think maybe his intent, if we’re reading it more charitably, was you do something more conservative for the first few steps, in order to just get the ball rolling. So, I don’t know if that was what was behind it.

I think he didn’t want any weak spots in the armor to attack was they’re still getting outta the gates because that’s the danger that if they make some false moves that public opinion would turn against them. And, they might get their funding taken away from them somehow. It’s fairly protected because it’s passed by measure. But there’s probably vehicles, they could try to take it away. Maybe it was also just, we don’t have social housing very much in our country, so the pool of people who are well versed and demonstrated commitment to it, there’s not that many. So, maybe it was just a factor of they’re not getting the died-in-the-wool type that they expected. 

[00:47:37] Amy: It’s innovative in this country. So I guess that will bring its own problems.

[00:47:42] Ryan: I mean, it ultimately illustrates the tension between the very established affordable housing world and social housing, which is a different model. We saw this during the two campaigns for these initiatives. And I think it’s clear that there’s just a lot of entrenched thinking around how you do quote unquote affordable housing.

And so even if you get somebody who’s super experienced in affordable housing and says they’re on affordable social housing, in practice, it might be a little bit harder than they even think. And like I was just kind of tweaking the model a little bit when it’s really fundamentally different.

[00:48:19] Amy: So they’re getting a lot more money to spend than we thought. Ryan, do you have thoughts about that?

[00:48:25] Ryan: I mean, everyone’s watching for their first big moves, which is likely gonna be building acquisition. So they’re probably gonna purchase an existing building or two. I’m very interested to see how that works. What happens to the existing tenants in those buildings, how they are able to stand up the social housing model in a building that might not be in great condition.

I’m very curious. And so in some ways I do wonder whether the over a hundred percent increase in expected revenue for the agency is gonna be a little bit too fast for them to have to grow. And so I I wonder if that’s gonna end up being a little bit of a mixed blessing in terms of having to really make use of all these dollars when a more limited ramp up could have been effective for them. Obviously, we know we want to have people housed. We know we want to have people be able to utilize these units, but especially if you’re gonna be buying existing buildings, it’s gonna be very interesting to see.

Obviously, we would also love to see them start building, so there’s a, related to this is another bill in the legislature actually that would allow local governments to get more directly involved in social housing PDAs, which is what this developer is technically a public development authority. That’s House Bill 1687, sponsored by Rep Reed over in Queen Anne, our urbanist champion. So I’m gonna be interested to see how that dovetails with the idea of getting the city more involved, and able to actually start building units, creating new units.

[00:49:59] Amy: One thing that’s always surprised me, it still kind of surprises me, even though I’m now very aware of it, is how difficult it can be to spend money. I always thought that, you know, the hard part is getting the money. Right. And then once you have the money, problem solved. But what I’ve seen in practice over and over again for, you know, very different programs is just because you have the money, getting that money out the door is another whole huge project of its own.

[00:50:26] Doug: Yeah. And part of the slow rolling of this… well. It’s not really still rolling, but they need to get the money in the door. And the Harrell administration was kind of jerking them around as far as fronting them the money based on the proceeds. And they eventually did do that, but not as fast as the board would’ve wanted of the social housing developer.

But now they made these hires and it was Ginger Segel was the person they brought over to be their chief real estate officer. And they have someone named Cole Husman, who’s their chief financial officer, and then they hired Lily Fowler to be their comms person.

So, you know, now they have a team that can actually hopefully handle these transactions and then communicate them to the public. And yeah, it’s not gonna be easy. Certainly now they can ramp up faster than they thought. So it’s more of a matter of their plans weren’t laid out for the money coming this fast.

But I don’t think you’ll hear many nonprofits, or public housing authorities complain about having too much money, but it is helpful to have reliable projecting for that money.

[00:51:33] Ryan: Well, we’re almost outta time, but I do want to end on a nice palate cleanser here. The days are getting lighter and sunnier. This past weekend was amazing. I was out at Pike Place Market. The market was jam packed with people during the pedestrian pilot, which is still going on hopefully for several more months or years, hopefully. We just did a story on potential barriers at Pike Place Market. You can read on the site last year that are helping to harden the market during the World Cup. But I have a question for our panelists here.

What is your favorite place to grab a bite to eat at Pike Place Market? Amy, what do you think?

[00:52:10] Amy: So first of all, I have to confess that I don’t actually go to Pike Place Market that often. And that’s actually something I wanna change because I can take the water taxi over from West Seattle and it’s lovely. I love the water taxi, and then you just walk up, and it’s a really nice outing.

So hopefully this will be the year that I start doing that more often. But I will say that one of the places I’ve really enjoyed eating is Crepe de France. They serve crepes and I love crepes so much. So I’m always happy to be able to eat a crepe. So, that is where I tend to gravitate.

[00:52:44] Ryan: That’s a great option. El Borracho is a go-to for me with their vegan burritos and tacos. I do love Lands of Origin for a quick bite right on Pike Place. They’ve got some really good vegan and non-vegan options. Always tasty. Pike Place Chowder is always a go-to. I will say that I’m at the Market at least three or four times a week, so I’m always grabbing something to eat down there. Cinnamon Works huge ass cookies, always amazing. What about you, Doug?

[00:53:16] Doug: Yeah, of course you would have like five answers, Ryan. I like to grab it back to eat there too. I will put in a good word for the Patatas Bravas at the Lonely Siren. I love Mediterranean food, Portuguese food and the brava sauce is something that I would put on, I don’t know, everything. It’s so good. And they also do a good sandwich there, like a bifana sandwich is really good. And the other thing I would say is if you want to see them toss salmon, you should buy something from the people tossing the salmon. And my, my go-to there since I don’t always want to cook a whole salmon filet is the salmon candy. It’s really delicious. So that’s a great thing if you’re showing people around. Yeah, it turns out salmon makes great candy. What, what can’t it do?

[00:54:00] Amy: I had no idea. This is news to me. I’m gonna have to try it.

[00:54:04] Doug: I think they preserve it in sugar. So it kind of has that delectable, savory, sweet thing going on. So those are two that come to mind pretty quickly. Oh, and the other one: the French Onion soup at Maximilian is really good.

[00:54:17] Ryan: Okay, but is it better than the French onion soup at Le Pichet? That’s the question.

[00:54:23] Doug: Oh, that’s close. I wasn’t sure if I could say Le Pichet because it’s on the other side of the market, but I guess it is…

[00:54:28] Ryan: It’s inside the district. As a former Pike Place Market tour guide, I can attest that it is inside you. Technically inside Pike Place Market District, if you walk into the middle of First Avenue, but once you cross the middle of the street, you’re not in the district anymore.

I just wanted to lament the fact that we officially, officially lost Jar Bar. They had been closed for almost a year, but had been hoping to reopen and I walked by and saw the sign finally noting that they wished everybody the best, but were throwing in the towel, which is a sad loss for Pike Place.

[00:55:04] Doug: Yeah. And that’s the beauty of the market having choice too. ’cause we were talking about the multiple French restaurants, but there being multiple Portuguese restaurants in the market shows just the wealth of options you have, and I’m never gonna complain about more places with good apps and tin fish and things like that. So hopefully someone can bring that back in.

[00:55:23] Ryan: Or just really small bars. We need more tiny, tiny little bars. Well that’s all the time we have this week on the Urbanist Podcast. If you like our episodes, don’t forget to rate us on your favorite podcast app. But this newsroom has to get back to reporting on the stories all around the region. And so we’ll let you go, and be back with you in two weeks. Thanks for listening. Thanks for joining us. 

The post Urbanist Podcast: Social Housing and Wilson’s Four Pillars of Affordability first appeared on The Urbanist.

Senate Bill 6347 and House Bill 2725 are clearly titled, “Undoing recent changes to the estate tax.” By reversing the increases in tax rates on the very wealthy, especially the billionaires, this proposal would result in a revenue loss to the state of almost $200 million a year starting this July. That revenue is supposed to go into the Education Legacy Trust Account – a crucial funding vehicle for early childhood education.  

Last year, the Legislature’s actions exempted almost 45% of estates that would have been taxed from paying the tax altogether, and reduced the tax on another 40% of estates. The loss was made up for by increasing rates on estates valued at more than $15 million. That is literally a couple of dozen estates each year.  

By reversing these rate increases, SB 6347 and HB 2725 are simply a gift to the children of the uber wealthy, children who did nothing to gain this wealth – a bow to the intergenerational and antidemocratic transfer of income, power, and political influence.

This isn’t a proposal from a right-wing corporate backed backbencher. It is sponsored in the House by Joe Fitzgibbon (D-Seattle, 34th LD), the Democratic Majority Leader, along with other Democrats (and no Republicans) and in the Senate by Vandana Slatter, who ran and won a special election as a progressive Democrat in Legislative District 48. 

This estate tax cut just passed 38-11.

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— Ryan Packer (@typewriteralley.bsky.social) February 16, 2026 at 5:52 PM

SB 6347 was voted through the Senate Ways and Means Committee, with support from Chair June Robinson (D-Everett, 38th LD) and Vice Chairs Derek Stanford (D-Bothell, 1st LD) and Yasmin Trudeau (D-Tacoma, 27th LD), and all Republicans. The only Democrats who voted no in committee were Noel Frame (D-Seattle, 36th LD) and Bob Hasegawa (D-Seattle, 11th LD). On Monday, the legislation passed the full Senate in a 38-11 vote. 

The tally.

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— Ryan Packer (@typewriteralley.bsky.social) February 16, 2026 at 5:52 PM

How do the Democrats, allegedly trying to fill a multi-billionaire deficit in the state budget, decide to relinquish half a billion dollars every biennium to billionaires? It really doesn’t take much – a phone call, an aside at a celebration, a quiet visit to elected officials. It is hard to track – but it happens. 

The result is that the legislative leadership is rewarding the billionaires and centimillionaires, including those who covered up their relationships with Jeffrey Epstein. Our state leaders are more comfortable stooping to these billionaires and begging them for money, for services like early learning, rather than actually taxing them like the rest of us.

After George Bush and the Republican Congress pretty much leveled the federal estate tax in 2002, Bill Gates Sr. helped to develop our own estate tax, understanding that wealthy individuals have an obligation to pay back into the society that provided them with the infrastructure to succeed. This is especially true in our state, with wealth accumulating over decades without paying one dollar in state income taxes. The people understood this. In 2006, Washington state voters endorsed the estate tax by a two-to-one margin.

Regarding the proposed giveaway to the already wealthy – there is a solution for Democrats: Don’t do it. Don’t vote for it. Don’t fall for it. If you do, you are doing the biddings of the ruling elite, not the children and the people of this state.

The post Op-Ed: Washington Legislature, Don’t Reverse the Estate Tax first appeared on The Urbanist.

Amazon, Microsoft, and much of the tech industry have been enabling the rising Trump dictatorship. Both mega-corporations donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. They were among the largest donors to Trump’s $300 million ballroom built on the remains of the East Wing of the White House, which was demolished by Trump last year.   

While currying favor with Trump has been a priority, Amazon and Microsoft have been silent about Renee Good, Alex Pretti, the little five-year-old boy stolen from Minneapolis, and the two-year-old boy left alone in a car in Shoreline after his dad was snatched by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Why do anything to get in the way when colluding  with Trump fattens the corporate bottomline? 

What is weird is that, while Washington state Democratic political leaders have condemned ICE, the state legislature seems intent on purposefully ignoring an opportunity to hold Amazon and Microsoft accountable. This accountability would make Amazon and Microsoft pay the same tax as other companies to fund college grants for Washington students and to lower tuition. Democratic legislative leaders are just sitting on that bill — you could say colluding with Amazon and Microsoft. 

In 2019 Amazon and Microsoft were public proponents for the Workforce Education Investment Act, which included a surtax on advanced computing businesses. It was a tax applied uniformly to all such businesses. However, the House Appropriations Committee adopted an amendment to ratchet down payments from those corporations with over $25 billion in global receipts… two corporations, to be exact – Amazon and Microsoft. 

Very few advocates or legislators knew of or understood this amendment. Who did it? Several Democratic lawmakers, including Guy Palumbo, a Democratic state senator who resigned from office to become Amazon’s public policy director, Drew Hansen, now a state senator, who was chair of the House Higher Education Committee in 2019, and Jamie Pedersen, currently Senate Majority Leader for the Democrats.

In 2020 the Legislature made some “corrections” to the Workforce Education Investment Act, authored by Senator Pedersen, which again made sure to cap any payments by Amazon and Microsoft, to give them a significant tax advantage that smaller corporations did not receive. Each year this amounts to the robbery of over $100 million from higher education.

These were both Democratic bills. No Republicans voted for them, while very few Democrats voted no, including Dave Paul, the current chair of the House Postsecondary Education & Workforce Committee and Mari Leavitt, also a member of this committee, perhaps because they realized the gross favoritism to and collusion with Microsoft and Amazon.

Thanks to this loophole, the legislature actually reduced eligibility for the full college grant this past year and tuition goes up and up every year. When I talked with legislators about this loophole over the past five years, their refrain has been that they had a deal with Amazon and Microsoft to support this legislation. How about a deal with citizens of our state trying to afford college? Rather than capitulate to Amazon and Microsoft, how about we stand with students?

That is what House Bill 2098, sponsored by state representative Julia Reed (D-36th Seattle) does: it erases a megacorporate exclusion from taxation and insures proportional taxation across the board. The new revenue – $800 million a year – will fully fund the College Grant program for students from families with incomes up to $150,000, and it will also enable the state to lower tuition. These are what our objectives for progress should be in our state, not to protect the corporate billionaires whose actions are destroying our democracy. 

A recent poll shows two-to-one support for this bill. Responding to this statement “this bill would require Amazon and Microsoft to pay the same tax rate as other Washington-based advanced computing companies,” voter support is 77% to 16%. Reducing tuition garners 73% to 17%. Expanding college grants to students with family incomes up to $150,000 gets 67% to 23%. 

And yet, since the legislative session began on January 12, Democrats have refused to act to advance HB 2098. The Democratic caucus appears to be held hostage by corporate lobbyists. They are careful not to overturn legislative actions from six years ago, even as a majority of the senators who voted for these loopholes are no longer in the legislature. So while Democratic legislators mourn Alex Pretti and Renee Good they continue to coddle the mega-corporations that are enabling Trump. These are the corporations that are helping Trump to create a fascist state of our nation.

Democrats, don’t you think it is about time you actually worked for Washington students, not global soulless corporations? It is time to pass HB 2098.

The post Op-Ed: State Lawmakers Should Hold Amazon, Microsoft Accountable for Supporting Fascism first appeared on The Urbanist.

“The ICE memorandum […] that basically instructs agents to ignore the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, to throw it in the trash, that represents a constitutional crisis at the level of everything the founders of this country warned us against, warning us against the tyranny that could arise if we put our heads in the sand,” Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown said.

Early in January, ICE released a memorandum saying their agents can enter people’s homes without a judicial warrant in a direct assault to the Fourth Amendment. A large-scale operation in Minneapolis that began in December has resulted in ICE agents killing two U.S. citizens who didn’t pose any danger to the agents in question. 

“It feels like Minneapolis is being used as a testing ground, both in the brutality of the tactics, and we have seen since they killed Renee Good, we have seen such an acceleration in the brutality and illegality of the tactics that are used against observers, violating people’s civil rights with just absolute impunity,” said Minnesota Rep. Aisha Gomez on an episode of The Majority Report. 

Meanwhile, at least 31 people died in ICE custody last year, which Axios reported is a 20-year high.

Earlier this week U.S. District Court Judge Katherine M. Mendez explored the question as to whether the surge of federal ICE agents has been meant to coerce local and state governments into changing their policies. 

A few days later, Tom Homan, the executive associate director for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), made a statement that implied ICE enforcement is in fact being used to extort cooperation from state and local governments.

 “The withdrawal of law enforcement resources here is dependent upon cooperation,” Homan said. 

Given the behavior of the federal government, state and city elected officials are being forced to come up with response plans to prepare for the possibility of a large contingent of federal forces being sent to invade Washington state. 

State-level response

On Monday, Governor Bob Ferguson joined Brown to outline how the state is preparing to respond if ICE were to come in greater force to Washington. However, they kept their remarks very broad. 

“People have asked what we can do if ICE descends on Washington state, as they have in Minnesota, and I will not speculate on our strategy,” Brown said. “I’m not going to hand our playbook to them.”

In addition to aggressive legal action – Brown brought 50 lawsuits against the Trump administration in its first year – Ferguson outlined other steps he was taking, including meeting with the head of the Washington State National Guard and coordinating with state and local partners. 

However, Ferguson was clear that he cannot prevent ICE from operating in the state. 

This week, Ferguson and Brown sent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem condemning the actions of ICE in Minneapolis and objecting to the illegal orders to ICE that violate the Fourth Amendment.

“If ICE agents attempt any such unconstitutional measures in the state of Washington, we will do everything in our power to oppose it. Our state will consider all legal options to hold the U.S. Government and individual ICE agents accountable for violating Washingtonians’ constitutional rights,” the letter reads.

Ferguson also mentioned bills being considered by the state legislature this session, chief among them Senate Bill 5855, which would prohibit law enforcement officers from wearing face coverings, and Senate Bill 5876, which would prohibit people from having badges and using law enforcement insignia if they aren’t law enforcement. 

In spite of Ferguson’s promises to “not be shy” about taking ICE agents to court if they choose to flaunt the law and wear masks, there are questions about how enforceable SB 5855 would be in practice. The bill includes a private right of action for people detained by a masked officer, but in addition to the potential dangers for a private citizen who chooses to sue an ICE officer, officers wouldn’t be liable for wearing a mask as long as they complied with other state identification requirements.  

SB 5855 passed the Senate on Wednesday and will now be considered by the House. 

Brown cited the Immigrant Worker Protection Act, House Bill 2105, which would require employers to give notice to workers of federal agencies asking for employment eligibility records within 72 hours and make sure employers aren’t sharing personal employee information without a subpoena or judicial warrant. 

Also relevant is Senate Bill 6045, which would give farmworkers more collective bargaining rights. Right now farmworkers don’t receive the institutional protections provided by the National Labor Relations Board, but this bill would allow farmworkers to be represented by Washington’s Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC) for the purpose of enforcing workers’ rights.

Senate Bill 6286 would allow the Department of Health to fine private detention facilities, such as Tacoma’s Northwest ICE Processing Center (NWIPC), if the department isn’t allowed to inspect the premises. The fees escalate to up to $1500 per day if a center doesn’t allow an inspection for more than 60 days. 

While this bill doesn’t go as far as taxing detention facilities, which could lead to their existence being financially untenable in the state, it does at least provide real consequences for a failure to comply with inspections. Lawmakers are already aware that NWIPC doesn’t provide adequate medical care to its detainees.

“What we know from the Department of Health is they’ve had a huge number of complaints that have come in, in the hundreds, around nutrition, undercooked food, black mold, not getting access to medical care. The list goes on and on,” Senator Tina Orwall (D-33rd Legislative District, Des Moines) testified at the bill’s hearing. “And so the reason that we’re putting this hefty fine is it’s urgent. People’s health and their lives are at stake here.” 

Notably, at the press conference Ferguson didn’t mention his failure to address the current loophole that allows ICE and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) to access private drivers’ information from the state’s Department of Licensing (DOL). Researchers from the University of Washington Center for Human Rights (UWCHR) released a report in early January, finding that at least nine cases of federal immigration enforcement between September and November of last year involved a search in the DOL database. 

Since that time, UWCHR has identified six additional cases and say they expect to find more cases as they continue to investigate. UWCHR confirmed that as of January 22, state officials have taken no action to cut off CBP or ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), leaving Washington drivers’ information vulnerable. 

Response in Seattle

Under new Seattle City Attorney Erika Evans, Seattle, along with King County, have submitted amicus briefs in a lawsuit brought by the State of Minnesota against DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and other federal officials challenging ICE’s “Operation Metro Surge.” 

Seattle’s Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs (OIRA) presented at a council meeting this week, sharing the increased difficulties being faced by immigrants and refugees in Seattle over the last year. 

Azmi Haroun, the communications advisor at OIRA, told the committee that between December 2025 and January 2026, the 10 partners they work with have seen over 100 community members having their citizenship appointments abruptly canceled with no reasons given. 

Haroun said they’ve seen an increased demand for services and increased barriers to representation, such as “lawyers being allowed into the Tacoma detention center.” Many people are being held in prolonged detention without communication, pressuring them to choose deportation.

The Deportation Data Project found that since January 2025, nearly 2,000 people have been arrested for immigration detention in Washington state. 

Councilmember Eddie Lin spoke of the expected escalation of the need for legal assistance if Seattle sees an ICE occupation, and how various City departments can be a part of a response. 

“I’m concerned [with] how long it’s going to take to staff up and get prepared and get people ready,” Lin said. “And I know it’s a little bit hard to predict, right? But it seems like a natural disaster coming our way, but it’s the federal government.”

Lin called out the federal government for its role in spreading fear and inaccurate information.

“It is so critical that we provide accurate and timely information, and it is just so difficult to do so when our federal government is not sharing information with us,” Lin said. “I want to put blame, the primary blame, where it should sit, which is with our federal government intentionally causing this fear and chaos.”

Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck spoke of the atmosphere of fear preventing Seattleites from carrying on daily activities such as going to work, sending their kids to schools, and receiving medical care. “The stakes could not be higher,” Rinck said. “Our neighbors are quite literally being disappeared off of our streets.” 

Rinck also spoke of community members sharing a noticeable increase in visible racism and xenophobia in Seattle’s streets. 

Meanwhile, earlier in the week, Mayor Katie Wilson’s “Standing Up for Our Values” transition team held a town hall to discuss how to protect Seattleites, particularly immigrant and LGBTQ+ communities, from federal threats. More than a hundred people attended the meeting to share their experiences and concerns and stand in solidarity with community members. 

Immigrant and refugee community members spoke of how afraid they were to even be attending the meeting, and how the fear of being detained or killed impacts their daily lives. They also spoke of the fear of not being able to go safely to work, which would mean being unable to pay their rent and ultimately being evicted. 

Transgender community members spoke of their experiences of transphobia in Seattle and the current transgender relocation crisis. In a recent survey, 9% of transgender respondents said they’d moved to a different state between November 2024 and June 2025, which one person estimates could mean 400,000 transgender people moved during that time period. 

Attendees expressed a mixture of distrust in the Seattle Police Department (SPD) and the desire for SPD to step in to protect people from ICE and arrest ICE agents who are acting illegally. 

One attendee, who was a circus artist, noted police’s mistreatment of left-wing protestors: “I also don’t think that the solution is to take that power and give it to SPD, because the Seattle Police Department is a menace to a lot of us. Last summer, when the counter protesters at Cal Anderson Park were just brutally beaten by SPD, they came out with a statement afterwards from their union reps that said, we operate in the heart of antifa land. What makes you think that they have any interest in protecting those of us who are anti-fascist?”

Many community members spoke against widespread surveillance in Seattle, saying it was making them less safe. 

A person who grew up undocumented in Texas argued many companies are profiteering off mass deportation and surveillance: “I’ve witnessed the economics of criminality, of deportation, and locking people up in jails for as long as I’ve been an activist: families being torn apart, Black or Brown people being surveilled unlike ever before, while putting billions of that money into the pockets with companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Palantir, Axon, Flock and many others that profit from the economy of mass surveillance, deportation and incarceration.”

Community members had a list of requests for Wilson, including:

• Turning off the surveillance cameras, license plate readers, and the real time crime center in Seattle.
• Providing more support for immigrant and refugee communities.
• Providing more support for transgender people, especially those relocating to Seattle, including job programs.
• Canceling contracts with companies with a direct relationship to ICE.
• Requiring SPD to withdraw from the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the Washington State Fusion Center so they are not directly cooperating with ICE and DHS agents.
• Banning all staging and operations of any federal law enforcement activities on public and City property.
• Preventing SPD from arresting protesters who are protesting ICE or other immigration enforcement and/or trying to protect community members from ICE.
• Eliminating the use of SPD to attack local mutual aid networks that have organized to protect at-risk residents.

While Wilson wasn’t invited to attend this event, several community members expressed disappointment that she wasn’t present. More than one person shared feelings that WIlson hasn’t acted decisively enough since taking office. 

“I think we should be clear that there are stakes for Mayor Wilson as well and the longevity of her administration,” a participant said. “So far, what you’ve seen is a lot of talk and not a lot of action. We’ve seen this during the campaign, she spoke openly against the establishment of the CCTV system in the city, and now, since she’s in office, it’s still going. What happened to that? She says she’s waiting to hear from immigrant rights groups. They’ve already spoken. They’ve said those surveillance cameras should be gone, and they’re still there.”

The Wilson administration’s response

The Mayor’s Office issued a press release on Thursday afternoon outlining the steps Wilson plans to take in response to the current constitutional crisis and federal violence.

The list of commitments includes providing City employees with updated training about how to report and respond to enforcement activity, having all departments conduct a data privacy review, posting clear signage of private spaces on city properties, and coordinating with other elected officials in the state.

In addition to moving quickly on spending money designated during the budget process last year for supporting immigrant communities, Wilson will issue an executive order prohibiting civil federal immigration authorities from using property that is City-owned and -controlled for civil immigration enforcement activities. 

The Mayor’s Office announced the new “Stand Together Seattle Initiative,” which will invite private property owners to post notice that their properties cannot be accessed by federal agents without a warrant. 

A hotline will also be established, led by a “trusted community-led organizational partner,” where city departments and community organizations can share information about federal enforcement activities that can then be passed along to concerned community members. 

Finally, Wilson will “require the Seattle Police Department to investigate, verify, and document any reports of immigration enforcement activity.” This will include SPD officers validating the identity of ICE agents, using body-worn and in-car video, and securing scenes where ICE might have done something illegal in order to gather evidence. 

However, the Mayor’s Office said the mechanism for the above is an updated directive, with no plan to enshrine the instructions in official SPD policy, which would provide accountability for SPD officers to comply. 

The press release contains no mention of the surveillance technology currently operating in Seattle, which appears to allow the current surveillance status quo to continue. 

“So many of us are shocked and heartbroken by the news out of Minneapolis, and share a growing concern that our city too could come under attack by the federal government,” Wilson said in the release. “The federal government is causing profound, long-term harm to so many communities, and we all have a shared responsibility to organize, practice solidarity, and do what we can to keep Seattle safe.”

As Washington and Seattle elected officials scramble to respond to the possibility of a federal incursion, Gomez has lessons to share from Minneapolis.

“The fact of the matter is that we have to be clear-eyed about the truth, which is that state and local policy are not the tool with which to respond to an authoritarian federal regime,” Gomez told The Majority Report. “Those tools are inadequate.”

Gomez presented an alternate solution to authoritarianism on the march: “We, the people” coming together, being courageous, and taking care of one another.  

The post Washington State Reacts to Feared ICE Invasion, Constitutional Crisis  first appeared on The Urbanist.

With at least 14 bills in play this legislative session that pertain to AI, the focus on regulating this technology is as strong as it’s ever been. 

Jon Pincus, the founder of Nexus of Privacy, said legislators are grappling with the implications of AI all over the country.

“AI is moving really fast, and no matter what you think of it, it’s really changing things,” Pincus said. “And states are all wrestling with how to regulate it. Like any industry, tech doesn’t want to be regulated at all. There’s a sort of grudging admission that, well, okay, maybe something needs to be done. They’re pushing for things to be as weak as possible. I’m certainly in favor of strong regulations, but there is this real complexity that we don’t want to just kill promising technology.”

Tee Sannon, the the ACLU of Washington’s Technology Policy Program Director, said the ACLU has been advocating for meaningful regulation of AI for some time now. 

“There’s a slew of AI-related bills that we’re seeing introduced, and I think it speaks to the point that we do really need AI regulations,” Sannon told The Urbanist. “And currently this is an unregulated space, and we’re seeing the risks and harms that come from that. But at the same time, we also have to be careful to make sure that those protections are meaningful.”

Washington State could be uniquely positioned to lead in AI regulation. The state is one of the country’s big technical hubs, is the home to the world-class research institution the University of Washington, and has a strong network of tech organizers. For example, in 2023, the legislature passed the landmark “My Health My Data” Act, which the Electronic Frontier Foundation called “one of the strongest consumer data privacy laws in recent years.” Washington was the first state to tackle issues around the gaps in protection of consumer health care data.

“I feel like we’ve arrived at this moment where many, many people are waking up to the fact that an unregulated tech industry has sort of brought us to this place of urgency and crisis in terms of what we’ve allowed to happen with big tech in our lives,” Maya Morales, founder of Washington People’s Privacy, said. “We’re now having this fraught and violent and disruptive kind of world environment, of many people coming to a realization all at once that we are literally creating a tech war against ourselves if we do not step up and regulate.”

Concerns around AI abound, from harms to the environment from increased energy and water usage to power massive data centers to the fear of AI taking away people’s jobs. Because AI is trained on real-world data, the bias contained in that data is baked straight into AI, which can then potentially make decisions that repeat that bias, leading to algorithmic discrimination. AI’s use in various systems has also raised privacy concerns – since AIs tend to collect a huge amount of data as they’re being used – and criticism over a lack of transparency, since people may not know they’re using a system that involves AI or consuming a product (or information) that was created by AI. 

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has staked out a strongly anti-regulation stance. Although their bid to include a 10-year moratorium on states regulating AI was removed from last summer’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” H.R.1, by a vote from the Senate, President Donald Trump issued an executive order in December to “check the most onerous and excessive laws emerging from the States that threaten to stymie innovation.” The order instructs the formation of an AI litigation taskforce to challenge state-level AI laws and threatens to withhold federal broadband funding for states that do not comply.

Morales spoke of the dangers of big tech billionaires and their credo of technofascism, which is furthered by a lack of regulation, to democracy itself. 

“It’s understanding that if you don’t regulate big tech, then you’re looking at this massive sort of techno class divide, where you literally have a ruling high tech class and you have this populace that doesn’t have its needs met,” Morales said. “Many people have been speaking about this on world and national stages, but ultimately, there is really this risk of building this techno future that isn’t even really built for humans.”

Regulating AI in schools

Senate Bill 5956, sponsored by Senator T’wina Nobles (D-28th Legislative District, Tacoma), sets statewide rules for student privacy protections, regulating the use of AI in school discipline and surveillance.

The bill prohibits using automated decision systems and surveillance systems from being the sole basis for disciplinary decisions, using student risk scores, and using biometrics to infer students’ sensitive psychological or personal characteristics. It prohibits school use of facial recognition technologies, which suffer from accuracy issues, especially for people of color. 

The bill also protects student data by setting limitations on when it can be turned over to law enforcement.

Derek Harrison, the executive director of Black Education Strategy Roundtable, testified at the bill’s hearing, telling the story of a student in Maryland last year who was holding a bag of chips that a gun detection system misidentified as a gun. 

“Even here in Washington State, we see that Black students, students with different needs, we see LGBTQIA+ students, students in foster care, are disproportionately impacted by discipline rates,” Harrison testified. “And so, SB 5956 protects student safety and civil rights.” 

The bill directs the Washington State School Directors Association to develop a model policy that addresses human oversight of AI systems and automated decision systems strategies to avoid discrimination and harm to students. The development of such a policy is likely to add a small fiscal note to the bill, which was passed out of committee on January 22.

“Across the country, we are seeing more automated systems used in schools with attempts to keep students safe or to predict student behavior, to assign risk scores, to increase surveillance. Often, these systems are without transparency or context or meaningful human judgment,” Nobles said. “Most importantly, this bill affirms a simple principle that decisions that affect our students’ future must be made by people and not by algorithms.”

AI surveillance pricing for retail goods

House Bill 2481, sponsored by Rep. Mary Fosse, (D-38 LD, Everett), takes on the recent practice of grocery stores and other retailers to enact the widespread practices of surveillance and surge pricing. 

Surveillance pricing is the practice of retailers building up a profile on a customer and then charging what an AI thinks they will pay. Surge pricing is the practice of changing the price of a product due to demand (think of how taking a rideshare home on the night of a popular event costs twice as much, and apply that principle to other goods and services). 

A report from the Federal Trade Commission released last year found that surveillance pricing happens “frequently,” taking into account factors such as location, demographics, cursor movements, and what you left behind in your cart. 

Consumer Reports collaborated with Groundwork Collaborative to conduct an investigative study on Instacart and found the price variation between customers for the same item could range as much as 23%. Instacart has since said it no longer offers the technology that allows this surveillance pricing. 

Derek Kravitz, an investigative reporter and deputy editor at Consumer Reports, testified at the bill’s hearing last week. 

“What we found was not an isolated event in our testing,” Kravtiz said. “Every single shopper using the Instacart app was an unwitting participant in the company’s pricing experiments. None of the volunteers we spoke to had any idea Instacart was running these algorithmic tests. When we told them, they repeatedly referred to the practice as unfair and manipulative.”

The bill would also institute a four-year moratorium on the use of electronic shelf labels in retail stores that are 15,000 square feet or larger. These labels aid companies in collecting data about their customers and allow for instantaneous price changes.

Lobbyists from the Washington Food Industry Association and the Northwest Grocery Retail Association oppose the bill. UFCW 3000 is in support. 

“The need for state action is especially clear in this case,” Pincus testified. “As an earlier panelist said, food is not a luxury. Purchases of food are necessary for survival. Treating violations as an unfair, deceptive business practice under the Consumer Protection Act is appropriate.”

This bill is scheduled for executive session on Wednesday. An amendment is expected.

The risk of AI chatbots

One of Governor Bob Ferguson’s legislative priorities this session is Senate Bill 5984 (and companion bill House Bill 2225). Sponsored by Senator Lisa Wellman (D-41st LD, Mercer Island), SB 5984 makes an attempt to regulate AI companion chatbots, and specifically the way minors interact with them. 

“AI holds the promise of amazing benefits, but with numerous instances of damage to humans and a number of child suicides with AI involvement, we feel we need to step in and put industry on notice that it is not okay to put out a product that has so many possibilities for significant damage,” Wellman said at the bill’s hearing. “Their software, the playground we’re talking about, these chatbots, it’s their responsibility that the children have a safe environment to operate in.”

The bill requires an AI chatbot that seems human to give reminders that it is not human at the beginning of a session, at least every three hours, and whenever a new session is initiated. Chatbot operators would be required to have a protocol for detecting and addressing suicidal ideation and expressions of self-harm, including giving referrals to crisis hotlines and other mental health resources if such behavior is detected. 

In addition, if the operator knows the chatbot is engaging with a minor, then the chatbot is not allowed to generate sexually explicit content or engage in emotionally manipulative techniques.

Attorney Laura Marquez Garrett specializes in representing children and families harmed by tech products. 

“This is not just one or two apps. This is AI chat bots as an unregulated product type, and these are design-based harms,” Garrett testified. “That is why we see sexual abuse harms with some AI products and not others. We see suicide encouragement with some AI products and not others. […] We shouldn’t need a law to stop these kinds of design-based harms, but the AI industry has made clear that we do.”

Pincus from Nexus of Privacy would like to see the current version of the bill improved, including adding privacy protections and extending the ban on emotionally manipulative techniques to everyone, not just kids. He’d also like to see the manipulative techniques be expanded to include a chatbot using first person language (referring to itself as “I”), which reaffirms the impression that the chatbot is a person.

Sannon doesn’t think this bill takes the right approach to the harms caused by chatbots.

“We’re all concerned about children’s safety online, and I think there are a number of other solutions that we can explore, like device-based protections,” Sannon said. “Sometimes I think the gap ends up being focusing on minors to protect them, but when there are certain protections that just seem good, maybe we just apply them to everyone.” 

Right now this bill doesn’t include explicit age verification, but if this were added, such a policy would bring with it a lot of privacy concerns as well as potential harms to marginalized groups. 

Companion bill House Bill 2225 just passed through the House executive committee on Friday, but as a substitute version that made several changes, including prohibiting a chatbot from mimicking romantic partnership with minors and requiring notifications that it isn’t human every hour instead of every three hours.

An amendment was introduced that would have removed the bill’s private right of action, but it failed.

A slew of AI bills

The bills discussed above only represent a few of the issues around AI currently being tackled by the legislature. Other bills being considered include regulating AI use in therapy, AI use in health insurance authorization, transparency around AI training data, allowing collective bargaining around use of AI, and regulating high-risk AI systems that make impactful decisions in areas such as housing, employment, and health care. 

But with a short session and a tight purse, lawmakers are likely to be constrained in what they can accomplish this year. Lawmakers may be tempted to weaken the bills to get them over the finish line.

The tech industry is lobbying to remove the private right of action from each bill, as we’ve already seen illustrated in the House chatbot bill. Such changes will both reduce the public’s ability to access accountability from the harmful behavior of tech companies and potentially increase the price tag of bills that will then rely solely on the Attorney General’s office for enforcement. 

Another temptation will be to add a “right to cure” to some of the bills, giving tech companies time to address issues after they’ve arisen. This right to cure also raises the costs for the Attorney General, and advocates say it’s a way for companies to avoid accountability.

Still, as attitudes around AI shift, both legislators and the public seem more inclined to push harder around efforts to regulate AI.

“We’re seeing AI in every single space,” Morales said. “There is this decision and this crossroads that we’re at as people and as local and state governments, where many of us are realizing, and it’s clear our legislators are realizing, we’ve actually got to stand up and be a little more decisive about the future that we really want to build for ourselves, and we cannot really allow [Elon] Musk and a few gazillionaires to make those decisions for us.”

The post Washington Legislature Grapples with Slew of Bills Regulating AI first appeared on The Urbanist.

Ryan recently covered a myriad of housing bills working their way through Olympia. Bills allowing smaller elevators and scissor stairs could make midrise buildings more feasible to build. The hosts discussed the pros and cons of legislation allowing residential construction in commercial zones in mid-sized (and up) cities, which was requested by Governor Bob Ferguson, but perpetuates a corridor urbanism approach that focuses apartments near crash-prone, polluted highways.

The bills we referenced include:

• House Bill 1175 – Neighborhood cafes
• HB 1443 – Allows Mobile Dwelling Units on all Residences
• HB 2228 – Legalizing Scissor Stairs
• Senate Bill 5156 – Legalizing Smaller Elevators – Sightline Institute has a video explainer for more info.
• SB 6002 – Regulate Immigration Officials Access to License Plate Readers – Read Amy Sundberg’s article for more.
• SB 6026 – Requiring Mid-Size Cities to Allow Residential in all Commercial Zones.

Plus, Amy and Doug recounted their first interview with Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson since she’s been installed in office. And the crew talks about their go-to parks for false spring reveling.

This episode of The Urbanist Podcast was edited by me. Episodes also air on KVRU 105.7 FM radio Thursdays at 4pm, on a once every two weeks cadence, give or take. Thank you to Crystal Fincher and Shannon Cheng of KVRU for their assistance producing our podcast.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Ryan: Hello and welcome to the Urbanist Podcast, a show touching on the biggest headlines at The Urbanist, and offering a deeper look from the reporters breaking the stories as an independent reader supported publication. The Urbanist has been covering the Seattle metropolitan region since 2014. We do advocacy journalism for better cities. 

You can find us at theurbanist.org. My name is Ryan Packer. I’m a contributing editor here at the Urbanist, and with me is the rest of our newsroom publisher, Doug Trumm 

Doug: Hey Ryan. Good to see you.  

Ryan: And reporter Amy Sundberg. 

Amy: Hey, everyone. Great to be here. 

Ryan: Every couple of weeks the Urbanist Podcast will recap the biggest headlines happening around the region and take you beyond the stories on the site. This week the Washington State Legislature convened for its whirlwind 60 day legislative session. 

There’s many topics they’re trying to tackle, the budget, transportation, housing, and policing among them. And we’re gonna go ahead and start running down what’s happening at the legislature, over the next few weeks as they try and get bills advanced, during their first big deadlines. 

Amy, what are the things that you’re tracking right now? 
 

[00:01:12] Amy: I am tracking so many things. I have this very long list. It’s not even a spreadsheet because I’m not organized. But one of the main things that legislatures are gonna be tackling this session is the budget, because they do have a budget deficit. So there are several bills around that effort to balance the budget. 

Of course, Governor Ferguson has come out in favor of the Millionaire Tax, which we talked about last time, which would be an income tax on income over a million dollars. So it would not affect 99 point something percent of Washingtonians. It seems like he is less favorable towards other new revenue ideas. But that is not gonna stop some of the Democrats from bringing them forward. 
 

[00:02:03] Ryan: Yeah, I know there’s a proposal from Shaun Scott, one of the most progressive legislators in the Democratic caucus, in the house in terms of a statewide payroll tax similar to the Seattle Jumpstart Tax. Have you seen that get any early attraction in the first few days, Amy? 

[00:02:20] Amy: I haven’t heard much about it, although it does have many sponsors, which is promising. I know that Governor Ferguson said he was, quote, not a fan end quote of this idea of a statewide payroll tax. But, Representative Scott has the idea that a lot of the money that this would generate would go towards backfilling some of the expenses that the state will incur because of the Trump administration’s changing of policy. 

So it would help with education. It would help with healthcare, and other really important priorities like that. Another interesting thing is, as a Seattleite of course, is that if we had a statewide payroll tax, I don’t know that we’ve seen a lot of capital flight from Seattle, but if it were statewide, of course no one would have any incentive to leave Seattle and go elsewhere in the state, which I think is an interesting thought. 
 

[00:03:20] Ryan: Doug, you’ve been watching The Urbanist ramp up its legislative coverage over the years. How is this session working out so far. I know it’s only day, day three, but in terms of past sessions and what, what are you tracking? 
 

[00:03:33] Doug: Yeah, it feels like a little bit of a odd session, especially for a short session. They have a lot of budget problems to dig out from under, with a multi-billion dollar deficit. Normally they’re dealing with the budget in the long session, but when this problems spill over to the next year, then they’re still dealing with that. 

So it seems to have robbed a little bit of the ambition, but obviously if they get their framework for a millionaires income tax, that would be a big accomplishment, even if it’s something that doesn’t start collecting money until 2029. We’ve never had an income tax in our state and it’s starting to become very difficult to grapple with some of our budget issues without one. 

But there’s still obviously going to be some bills moving. This week we had a piece from you that was laying out okay, like, here’s the housing bills that are moving. And I thought that did a really good job of, showing there’s still impactful bills here, more on the margins or on the edges. It’s not like the big sweeping zoning bills that we saw over the previous years. But it’s these nitty gritty bills that will hopefully help builders actually take advantage of that zoning. So we saw a number of those bills focused on more affordable building methods. And that includes scissor stairs, elevator reform, and things like that, that could help, you know, make sure that there’s not like these unforced errors here, that makes building untenable. 

[00:05:05] Ryan: Yeah, I think what I said on the site in my legislative preview was they tackled the elephant in the room, which is our inclusionary zoning and our parking mandates, and things like that. And now we’re getting into the, the thousand paper cuts that make housing more expensive, you know, requirement to have two sets of stairs and you can’t make them consolidated together like with a scissor stair building. 

It’s very wonky, very wonky stuff. The elevator issue got a lot of attention last year in terms of the ways that the US isn’t a big outlier. The U.S. and Canada are a big outlier in terms of requiring every elevator to accommodate a, a lay down stretcher, which paradoxically leads to a lot of buildings being built without elevators or without redundant elevators. 

So when one breaks down, you have to use the stairs. And so I think that one’s gonna get a lot of attention. I think it generated a lot of controversy among the firefighter community and the very powerful elevator unions, which people don’t really, I think, know too much about, that there are very, very small number of unions that control who’s able to maintain all of the elevators in the US and it’s a little bit of a mafia in terms of the very controlled situations and the standards that are in place. We talked to the bill sponsor. He thinks he’s gonna take a little bit of a retreat of a position, kick it over to the State Building Code Council to make the really big decisions, which I think is gonna disappoint some people who are hoping for bolder action on that. 
 

But I think it ultimately might be the only way that we’re gonna be able to get that across the finish line. 
 

[00:06:41] Doug: Yeah, and it is super wonky. The elevator reform bill is Senate Bill 5 1 5 6. For those who wanna track its progress or weigh in on, on the state site, we’ll include a link in the podcast notes. But you know, the elevator pitch, see what I did there, for that bill is that by requiring such large elevators, we basically get no elevators, in many, many smaller projects in particular where they may not be required. 

In Europe we see, and in Asia, for that matter, we see buildings going in, they have these smaller elevators and they actually have them. So there’s a much higher number of elevators per capita in those places. So we’ve regulated ourselves into an absurd outcome where, we want these elevators, but because we’re requiring gold plated version that fits a a large stretcher, we’re not getting it. 

So it’s hard to argue with and maybe this new approach from Solomon will bear more fruit where it’s not dictating from the state legislature, but punting to the, the building council to, to do, so hopeful for that. And then the scissor stair bill, if you’re wanting to look that up, is, is House Bill 2228. 

And similar reasons there. By requiring not more efficient stairway design, we’re just using more of our building space for hallways and stairs instead of housing. And obviously if we’re in a housing crisis, that that should be our priority. 
 

[00:08:04] Ryan: Yeah, and there was one more splashy bill that the governor actually proposed, got put forward through Senator Emily Alvarado outta West Seattle. It would essentially require all major cities, I think over 30,000 in population to allow residential uses on commercial properties. So, strip malls, big box stores that are underutilized would be required to let developers build multifamily and they couldn’t require ground floor retail. So that’s a little bit of an interesting bill. I’d be curious for your thoughts on that, Doug and Amy, in terms of where we’re encouraging housing development. 

I think it’s a little interesting. A lot of the capacity, like in Seattle is already in these places. We’re not really seeing people build there. Aurora is pretty much zoned for residential, but it’s not becoming… people aren’t really redeveloping these big sites to build housing now. It’s not clear to me whether this is gonna be a big change. And there’s the issue of a lot of these areas that are zoned for commercial zoning are along highways and in the areas of the cities where you wouldn’t necessarily wanna live. And so there’s an environmental justice aspect to this. 

I kind of see this as one element of this very popular idea right now, coming up in certain elements of state government, which is like corridor urbanism, where we’re gonna only change the areas of the cities that people don’t really like and kinda leave the nice neighborhoods alone. 
 

[00:09:43] Amy: I think it’s really tough too, because as you said, it is an environmental issue and it’s a health issue, right? In terms of pollution, and what that does to the body over time or as a child. And in terms of desirability where people would prefer to live, where they can afford to live, are they pushed into less desirable locations because of what they can afford? 

And then at the same time, we have so little housing, right? And so I think there’s the, the push to try to get more housing however is possible, even if it means instituting this corridor urbanism. So I think a big question is how, how do you push back on that? Or how do you make sure that it’s balanced so that you allow as much housing as possible, but allow it also in more places. 
 

[00:10:34] Doug: Yeah, I, I think it’s necessary but not sufficient. We, we just need to put housing in places where people actually wanna live, has got to be more of our policy going forward. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do this when we’re in the midst of a crisis, and some of these strip mall areas and commercial corridors, hopefully aren’t quite so polluted road, backwater places. 

But many of them are. And the 30,000 cutoff is interesting ’cause many of the places that come to mind for me are in those smaller cities, the Mercer Islands of the world. And they won’t be affected by the bill. At least, unless they change that population threshold. 

The corridor’s approach is something that’s popular with Challenge Seattle and Chris Gregoire, the former governor of Washington, someone who’s, who’s very close with the governor, someone the governor said he has on speed dial, and is a great conduit for him. So, he jokes that housing, housing, housing are his top three priorities and he’s trying to do things and then this was a requested bill from him. 

But, it still seems like a bill that’s maybe a little behind the times. It’s something we still need, but we gotta be thinking about the next steps about how to get housing off of those busy corridors where people don’t actually wanna breathe the air or have their kids play outside. 
 

[00:11:51] Ryan: Yeah, or just get better at converting those corridors into places where people are safer and wanna spend more time. I think that’s a big question about this. We recently wrote about a proposal for State Route 99 through Snohomish County, which is gonna be subject to the new Complete Streets mandate, that was passed in 2021, requiring biking and pedestrian facilities to be evaluated for state highways. 

And so, if you’re gonna be creating a place that has bike lanes and transit lanes and is a little bit more of a pleasant corridor, but I haven’t seen necessarily a political will behind more intense treatments to actually make these places more walkable neighborhoods. 
 

[00:12:36] Doug: Yeah, I live three blocks off of Aurora and it makes a huge difference. Granted, a benefit of there being a hill there as well. But, I think if we’re only focused on those first few blocks, that’s not gonna really be that desirable of housing, that healthy of housing. And your point about these strip mall conversions being trickier than people think is well taken, ’cause there’s plenty of those on the map that we’ve been hearing about forever but haven’t fully happened. Whether, whether Northgate, which I think will happen eventually, or Totem Lake, some of these big malls that, that haven’t been converted yet. Even though, you know, there’s been huge civic dreams and big numbers in their planning schemes counted on for those. 
 

[00:13:16] Ryan: Amy, I know there’s a number of public safety bills that you’re tracking. What are the top ones that, that people should know about? 
 

[00:13:24] Amy: Yeah, one of the things I am interested in is whether the state is finally gonna move on the public defender problem, which we’ve reported on in the past. And basically there just aren’t enough public defenders in the state of Washington and they’re also working very long hours. They’re not very well paid. And so the State Supreme Court basically made new caseload standards to try to help make it more tenable. But those caseload standards mean they have to hire more lawyers, so it’s going to cost more. And Washington State is unusual in that right now the state doesn’t really contribute to the cost of public defense, which is a constitutional right. 

So the question the last few years has been, is the state gonna step forward and take some of that expense on, of course, with a budget deficit, nobody wants to. So, it’s an interesting question. I know Senator Jamie Peterson said last week at the state legislature preview for media that he was more interested in not having the state get directly involved in funding, but instead lift the property tax cap for counties, which is something that we’ve also talked about before. So that basically counties would be able to raise more money through property taxes in order to pay for public defense. So it’s gonna be interesting to see which avenue they choose to take, or if they kick it down the road another year, which is what they’ve been doing so far. 

Another bill that I’ve been following and will be following closely is the automated license plate reader bill. It is sponsored by Senator Yasmine Trudeau. It is trying to establish some rules around the usage of these license plate reader cameras, that we have been covering for the past year or so, that have a lot of data privacy issues. 

The most concerning reporting I think over the last year has been that we’ve been able to tell that many law enforcement agencies have been sharing their data with ICE, and ICE-related immigration activities. And also there was a report of the data being shared for a Texas law enforcement agency was looking for someone who had been seeking an abortion. So, data had been shared in that case as well. So, we, we know about these few cases, but in general we think that probably there’s a lot more going on that we don’t know about. This bill is trying to put some safeguards around the data. It’s still in progress. It’s supposed to have its first hearing towards the end of January. 

So, there are still some outstanding issues as to what the bill will actually say, but it’s something that I’m following very closely. 

And that’s SB 6 0 0 2, I believe, if people wanna track that. And I’ll be doing a deep dive analysis of exactly what’s in that bill and you know, also how it could be made stronger and better. 
 

[00:16:34] Ryan: And so obviously that bill is a direct response to what we’re seeing happening in the federal government, in terms of ICE behavior. Are there any other bills that you see the legislature putting forward to just directly respond to the pretty egregious behavior that we’re seeing at the federal level right now?  
 

[00:16:53] Amy: Yeah. The other one that’s getting a lot of press is the mask ban for law enforcement bill, which the governor has spoken about many times. Like I’ve seen people seem in general to, to have a lot of enthusiasm for it. I think it’s already had its first hearing. I don’t see any reason why it can’t be passed relatively quickly. 

I’m a little bit, maybe less. It’s not that I don’t think it’s a good bill or even a good idea, but I feel like we don’t know exactly what effect the bill will have in practice. And it seems kind of insufficient and I’m a little bit worried that we’ll have a quick pass of this bill and then not do anything else. 

But there’s a similar bill that passed in California, and there’s currently legal action around that. So, once that case resolves, we’ll have a better idea of what this bill would actually do in practice here in Washington. But right now it’s kind of in limbo in terms of whether or not it would be able to be enacted, how it would be enforced, who would enforce it, right? 

Who’s gonna go up to ICE agents and be like, actually, you can’t be wearing the mask. Would it be local law enforcement? Because I think that could be a problem. 
 

[00:18:07] Ryan: Yeah, I know Portland is also considering a bill like this right now. But it sounds like you think it might be a little bit more symbolic than anything. 
 

[00:18:15] Amy: I mean, we’ll see, I think it really depends on the court case. And yes, it does feel a little symbolic. And, like I said, I don’t think it’s a bad bill. I do think that there’s some value in, in stating one’s beliefs firmly. If, if that’s what the bill ends up achieving, I don’t think that’s nothing.

But I also would like to see more urgency from our lawmakers. And I don’t want anyone to be lulled into a false sense of security. 
 

[00:18:44] Ryan: Great. Well, like we said, there’s only 60 days in the session, which is very short. You know, I think it is clear that there are no budget years anymore. Every year is a budget year with everything that’s going on in the federal government. So it’s interesting to see that we’re just kinda going with the flow in terms of the 60 day session. 

The governor could call an emergency session anytime he wanted to, but we’re giving ourselves a very condensed timeline to get these very big proposals across the finish line. I think the first deadline is early February for committee bills. And so we’ll be tracking all of those and seeing what ends up falling by the wayside due to that, that short timeline. 
 

[00:19:25] Doug: Yeah. Ryan. One bill I was curious about circling back to housing a little bit, was the mobile dwelling units bill, House Bill 1443. I know that’s getting pushback from the Association of Washington Cities, which they often push back on housing capacity bills. But, do you think it has an actual shot, and how big of impact could that be? 
 

[00:19:46] Ryan: I think that bill definitely has a lot of potential. It’s a holdover from last year, so it’s already been kind of considered a little bit. So we might see some, some clear movement, since people already know what they’re, they’re dealing with. I think it’s seen as a very easy win in terms of letting people do what they want with their property. 

If they want to build a very cheap relative to a lot of other types of housing, essentially accessory dwelling unit, except it’s on wheels. But like you said, there’s some concern, mobile homes fall in a different category of tenant protections in Washington, and so it’s not clear who’s in charge of ensuring these things are up to code, whether they can be inspected, how cities are able to deal with these if there are problems. And so I think that’s an interesting element. 

Over the past couple years we have seen opposition from AWC to a lot of bills that wasn’t able to stop it. You know, parking reform was pretty opposed by them. Middle housing at one point was, was not really their favorite bill, but they, they were able to get across the finish line. So I’m interested to see whether they kind of are able to put their foot down and say this is too much for us. 
 

[00:20:58] Doug: And is it mostly a age in place expand your family kind of bill? Or is it being framed as helping with the homelessness crisis, like getting cheap units out the door quickly? 
 

[00:21:08] Ryan: I think it’s more, more just like giving people different options. I don’t see people proposing like a, you know, 50 unit MDU development or something like that. It’s like if you have a backyard and you want to be able to do something cheaply and efficiently with a utility hookup, not a full sewer connection, it’s a good option. 
 

[00:21:29] Doug: Well, another big development early this year that has massive budget implications for Washington State is the interstate bridge replacement project, which is an I-5 bridge to between Portland and Vancouver, Washington that has been on the wishlist of highway builders and lawmakers for decades here. 

And, you know, it felt like it was inevitable at a certain point, but then it turns out that there’s new budget estimates that are way larger than initially thought. Ryan, you broke this story, at least in this region. I know City Observatory got their hands on the data, but walk us through what, what happened here? 
 

[00:22:10] Ryan: Yeah, so this is essentially the biggest highway project in Pacific Northwest history. It is framed as a bridge replacement, but the scope has long been more than that. Five miles of expansion of I-5 to add two lanes, which they’re calling auxiliary lanes, seven interchanges and ramps and all this, as well as, you know, a bike walk path and a light rail extension of the existing yellow line, a MAX line. 

So, this has been slowly advancing. The two bridges that carry I-5 over the river are very old. You know, everyone’s concerned about what’s gonna happen. But they’ve been trying to jam all these different elements into this project. It was already the most expensive highway project in history, and now the cost estimates are anywhere from $13.5 to $19 billion, depending on whether they’re able to do a fixed span instead of a movable span bridge that lets boat traffic through. 

Washington and Oregon had already put forward a billion each for this. And they had gotten some pretty big federal grants. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell teed up a grant program in the 2021 infrastructure bill that was essentially just for this project, really big bridge projects, giving them a very large amount of money. 

But, even with that, they only have around 6 billion assembled and that includes tolls. And so, there’s not a whole lot of extra spare change in either states’ budget, especially Oregon, which is in really dire straits right now in terms of where their transportation budget is. They’re probably gonna repeal their transportation package that passed last year, which was very modest. 

And so have start over from square one, and so a lot of people are questioning whether this project is gonna be able to move forward at all. 
 

[00:24:03] Amy: One thing that really struck me about this story was that it only came to light that the budget had ballooned so much, because of a public records disclosure request that somebody made. What was going on with that? Why? Why the secrecy. 
 

[00:24:19] Ryan: Well, to provide the benefit of the doubt answer. It’s a very large project. There’s like dozens of different individual elements that they have to cost out and do their rigorous analysis. I think even if a final number wasn’t available, the fact that you’re in the 13- to 15-billion-dollar range is like something you should give people a heads up on. 

They spend around two years just being like, ‘we’re gonna have these cost estimates soon, but costs are going up, so you should be prepared for that.’ And without this, we were gonna probably go through another legislative session without this information. And so it’s a big issue to get your head around. 

And like I said, it’s unclear whether the two states are gonna be able to come up with any additional money for this. 
 

[00:25:07] Amy: Saying that they can’t find any additional money is, is there enough money to replace the bridge even and just take out everything else, or what would be another way forward? 
 

[00:25:19] Ryan: Well, that’s what Jake Fey, the chair of the House Transportation Committee in Washington told me last week. 
 

[00:25:26] Doug: And that’s a pretty big step for Fey, I believe, because he’s been one of the bigger proponents for keeping these highway expansion projects on the dockets and framing them as necessary even when they do sneak in some this expansion, if I’m remembering correctly. 
 

[00:25:43] Ryan: So Fey said that they have enough money to replace the bridge, knock the old ones down, just do a very minimal replacement project, but that’s not what the scope of this project is, and it hasn’t been for many years. And so they are trying to reuse the environmental documentation from the previous iteration of this project, which was pretty much the same thing, 10 lanes. 

It’s not clear to me at least whether you can just pull that out and just do this one little part. The light rail has gotten a lot of attention. It got called on Antifa Superhighway during the last congressional race in that district, which was the famous Joe Kent, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez race. 

I think it’s part of the project. You have a high capacity transit component. They looked at doing bus rapid transit. They settled on light rail, but like that is in there. So the question of whether you just phase that, do it later. It seems like you’re gonna have to redo your environment documentation, and we’ve been working on this for years. And it’s just not clear whether we’re gonna have to derail the entire thing. I don’t, I don’t see how we get to. And, the intense irony is that for years transportation advocates in Portland mostly, as well as some on the Washington side, sustainable transportation advocates, I should say, have been saying: ‘right size this, it’s too bloated.’ 

And now we’re at the 11th yard line and only because we are having a huge cost overrun are, they kind of saying: ‘Hey, maybe we need to right-size this.’ 
 

[00:27:17] Doug: Yeah, it, it only when their back is against the wall, for sure. I think the light rail’s a little disappointing in what they had envisioned. It sticks to the freeway, but obviously for multimodal advocates, it’s at least a foot in the door to be like, well now we have the crossing. 

We can look at expanding it later or figuring a way to maximize its value later, even if it’s not ideal places for transit-oriented development. 

I do think that in the longer term, there’s all these dreams about high speed rail, and this process has not inspired hope in that, maybe if we had started from scratch, we would be talking about how to make a high speed rail ready bridge instead of half-ass light rail ready bridge. 

Because it doesn’t feel like a huge win to really have. Relying on that old environmental study is also leaving you with 1990s or 2000s priorities. Now the dream’s a lot bigger, and this bridge isn’t gonna solve the I-5 transportation pinch in any stretch of the imagination, even with those extra lanes through Clark County. But high speed rail would be something that would scale and would meet travel demand in this corridor to a large extent. So yeah, they have to figure that out. 

And, the other thing that really struck me about this story was the extent that the US Coast Guard, again, is creating huge roadblocks to local projects that are really important. We saw this come up in 2022 when Sound Transit was trying to deal with the Ballard Link light rail planning. They wanted to do a bridge over Salmon Bay to get to Ballard. And then the Coast Guard comes in and says, you need 205 feet of vertical clearance because it came out later through our reporting that they wanted to make sure super yacht industry had a, a good foothold in Seattle, I guess in the other side of the bridge. 
 

That’s why you need whopping 205 feet of clearance even when the George Washington Bridge, which carries 99, was what sound transit had been working with as the amount of clearance they could provide. And you could do that with a fixed span, but it becomes astronomically more expensive to try to do 205 feet of clearance with a fixed span or if you’re adding a movable bridge, it’s also expensive. 

That’s what we see here with the Columbia River being a major thoroughfare for freight traffic and they’re the Coast Guard’s pushing them to go higher and that’s adding a lot to the budget. 
 

[00:29:45] Ryan: Yeah, I mean, it’s part of a larger issue where our standards are totally different than they were during the era when we were building a lot more things. Like, I just think of, speaking of light rail Ballard Link, the sizes of the stations for Westlake, something like five times as big as the existing Westlake Station, even though, we already have the exact same type of thing that we already would wanna build, but we can’t build it that small because the standards are totally different now 40, 50 years later. 

Exactly the same way that the bridges that exist now, you couldn’t build those today. And so in part, transit and highway projects are both subject to this very different environment for permitting things. And, you know, I’m happy to say that it’s slowing down a highway project that was gonna make the climate worse, but it’s kind of an across the board problem. 
 

[00:30:37] Amy: Well, and right now it might be preventing a highway project, but clearly it’s also preventing transit projects, right? Light rail or high speed rail that I think all three of us agree we really wanna see more of. 
 

[00:30:50] Ryan: A hundred percent. I think it’s a big reason why the costs for transit in the US are so much higher than they are elsewhere. 
 

[00:30:56] Doug: And the plans don’t connect either, right? Like you have this nice renaissance, or whatever you wanna call it, in downtown Vancouver. And they have this nice development and there’s this nice waterfront and then they wanna put a giant freeway bridge and interchange right on the edge of it. Like that’s not gonna help their downtown. That’s not going to promote more housing wanting to be there, more people to be in that housing. , So, figuring out how do you make your vision for your urban development match your transportation network? It feels like we let highways get whatever they want, and then everything else has to fit in between in the gaps. 

[00:31:32] Ryan: Yeah. Legislators are now gonna be forced to deal with this. I’m tracking to see what they’re saying about this. I don’t ultimately expect any decision to get made because it’s in a holding pattern. But I’ll be curious to see where things go from here. 
 

[00:31:50] Doug: Yeah, I would be surprised if they leave this in limbo, because one thing we’ve seen out of the playbook of these mega projects for highways is the project’s never done. It’s only broken into segments or put on pause and, and there’s this air of inevitability around them. 

So I don’t think they’re gonna admit defeat, but they might have to put it on the back burner for a while. 
 

[00:32:10] Ryan: Yeah, I mean, one of the things about this project is I’m worried about starting construction and then ending up running outta money in the middle of it. I don’t think people really realize how long the timeline is for this. They’re not expected to get done with this thing until the mid 2030s. 

And it’s gonna be a very long time of construction if they end up starting this. So what happens if, even if they’re able to assemble funding and then costs go up even more, and they’re in the middle of this 12-year project? I think we saw that with the 520 bridge in Seattle a little bit, but it’s not really sustainable for us to keep working on the same project over and over again in terms of our budget issues. 
 

[00:32:55] Doug: Yeah, it reminds me of how that the Tacoma section of I-5 the joke is it’s always under construction and they’ve finally got that to a place recently where everyone’s like, oh, there’s not construction there anymore. That could very much be the future for Clark County too, where it just becomes one of these 20 year stop and start projects. 
 

[00:33:12] Ryan: Well, let’s turn our attention to back to the city of Seattle. Doug and Amy, you guys got to do a pretty cool thing and go to City Hall and talk to the new mayor, Katie Wilson, for an exclusive 45-minute interview. How did that go? 
 

[00:33:27] Doug: Yeah, that was pretty fun. I don’t remember being up on the seventh floor of City Hall before. Bruce Harrell didn’t invite me, Jenny Durkan didn’t invite me. I don’t know how many more invites we’ll get, but it was cool to see. We got to go out in the little balcony there on the seventh floor and look down on the city. 

And, definitely was a cool feeling to see that coming together, to see some new opportunities emerging. Obviously there’ll be a lot of work to actually seize those opportunities, but yeah, it definitely felt like both energy and also they got a lot of balls up in the air and they’re, they’re starting to try to juggle them all. Amy was that your impression as well? 
 

[00:33:58] Amy: Yeah, there’s a lot going on here in Seattle. And I think it’s a heavy lift just to assemble a team and get started on things. That’s what we’re gonna be seeing is that beginning to get things moving, but it remains to be seen exactly how long that will take. 
 

[00:34:16] Doug: Yeah, we’re sorry you missed it. Ryan, you came down with the flu that week and, and you were supposed to be there as well, but I’m sure there’ll be more opportunities. 
 

[00:34:23] Ryan: Yeah, I was sad to miss it. I think a lot of people are watching for the Wilson Administration’s first moves. I think some people are surprised we haven’t seen an executive order or a big press conference yet. And you know, the comparisons to Zohran Mamdani are kind of hard not to draw. Obviously it’s a much bigger city government over there in New York City. But there have been a lot of policy rollouts. And so, what is your read? Do you think people are being a little too impatient? Or what? 
 

[00:34:54] Amy: I think things take the time they take. So, I think if, if people feel impatient, that’s understandable because there’s a lot of urgency right now. There’s a lot of important things that need to be done. But also I think giving someone a little grace at the beginning of their term is fair. 

I take your point too, that New York City is very different than Seattle. Just for starters, it’s a lot bigger, not just the city government, but just in general. I don’t wanna have expectations that are correlated to where we’re at. 
 

[00:35:25] Doug: Yeah, I think it’s too early to draw any firm conclusions. I definitely think that they have some pretty big aspirations, and maybe our focus on some of those big items rather than having some splashy thing that they can do in the first few days. And they have the state of the city speech next month, and I think that’ll be when we start seeing the big stuff really getting pushed, hopefully. And, maybe it’s still ducks in a row time. But, yeah, some interesting stuff if you read between the lines, and we asked about Wilson’s vision for SDOT and both in SDOT and at, the Seattle Police Department, she’s working with people who had already been there. She did remove the SDOT director, Adiam Emery and replaced her with another senior staffer who was actually over at the Waterfront, Angela Brady, as we talked about, I think in a previous episode. But, we asked her about that, and she stressed the value of continuity, especially in a time of wanting to prep for the World Cup and wanting to get some things done immediately, not wanting a period of upheaval.

And her reasons are similar for keeping Shon Barnes, not wanting to rock the boat when hiring is finally recovered for the police department and wanting to keep some things moving and collaborations with the civilian CARE department. So that’s kind of a gamble that some of those folks who’ve been there a long time will, will come over to her side of things, and can actually carry out culture change even if they’ve been in that culture for a while. 

I think it could work, but obviously there’s no guarantees. What are you feeling about the SDOT approach Ryan? 
 

[00:36:55] Ryan: Yeah, the fact that she moved so quickly to replace Adiam Emery, who, to be clear, was an interim director, never got confirmed by Bruce Harrell as an intentional choice, you know, I think was a clear signal of the importance of that department. But she did face a limited universe of people who would be able to start that job on day one. 

You mentioned that Angela Brady was at the waterfront, but she had been at SDOT before that and, and the Office of Waterfront works very closely with SDOT on a lot of projects. You know, it’s, it’s standalone department, but it is kind of within SDOT in some ways. 

So I think, she’s clearly signaling that she has big intentions for that department. But I’m waiting to see what the fruit of that is. We’ve got this huge transportation levy, a lot of investments that were already in the pipeline, and so it remains to be seen what her stamp of change looks like. 

I’m watching these big Vision Zero corridors and whether SDOT feels like they have a little bit more of a someone who has their back when it comes to making bold changes on these dangerous streets and not being afraid to reallocate space. But so far it’s only been a few weeks. So we don’t really have a whole lot of stuff to go off of. 

Doug, I’m curious for your reaction to her talking about Sound Transit. 
 

[00:38:17] Doug: Yeah, people seemed struck by the fact that she really emphasized regionalism in that answer. When I asked her about, how are you gonna approach these pretty weighty issues that Sound Transit. They’re deeply over budget on some of their long-term aspirations for expansion. 

And also it’s just generally the operations budget’s costing more than they thought. So they have to get their house in order. No time for her to have an easy first few months here in her Sound Transit board gig. She’s immediately gonna have to go into what they’re calling the “enterprise initiative” to solve their long-term financial woes. But yeah, I think focusing on regionalism is something that is somewhat a break from her predecessor Bruce Harrell, who he was kind of a hands off as a member somewhat. 

He didn’t have the most sterling attendance record, or he was there, but he didn’t say much. But there were some meetings where he really would have a big impact. That came up a few times, but one of them was like, once he had lost the primary, he suddenly wanted to be more out front on Sound Transit issues. 

And that might’ve happened anyways, because that was sort of the topic of the day was how to find budget savings on the various lines, including Ballard Link and West Seattle Link. And that’s a politically fraught topic, but he had this press conference where he threw down the gauntlet and said: ‘we’re not cutting our projects. They’re too important.’ 

And, it wasn’t really regionalism that came across from that press conference. So, that seems to be one big difference. Katie Wilson is still saying: ‘well, we’re not really wanting to cut our projects. We don’t wanna cut any of the projects.’ But more of a collaborative olive branch approach where you’re saying well, let’s figure it out together rather than all back into our corner and beat our chest about how important our particular projects are and how great our cities are. But just look more broadly than that. 

[00:40:00] Amy: I’ve been really interested in the debate about whether we should have one tunnel or two tunnels for light rail. So I was really interested that Katie Wilson just came right out and said that she thinks we need to tunnels, and it’s because of reliability of the system, right. Which certainly is a thing that we’re seeing in terms of the whole light rail kind of shuts down and you have to take a shuttle bus from one station to another station. 

It’s often on the weekends and so people are trying to go out and have fun, see their friends, whatever. And it can be really difficult or time consuming to use the transit network. So I thought it was interesting that she didn’t hedge at all, so she seemed pretty clear as to where she stood on that issue. 
 

[00:40:47] Doug: Yeah, she didn’t need time to get up to speed on that one. And that you’re right. That was a super interesting answer. And it’s very top of mind for riders right now because we are in the midst of a period of several weekend closures. The second weekend of January was one of those closures and it’s very disruptive. 

And if you thought you were gonna count on light rail suddenly, the agency itself says it might take a half hour longer, maybe less if you figure out a bus route that’s an alternative. But, you know, it’s disruptive and conceivably if you had two tunnels, you wouldn’t have to suffer through that quite so badly. 
 

[00:41:18] Ryan: Yeah, well the board set aside the two tunnel issue in December, right before Katie’s set to go on the board. I think we saw an interesting tactic from Dan Strauss who’s gonna be sitting on the board with Katie, more of a, I think a tactical decision, political, if you will, in terms of his framing of the second tunnel, which was, he used the analysis that Sound Transit produced to say: ‘Ballard would be fine without the second tunnel. We can get to Westlake connect to the rest of the system. The second tunnel is actually for all of you guys, for Everett, for Tacoma, for the Eastside, in terms of providing that redundancy. And so it was a little bit of a: Hey, if you guys think this is so important, then maybe you should pay for more of it. 

I thought that was pretty interesting. I don’t know how far it’s gonna go. The second tunnel is very unusual in that it is paid for by everybody proportionally to the riders that are expected to use it. Ballard has the biggest amount of riders. It’s the most useful line in the ST3 program. But it is beneficial to all the systems. And so it’s an interesting way to calculate that because ridership is what you want. So it’s like kind of punishing the area of the system that is expected to generate the most ridership a little bit, a little bit backwards, I think. 

So I don’t know if they’re gonna rethink that, but it does set up an interesting conversation about the payment. I don’t know that we’re gonna have a full reconsideration of the actual second tunnel issue. Now that we’ve kind of set it aside. 
 

[00:42:55] Amy: One of the other things that’s gonna be really important for Mayor Wilson is standing up housing, in order to try to alleviate some of the homelessness problem. And, you know, she made a campaign promise to stand up 4,000 new units by the end of her first term. So 4,000 units in four years. 

But she also is working against a clock, because of the World Cup that is coming in June and wanting to have a bunch of extra units, so that she can move people off the streets into safe and, more humane housing, as opposed to just sweeping them elsewhere in the city. 
 

[00:43:35] Doug: Yeah, and she was very careful, as she has been in other interviews, not to set a specific number beyond the 4,000 for her whole four year term, which is probably good politics. I mean, we saw with Mayor Harrell what happens when you set a target and then don’t meet it, and then you just start making up new definitions of words to try to cover up the fact you didn’t do it, such as like, ‘well, we identified those units. We didn’t build them, but we identified.’ And that’s how he approached his 2,000 goal for his first year. But yeah, I mean, it’s a bold goal. Interesting that they both set similar goals. She actually doubled his goal, granted giving herself more time. 

But it’ll be a big lift. She would stress that it was her number one priority, so she’s probably gonna move heaven and earth to try to make it happen. That wasn’t the only World Cup preparations though she had in mind. 
 

[00:44:22] Ryan: Yeah, so that’s the emergency immediate housing moves. But there’s also the long-term zoning issues and whether she’s gonna be able to break Seattle’s longstanding zoning dichotomy of the single family home zones separated out from the apartment districts. 

Doug, what was your kind of read on how she’s gonna be approaching the city’s zoning plan? 
 

[00:44:47] Doug: Yeah, she mentioned that she wanted to lean on the supplemental environmental impact statement, which is something that emerged as something they need to do because they kept adding stuff to the plan late in the process. So, you know, she’s taking advantage of this phased approach where they’re gonna keep the stuff that’s already in process and has the environmental work, they’re gonna keep that moving. But, they’re gonna try to use the, the fact they have to do this supplemental EIS to add some new stuff on there, where it won’t impact the timeline for the other things. 

So that was interesting. Definitely something she said in the campaign trail. And there’s a few different points in her interview where she said, ‘well, yeah, my position’s still the same.’ So, she’s definitely seems like someone who wants to hold to her campaign pledges. And just ’cause she’s gotten office and she’s seeing where things face obstacles doesn’t mean she’s gonna give up on them. 

I think that’ll probably mean things like wider corridors along transit corridors where we’re allowing apartments or at least larger buildings than are allowed there currently. It could mean more neighborhood centers, which is our term for these new kind of mini urban villages that we’re adding around the city. 

And Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rink proposed eight additional ones. And, that seems like something that Wilson would support, although she didn’t say that specifically in this interview. Those are things that were told they had to go through the supplemental EIS, and it sounds like they wanna do that and maybe more. But I know, Rico Quirindongo, the director of the planning department of the city recently spoke to this issue too, and I know you were tracking that, Ryan. So what did he say about this as well? 
 

[00:46:24] Ryan: Yeah, I think they were kind of on the same page. Very methodical approach to getting things lined up. They have a pretty packed work plan, on top of anything that the mayor would want to add on their plate. City council kind of overloaded the buffet during the comp plan process. 

And they had to go back and say: ‘we’re gonna have to do a lot more review of these things.’ Parking, trees. Of course we have to do a lot of tree work always. And then the neighborhood centers and things like that. And so I think a lot of people have been pushing Katie to reopen the comp plan. It’s clear that’s not gonna happen. We’re gonna let the comp plan kind of implement itself. And then build on that. And so I think the pace is gonna be more methodical than a lot of people would want, but ultimately I think it makes sense. 
 

[00:47:14] Doug: Another thing from the interview that seemed to jump out at our readers, at least based on what they were saying online, was when Amy, when you asked about the Office of Mass Engagement that New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is rolling out, you asked if she was planning something similar, she just said, not imminently. 

And then, then after the answer she kinda said, yeah, I’m just gonna be constantly compared to, to Mamdani, aren’t I? And you know, she was laughing as she said. So I think it was lighthearted and glib, but people were reading into that a little bit. Or maybe just thought it was funny as well. 

But, I think that is a joke that was probably true that she’s maybe sick of hearing about it or it’s just getting ready to hear about it for four years. But yeah, definitely it’s tough when you’re, you’re held up against someone who’s sort of becoming a little bit of a internet superstar, whatever you wanna call him. 
 

[00:48:00] Amy: Yes. She definitely was joking. And I think you know the reason that I asked that question is because I had heard her give an interview, I think right after she was elected, in which she talked about wanting to have a different strategy for communicating with the public with Seattleites. 

And with her background as an organizer, she’s repeatedly stressed how she wants to bring that kind of philosophy and approach to the mayor’s office. So I was wondering if there was kind of more concrete plans there beyond, beyond what I just said. And when I was preparing for the interview, I was doing a little research to think, you know, what could that look like? 

And it just so happened that Mayor Mamdani had just made this announcement about this new office, which I thought was a good example. And it’s about engaging more with communities. It’s about keeping in touch with the grassroots campaign that, that basically succeeded at getting him elected in the first place and keeping that alive and going for, you know, future campaigns, for future things that he wants to do that are big in the city, which I think is smart and strategic. 

And then he’s doing stuff like, he’s having a rental ripoff, which there are hearings that they’re gonna have across the city of New York where New Yorkers can share their rental horror stories. And then Mamdani has promised that, you know, they’ll consider those stories and try to make policy to address some of those stories. 

So I just thought these are creative ways to engage with the public and I wanted to know what her thinking was there. But I think the answer is we’re gonna have to wait and see. 
 

[00:49:40] Ryan: Well, it sounds like we’re waiting and seeing on a lot of things. We’re gonna be keeping busy over the next couple of months with the Wilson administration getting going and the legislative session pressing on. Before we go, we’re kind of in the middle of a little false spring outside in Seattle right now. 

It’s pretty nice. The sun is shining. I’m curious for what you guys, where do you head when you have the first sign of false spring? What is your first trip? 
 

[00:50:05] Amy: I really love Lincoln Park. Of course, you know, I live in West Seattle, so it’s very convenient for me, but I like to go down to the edge, by the water. Lincoln Park’s kind of on a hill. So there’s the forested part up above. And then there’s this nice walk by the water and I just love to go and walk all the way down the water and then all the way back, I find it very soothing. 
 

[00:50:28] Ryan: Yeah, I wish they could get that heated salt water pool open during the wintertime. 
 

[00:50:33] Amy: Yeah, that would be great. There is a water slide, which I always get excited about, even though I don’t swim there. 
 

[00:50:41] Ryan: It’s pretty fun. What about you, Doug? 
 

[00:50:44] Doug: Yeah, I always love the [Washington] Arboretum. Tough to go wrong with the arboretum, and there’s such a wide collection of trees and plants there that there’s always something that’s, you know, beautiful or flowering there. So, I try to get there in, in multiple seasons, since it’s a relatively easy place to bike to as well, since it’s on the Washington Loop. 

And not too far from me. So that’s the big one. I also love exploring Discovery Park, so I like Amy. I like the mega parks, in particular. But, yeah, I just try to get out in any way I can in the spring. What, what’s your favorite go-to one, Ryan. 
 

[00:51:19] Ryan: Well, you kind of took mine too. I’ve definitely become a arboretum regular with the G Line heading right there, which is pretty great. But I guess I’m gonna go with the waterfront. Always happy to get down there, but when it’s a nice day, pretty, pretty excited to be able to have that on our front porch for downtown. 
 

[00:51:38] Doug: and it keeps getting better too. 
 

[00:51:41] Amy: We’re just so lucky in general here in Seattle, we have so many parks that I feel like whenever I get… I wouldn’t say I get bored of them, but if I am like, oh, I need a little change, I have like a huge list of options. And there’s the big ones, and then there’s so many little ones that I, I feel like I could spend the rest of my life visiting all of them. 
 

[00:52:02] Doug: Yeah, I, I feel very lucky too. There’s always Green Lake, Carkeek, Golden Gardens. I try to keep it moving and on the waterfront, we are about to get a big refresh on the port side of the waterfront, in Centennial Park. So I just bike through there and it’s a pile of dirt right now. But you can tell that they’re getting closer to planting things and it being ready to show it out for the World Cup people. And then Seattleites for ensuing months. 
 

[00:52:27] Ryan: Yeah, you’re right. I, I actually have been kind of avoiding that area subconsciously. I think I’m gonna be going down there a lot more once it finally gets, gets open. 

Well, thanks so much for joining us here on The Urbanist podcast. Happy to come into your ear holes every two weeks. Hope you have a great day. And remember to get outside. 

The post Urbanist Podcast: Olympia Preview and a Highway Boondoggle first appeared on The Urbanist.

Sponsored by Senator Yasmin Trudeau (D-27th Legislative District, Tacoma) and Senator Jeff Holy (R-6th LD, Spokane), Senate Bill 6002 – titled the Driver Privacy Act – would add guardrails to the use of license plate cameras, including how long data is retained and how data is shared.

Should the bill pass, Washington would join 23 other states with laws on the books regulating the way ALPR data can be collected, accessed, and shared.

“These license plate cameras are powerful surveillance tools, and I think most people would agree there should be clear rules governing how the data collected on all of us is stored and accessed,” Trudeau said in a press statement. “We have a balancing act before us. We want law enforcement to have the tools they need to solve crime, but we also need to respect community surveillance concerns and ensure the use of this data aligns with our values as a state.”

Trudeau told The Urbanist she’d been tracking the data use and misuse of ALPRs for some time, specifically citing a University of Washington (UW) report that came out in October that showed several Washington agencies had enabled either direct sharing with or back or side door access to the U.S. Border Patrol (USBP).  

The chair of the Members of Color Caucus and the first Muslim American to serve in the state legislature, Trudeau also cited her experience at the Attorney General’s office, working on data privacy concerns and consumer protections, and her recent advocacy for immigrant issues.

“Overall, I think the bill puts forth a lot of protections that are really important in terms of disrupting the status quo right now in Washington State, which is that there are no regulations,” said Tee Sannon, the ACLU of Washington’s Technology Policy Program Director. “The bill does some important things around identifying agencies that can use ALPRs, prohibiting them from using the readers for things like tracking people for engaging in constitutionally protected activity, and also has some common sense data protections.”

Sannon said the bill puts into place a requirement for law enforcement to obtain a felony probable cause warrant before searching old ALPR data for a particular case. 

While Californian law enforcement agencies have repeatedly broken their state law governing ALPR usage, Trudeau thinks the three paths of enforcement included in her bill might give the policy more teeth. 

The bill contains criminal penalties (a gross misdemeanor) for any individual who violates the policy and a civil right of action so people who have been harmed by a breach of the policy can sue. Violations of the bill will also be subject to the consumer protection act, which would allow the state to get involved if specific vendors are behaving in a way that’s harming Washingtonians.

Sannon said Trudeau’s bill compares positively to the one in California.

“There’s this audit requirement that agencies need to conduct an internal audit once a year to review all of the access that’s been taking place to their LPR systems,” Sannon said. “And coupled with the enforcement mechanisms and the penalties […] I think that this actually makes it a strong provision, because then it basically means that agencies can’t claim that they weren’t aware that access was taking place.”

“I think that we have the strongest enforcement in this bill,” Trudeau said. “As far as every mechanism we have available to us to both deter and respond to misuse, that’s what we have in the bill.”

In addition to guardrails to guide agencies’ usage of ALPR technology and enforcement mechanisms, Trudeau’s bill states that data from ALPRs would no longer be subject to disclosure under the Public Records Act except in the case of “bona fide research.” This clause specifically addresses a recent court ruling in Skagit County Superior Court that found that videos captured by Flock ALPR cameras are public records and must be disclosed.

Several Washington cities paused or delayed their ALPR programs while waiting for the above verdict, which continues to raise privacy concerns. 

While the bill doesn’t explicitly mention whether audit trail data from ALPRs would still be subject to public record requests, Trudeau said this data would still be available to researchers and journalists. According to Trudeau’s office, this information should include the user’s identity, date of access, search terms, and sharing details, and the audit trail is supposed to be preserved for two years. 

Journalistic outlets such as 404 Media, independent privacy watchdogs, and UW researchers have been using public records requests of these audits over the past year to determine that local agencies have been sharing their ALPR data with federal immigration agencies, as well as a Texas agency searching for an abortion seeker. Language added to the bill to make more explicit this intention about the audits would strengthen the bill further. 

Trudeau spoke about the importance of the bill for all Washingtonians.

“This is something that really, if I could just emphasize, we should all care,” Trudeau said. “This should not be a partisan thing. This should not be an immigrant issue. We have to do better by our personal information, and we’re watching in real time what happens when we have not been proactive.”

Data security in the age of ICE surveillance

License plate readers were first invented in the United Kingdom in 1976, but the systems didn’t enter into widespread use at that time because of high costs and accuracy issues. Even now, a recent report found that 1 in 10 ALPR readings contains an error, which can have disastrous consequences.

However, the cost of the cameras came down in the mid-2010s, allowing more, and smaller, law enforcement agencies to consider their use more seriously. A survey by the International Association of Chiefs of Police published in 2022 found that 40% of agencies reported using a license plate reader system.

In the last few years, Flock Safety – one of the biggest providers of license plate reader technology – began expanding its network of license plate readers in Washington State, with an estimated 80 cities, six counties, and three tribes using Flock ALPRs. 

In May 2025, 404 Media reported that Flock’s data was being shared with federal agencies for immigration enforcement purposes. After The Urbanist reported that the King County Housing Authority’s (KCHA’s) Flock data appeared to have been shared for immigration enforcement as well, KCHA chose to discontinue their Flock pilot. And U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) discovered that Flock had run a pilot (since discontinued) that shared its data with federal agencies like the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) without properly informing its clients.

In October, the UW Center for Human Rights published its report finding that several law enforcement agencies in Washington State had been sharing their Flock data with federal agencies involved in immigration enforcement. 

Under sustained criticism, Flock has been changing its policies in ways that appear to be circumventing increased transparency instead of improving it.

Experts have been warning the audit data might not always provide a necessary check on what has become a massive and nation-wide surveillance network. And when, earlier in January, several police departments accidentally leaked information about millions of their surveillance targets, Flock responded by limiting the information available in audit logs.

As 404 Media reported, “In recent weeks Flock severely limited the amount of information available on its audit logs, which are designed to be a transparency tool, raising questions about how much information journalists, regulators, and government agencies will be able to get about police use of Flock cameras in the future.”

In December, Flock CEO Garrett Langley claimed that criticism of Flock and its data privacy issues constituted an attack on law enforcement. In January, Flock told 404 Media that the concern over their data privacy policies amounted to “activists trying to let murderers go free.”

Seattle and Tacoma use license plate readers from Flock’s competitor Axon. While Flock’s data privacy issues have featured heavily in the media over the past several months, other license plate reader providers, including Axon, Genetec, and Motorola, have similar privacy concerns. 

The ACLU of Washington puts the stakes of the surveillance net created by these companies in stark terms: “The risks from unregulated ALPRs are particularly significant in this current moment when the federal government seeks to silence dissent and go after political enemies. The Trump Administration is performing a retribution campaign that seeks to silence and punish critics who oppose the president’s agenda.”

Remaining issues

One of the most hotly contested provisions in Trudeau’s bill is how long agencies can retain the data collected by their license plate readers. 

Across Washington state, 30 days has become a bit of a standard, although the Seattle Police Department (SPD) retains their license plate reader data for 90 days. Data privacy advocates have asked for a much shorter retention time, pointing to New Hampshire as an example, which only retains the data for three minutes. 

In its current form, the bill allows agencies to retain the license plate data for 72 hours. Trudeau said the Institute for Justice, a nonpartisan group, suggested 24 hours, but law enforcement agencies are saying they need at least 30 hours. 

Sannon said the ACLU of Washington has pushed for this number to be as low as possible. She also emphasized that the data being deleted after the time limit is not data associated with any crime, which would come under one of the many exceptions for retention outlined in the bill. 

While there is language in the bill that says it takes effect immediately upon passage, it gives the attorney general until July 1, 2027 to develop model policies for license plate readers and sets a deadline of December 1, 2027 for agencies using the readers to adopt a consistent policy based on the model and start their annual reporting. Given the data sharing that has already been happening, this delay could be a cause for concern.

License plate readers would be banned from use around facilities providing protected healthcare or conducting an immigration matter, as well as around schools, places of worship, courts, and food banks. This requirement should be relatively easy to meet for fixed license plate cameras. However, for those cameras attached to vehicles, such as all of SPD’s ALPRS, figuring out how to stop recording at certain locations while an officer is driving around the city could be a challenge, begging the question as to whether mobile ALPRs can be used responsibly in a sanctuary city. 

Sannon says her biggest concerns with the bill right now are the provisions allowing agencies within Washington direct access of each others’ license plate data and allowing direct data access to third party vendors, many (if not all) of whom aren’t located within the state. 

“If this becomes a regional network [in Washington], then it’s also super charging law enforcement’s ability, even within the state, to tap into different local jurisdiction data and make it available at a much broader level than people, and I think councils, intended it to be accessed,” Sannon said.

Out-of state vendors could be directly subpoenaed by ICE or DHS for the data to which they have access. Sannon said this would allow agencies to bypass the Shield Law, which protects Washingtonians’ access to reproductive care, and the Keep Washington Working Act.

It’s possible some of these concerns could be addressed in future drafts of the bill. 

Just the first step

Given Flock’s recent move to severely curtail information available in its audits, advocates view this bill as simply one step in addressing concerns around license plate readers and the broader data privacy landscape.  

Another UW report released earlier this January showed that ICE and U.S. Border and Customs Patrol likely still have access to data from the Washington Department of Licensing. Advocates are calling for state agencies to start collecting less data in response. 

As ICE continues to build out its nationwide, comprehensive surveillance apparatus, the overarching conversation around data privacy will be continuing in Olympia.

“I’ve watched what’s happened a lot on the privacy front, more broadly than this bill,” Trudeau said. “Right now we don’t have any data privacy law in Washington State. I think we should continue to have concerns that any efforts around data privacy legislation have predominantly been crafted and pushed by the very same tech companies that don’t want enforcement permissions. So I hope that this gets folks to pay attention to a larger conversation about how their information is being used and misused. But I think in this instance, where I have a chance to make a difference and protect people’s information as much as I can, that’s what I’m going to do here.”

But not everyone agrees that the bill goes far enough. Privacy advocates are concerned this bill would encourage cities that have put their license plate reader systems on hold to move forward with more surveillance.

“The bill would be an improvement on the current situation, but sanctioning bulk data collection regardless of suspicion risks further normalizing surveillance architecture, chipping away at our rights and freedoms,” local anti-surveillance group DeFlock Redmond told The Urbanist. “An outright ban on the use of ALPRs and other dragnet mass surveillance technologies by law enforcement would be preferable.” 

The bill will have its first hearing in the Senate’s Law & Justice committee on Tuesday at 8am.

The post State Lawmakers Move to Regulate License Plate Readers, Fearing ICE Misuse first appeared on The Urbanist.

In 2023, the state’s landmark middle housing bill and one of the most permissive accessory dwelling unit (ADU) bills in the nation raised the floor on minimum residential density. The legislature followed up with a full legalization of single room occupancy buildings in apartment zones the following year, and in 2025 knocked out three other major reforms: parking reform, transit-oriented development (TOD), and rent stabilization.

With so much already accomplished and limited time to advance bills in 2026, the pace of action on the issue of housing this year is expected to slow. The number of housing bills that were prefiled ahead of the session’s first day Monday was much lower than it had been during those banner years on housing, and the scope of those bills have turned from sweeping to wonky and targeted.

While the legislature had been tackling the elephants in the room — exclusionary zoning, outdated development standards, and costly government mandates — now it’s turning its attention to the thousand paper cuts that make housing in Washington more expensive.

“There’s still more to do, but I think that in terms of these really, really big regulatory regimes, we’ve sort of put those in place, and it’s less the cities are pushing us, and more like we need the state to write the model code,” Representative Julia Reed (D-36th, Seattle), the author of 2025’s landmark TOD bill, told The Urbanist. “We need the rule-making process to play out. We need some of the actual enforcement process to take place.”

Legislators are expecting more space to focus on the nitty gritty.

“So that’s why you don’t see a rent stabilization [bill] in this session, or, a TOD or an [HB] 1110 because, we’ve been really successful in getting this done, which is really great,” Reed added. “It also means there’s some things on the edges that you know didn’t get done because we were really focused on some of these bigger bills.”

Senator Jessica Bateman (D-22nd, Olympia), chair of the housing committee in that chamber, cited another reason legislators aren’t tackling as many major initiatives in 2026: the state of the budget. With a significant budget gap to fill over the next two months, proposals that come with a cost to state government will face a high bar to clear.

“Legislation that costs money this year, there’s going to be a fine-tooth comb process for reviewing those; they have to have a lot of merit,” Bateman said. “Because of the budget situation that we’re dealing with, anything that we add to the bucket of costs is going to be something that we have to figure out how we address it, by revenue or cuts. And we made a tremendous amount of cuts last year, and that’s not something any of us are looking forward to.”

Strip malls into housing?

This zoning bill likely to make the biggest splash this year is SB 6026, which would require mid-sized cities and urban counties in Washington to allow residential uses in any areas that are zoned for commercial businesses. Sponsored by Senator Emily Alvarado (D-34th, West Seattle) at the request of Governor Bob Ferguson, the bill would encourage the redevelopment of underutilized commercial properties, and ban cities from requiring ground floor retail spaces within those development projects.

“Washington needs to make it easier, and more affordable, to create more housing units of all kinds — faster,” a release from Ferguson’s office touting the bill stated. “This is one way to increase access to affordable housing. For example, an abandoned strip mall or shuttered big-box store could be turned into housing without having to go through the process of changing its zoning to residential.”

Another housing bill from 2021, HB 1220, is already forcing cities to reckon with how much land could potentially be rezoned to accommodate denser housing, with many of those cities looking at commercial zones located in places that have long been neglected. Woodinville, for example, is set to rezone a swath of commercial property along a state highway to accommodate multifamily development, a move that brought criticism from King County’s affordable housing committee from the perspective of equity and environmental justice.

As one of the bill’s co-sponsors, Bateman acknowledged that many areas zoned commercial today are close to major arterial roads, which means new residents added to those areas would be forced to contend with disproportionate amount of pollution, noise, and traffic safety issues. But she sees the idea as providing the type of flexibility around zoning that will be necessary to truly start building at the scale Washington needs to.

“We’ve seen the status quo before we passed all of these historic housing bills — you saw cities that really concentrated a lot of their multifamily [housing] on the edge of town, next to arterials or next to commercial industrial and that’s not really the vision that I see for this bill,” Bateman said. “I see this as freeing up and providing flexibility where currently none exists. You’re still going to have to take into account those types of scenarios and situations, but not simply just having a categorical rule that you cannot have housing in some of these areas, I don’t think makes sense, and so we’re looking for flexibility in that. Obviously, we still want places that are livable and walkable.”

SB 6026 is set to get its first hearing this Friday, at 10:30am in the Senate housing committee.

Elevators and stairs

One of last year’s closely watched housing bills is almost certain to return in 2026: the first legislation attempting to revamp residential elevator standards anywhere in the U.S. Put forward by Senator Jesse Salomon (D-32nd, Shoreline), SB 5156 would have directed the state’s department of Labor and Industries to legalize smaller elevators in all buildings six stories or shorter that include 24 units or less. With existing requirements for elevators to be large enough for a full 24-inch by 84-inch stretcher, many smaller multifamily buildings are being built with fewer elevators than they might otherwise, or oftentimes no elevator at all.

The bill met heavy resistance from both firefighter groups and the unions representing elevator mechanics, which have pushed to maintain existing standards for elevators — unique to the U.S. and Canada — that maintain their tight control over the market. Rather than directly implement a change, SB 5156 is likely to be modified to request changes to elevator standards from the state building codes council.

“This year, I think the track we’re going to take is to just kick it to the building codes council to adopt smaller elevator standards — that will be less controversial,” Salomon told The Urbanist. “The original bill was tasked with coming up with and adopting European elevator standards. That’s a lift. That was more of a message to regulators on the national level just hopefully start looking at that.”

The Sightline Institute has a new video laying out the case for elevator reform.

Also in the vertical circulation space, HB 2228 would legalize scissor stairs as a type of egress allowed in multifamily construction. This would allow builders to fit more housing in the same-sized building by wasting less space on stairs and hallways as they meet the requirement to provide two separate exits in the case of fire. Scissor stairs are quite common in places like Vancouver, B.C., but have not yet been legalized throughout the U.S. This bill is sponsored by Rep. Janice Zahn (D-41st, Bellevue), who joined the legislature last year after serving on the Bellevue City Council for nearly a decade.

“Scissor stairs allow for less space dedicated to stairs, hallways, and elevators in a building and more space for living space. This allows for the entire building to be skinnier or more compact than the buildings we typically build in Seattle, which saves on the amount of land needed to construct the building and the overall construction cost because one is constructing a smaller building,” housing advocate Markus Johnson wrote in an op-ed in The Urbanist last year.

HB 2228 also gets a first hearing this Friday morning, in the House’s local government committee.

Another bill set to return from last year is HB 1443, which would allow property owners to build mobile dwelling units (MDUs), a movable home with its own utility connections, usually added next to an existing home on a residential lot. Sponsored by Rep. Mia Gregerson (D-33rd, Burien), the bill received approval in two House committees but never reached the floor.

“It’s one of the most economical forms of housing for people,” Bateman said. “We’ve worked on accessory dwelling units, middle housing, all these different housing types and varieties, with the goal of providing options for people. And this is a really great option.”

The idea of allowing MDUs brought significant opposition from the Association of Washington Cities in 2025, over concerns that the dwelling units fall into a gray area of housing types and that local governments wouldn’t have very many tools to be able to regulate them.

“Although the bill was amended in several ways, it still allows an RV or pop-up trailer — now two — to park in every residential driveway and allow someone to live in it for an undefined period,” the local government advocacy group wrote of the bill last February. “Except for providing specifics on utility connections and inspections, the bill prohibits inspection of the ‘residence.’ Who safeguards the living conditions? Except for tiny houses with wheels, the rest of ‘mobile dwellings’ are not designed as permanent housing. These vehicles are designed for temporary camping and are prone to mold over time. Are these folks considered tenants? The bill does not provide protection under the Landlord and Tenant Act.”

Housing funding and legal liability

Zoning and development regulations are just one piece of the puzzle of getting more housing projects to pencil, with issues around financing now looming after Washington’s recent housing moves. One bill put forward this year to tackle the need to unlock dollars for affordable housing is SB 6028, also put forward by Alvarado. It would set up a revolving loan fund, with builders eligible to borrow dollars if they include housing affordable to households making 80% of a county’s area median income or below, with the projects that include the most affordable housing deemed to be more competitive for the loan dollars.

Additionally, the legislature is set to take another crack at condominium reform this session. Last year, lawmakers took a small step toward addressing one of the biggest barriers hindering condo development in Washington: strict liability standards that often mean lengthy lawsuits. This in turn has pushed many developers out of the condo market. Lawmakers adopted incremental reforms that exempt condo builders from “implied warranties of quality” that apply to larger condo buildings if their building is two stories or fewer, with a max of 12 units.

HB 2304, sponsored by Rep. Jamila Taylor (D-30th, Federal Way) expands that to four stories, making it much more feasible to construct a small multiplex development and sell the units as condos.

While few bills will likely garner the banner headlines seen in 2023 and 2025, this year’s proposals all push in the same direction: making it more feasible for builders to be able to make headway toward the more than one million new homes that Washington is projected to need over the next two decades, particularly if it wants to make a dent in its affordability crisis.

“We have done most of the big policies for sure, and we continue to hear, it’s not enough,” Rep. Davina Duerr (D-1st, Bothell), chair of the House’s local government committee, told The Urbanist. “I’m still hearing complaints about the permitting processes and how long the timelines are. We have to remember, though, just because we passed something doesn’t mean it’s been implemented yet. So a lot of these things we passed, but they’re not in play yet, or making a difference. A lot of the permitting reforms that we did were only implemented this summer, so it’s too early to know, but it’s also a very difficult sort of funding environment too. So we continue to chip away.”

The post 2026: The Year the Washington Legislature Catches Its Breath on Housing first appeared on The Urbanist.

Ferguson did signal support for instituting an income tax on millionaires, but his proposed tax would not go into effect until 2029. The governor said the delay was necessary to set up infrastructure to collect the tax and weather expected legal challenges to ensure the tax is collectible. However, some fellow Democrats have questioned whether such a long runway is necessary to get off the ground.

Ferguson had to bridge a new $2.3 billion budget deficit that developed since the end of 2025’s legislative session. 

“We are facing falling revenue, rising costs, and budget cuts and chaos coming from the Trump administration,” Ferguson told the press. 

State agencies made $2 billion in additional “urgent” budget requests for this period, of which Ferguson chose to include $700 million. In total, Ferguson’s budget proposal raises the state’s total expenditures by $1.2 billion. 

Ferguson did choose to backfill some of the recent federal funding losses, including SNAP food benefits for people without legal immigration status, Planned Parenthood funding to continue providing Washingtonians with reproductive health care, and funding to help people who would have immediately lost their Medicaid (Apple Health) coverage upon passage of Trump-backed H.R. 1 earlier this year. The proposal also maintained a premium subsidy program that helps people afford Obamacare health plans, the cost of which are going up an average of 21% for 2026. 

While the budget proposal does include funding for some H.R. 1 impacts on the state–namely, for implementing SNAP work requirements and paying for more of SNAP’s administrative costs – it doesn’t address the needs of people who will lose their SNAP and Medicaid benefits at the end of 2026. The state estimates that over 620,000 Washingtonians will be impacted by work requirements and changes to redeterminations for Medicaid, for example, while the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates H.R. 1 will lead to 430,000 additional Washingtonians becoming uninsured. 

In order to balance the budget without adding new revenue, Ferguson greenlit around $800 million in cuts, including cuts to education and health care. While Ferguson didn’t reintroduce his proposal from earlier in 2025 to furlough state employees, cuts at state agencies are likely to result in layoffs. 

Ferguson used $1 billion, or about half, of the state’s rainy day fund, which is meant to help bridge budget challenges during emergencies. This move leaves $1 billion remaining to deal with future emergencies, which could include more federal cuts and economic troubles.

To the dismay of environmental groups, Ferguson also used the bulk of the additional funds from the Climate Commitment Act – $569 million – to pay for the state’s Working Families Tax Credit, which had previously been paid for by the state’s general fund. 

Ferguson did propose removing two tax exemptions for large corporations. He wants to end a preferential business and occupation (B&O) tax rate for prescription drug wholesalers, saving the state $26 million per year, and a sales tax exemption for data centers purchasing replacement equipment, saving $63 million in 2027. 

Ferguson left the sales tax exemptions for new data center construction and the initial purchase of data server equipment in place. 

The state’s November 2025 revenue forecast showed revenue collections up $105 million compared to September’s forecast, and Ferguson expressed optimism that February’s forecast might improve a bit further. 

If any additional revenue materializes, the legislature will be able to work it  into the final supplemental budget hammered out during next year’s session, which starts January 12 and lasts 60 days.

Cuts to education and health care

Ferguson’s budget proposal makes further cuts to education and health care in the state. 

Earlier this year, the legislature agreed to postpone the eligibility expansion under the Fair Starts for Kids Act for subsidized child care and early learning programs until after 2029. The state budget passed earlier this year also imposed a 1.5% cut to public universities and decreased the state’s share of compensation for employees at public higher education institutions.

In addition, higher education has been subject to repeated attacks by the Trump administration this year.

In the new budget proposal, Ferguson calls for an additional 3% cut to the University of Washington and Washington State University, and a 1.5% cut to other regional universities and community and technical colleges. 

A brief from the University of Washington says this proposal would cut $15.8 million from their budget per year, in addition to a $3.5 million cut for administrative services. 

Under Ferguson’s proposal, higher education wouldn’t be the only target of education cuts. A planned increase in per-student funding for school districts with lower property values (who therefore can’t raise as many funds via property tax levies) wouldn’t go into effect. Signups in the Working Connections child care program would be capped, and 1,816 slots for the Transitions to Kindergarten program for four-year-olds would be eliminated.

The Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program, on the other hand, would expand, but only due to private funding provided by Ballmer Group Philanthropy, founded by former Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer and his wife, Connie. The group announced it would pledge up to $170 million annually to add more slots to the program, but for the 2026-2027 school year, only $34.5 million will be spent to add 2,000 additional slots.

“Unfortunately, this budget proposal takes an austerity approach,” State Superintendent Chris Reykdal wrote in a statement. “While that’s a common response to financial challenges, what’s troubling is that we know so much about income inequality and tax inequality in our state, and we can’t keep putting budget proposals forward that don’t take that inequality into account. This budget, like others before it, closes the holes in Washington’s budget on the backs of public services. This is a false narrative. The idea that we either need to cut from one direct service that our communities rely on in order to fund another public service is wrong.”

Reykdal said Washington state is ranked 40th in the country for the percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP) reinvested in K-12 public schools. 

Meanwhile, The Seattle Times reported that Ferguson wants to shift reimbursement rates for assisted living facilities back to 2022 levels, which the Washington Health Care Association said could cost these facilities almost $148 million.

Ferguson’s proposal also makes changes to a Medicaid drug pricing program that the Washington Association for Community Health says will cost already straining health centers more than $100 million annually while only saving the state an estimated $7.5 million. These health centers expect demand to increase as more people lose their health insurance coverage. 

“I’m providing a road map to the legislature,” Ferguson told the press. “This is, of course, the first step in a conversation about how best to balance our budget. Legislators will, of course, have their own ideas.”

Ideas about new revenue

The new revenue idea that appears to be gaining the most momentum is an income tax on Washington residents who make more than $1 million in a year. Charging 9.9% on adjusted annual gross income over $1 million, the tax is expected to apply to fewer than 0.1% of Washingtonians. It is estimated to raise $3 billion per year. 

Ferguson has come out in full-throated support of this idea — albeit on his own timeline. “We are facing an affordability crisis,” Ferguson said to the press. “It is time to change our state’s outdated upside down tax system to serve the needs of Washingtonians today, to make our tax system more fair, millionaires should contribute more towards our shared prosperity.”

Ferguson has been clear that no proceeds from his tax proposal would be collected until 2029, meaning that his 2026 supplemental budget proposal relies entirely on cuts and fund reallocation to balance. Indeed, this late collection date will mean no money would be collected from the so-called “millionaires” tax during Ferguson’s first term in office. 

How the proceeds from the tax would be spent is up for debate. Ferguson would like to spend the money to expand the Working Families Tax Credit, give tax relief to small businesses, reduce the state’s sales tax on certain types of items, and give more funding to K-12 education. 

Other lawmakers are interested in backfilling federal cuts to critical services like Medicaid, health insurance subsidies, and SNAP, as well as education. 

Rep. Shaun Scott (D-43rd Legislative District, Seattle) has introduced a different tax proposal to help backfill federal cuts that would go into effect mid-year. Modeled after Seattle’s JumpStart payroll expense tax on companies with both large payrolls and highly paid employees, the tax could raise up to $3 billion a year. Scott intends the money to go into a Well Washington Fund that would invest in important programs from which the federal government is divesting, which could include cash assistance programs, higher education, health care, and housing.

“The Well Washington Fund asks corporations to join in with their employees in contributing to the social safety net, and just as the federal additional Medicare tax helps to fund vital health services across our country, the Well Washington Fund will support those in poverty, the aged, and students in Washington State,” Scott said at a press conference.

Ferguson said he is “not a big fan” of a state-wide payroll expense tax.

Scott is also introducing a bill that would restore funding to the state’s wildfire response account by ending a tax break for big banks. 

Other lawmakers are also eager to search for new revenue.

Rep. Julia Reed (D-36th Legislative District, Seattle) has introduced a bill that would remove a tax cap on big tech companies in order to “provide tuition free higher education to all working and middle class families in WA.” 

Rep. Noel Frame (D-36th, Seattle) introduced a wealth tax in the 2025 session that received a last minute ‘yes’ vote in the Senate. This wealth tax would tax certain assets, like stocks and bonds, over $50 million in value. 

The Northwest Progressive Institute, a local progressive think tank, has compiled an entire list of tax tweaks the legislature could pursue to increase state revenue. 

Washington’s legislators will convene on Monday, January 12 to debate and pass the state’s 2026 supplemental budget, determining whether it will be balanced on cuts and emergency funds alone or whether new revenue will be a part of the picture. 

The post Ferguson’s 2026 Budget Queues Steep Cuts, Pushes Millionaires Tax to 2029 first appeared on The Urbanist.

Washington’s first foray into providing cash rebates to spur new e-bike purchases left more than $1.6 million in unspent funds on the table after rebates were redeemed at lower-than-expected rates, a new state-produced report released earlier this month has revealed. The leftover dollars, which are likely to be rolled into the amount disbursed with the next round of rebates, remained on hand despite the fact that nearly 35,000 Washingtonians signed up for a chance to receive a rebate but didn’t.

The state launched its “WE-bike instant rebate program” this past spring after securing funding via a legislative earmark in 2023. The program allowed state residents to sign up for the chance at a $1,200 rebate or $300 rebate. The larger rebate was reserved for lower income households and required proof that a household is earning less than 80% of their county’s area median income (AMI) in order to qualify. The goal was to enable more residents to access an additional pollution-free mobility option, aided by funding from the state’s Climate Commitment Act.

Despite the added paperwork, 55% more potential bike owners applied for the $1,200 rebate during the two-week application period in April compared to the $300 rebate, which meant that only 10% of applicants successfully scored the larger discount. But of those who did, 84% followed through and made a bike purchase — in contrast with just 24% of those who won the smaller $300 rebate.

Under a legislative mandate, 40% of the total rebate funding was intended for the pool of $300 rebates, but in the end less than 13% of the total dollars handed out went to those applicants, after a sizable majority let theirs expire without buying a bike.

Despite offering more than twice as many $300 rebates via random lottery than $1,200 rebates, the state saw 1,880 rebates worth $1,200 redeemed, compared to just 1,087 rebates that were worth $300. Clearly, the larger rebates provided winners with a much bigger incentive to see their purchases through. The unspent dollars could have helped more than 1,000 more low-income Washingtonians to purchase an e-bike

This first attempt at rebate distribution, which comes on the heels of other programs elsewhere in the US, offers some major lessons learned for the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT). In rolling out a rebate program from scratch, the department faced an impatient public and had to significantly tamp down expectations for the program, given the relatively small pool of money that was set to be available.

The report notes that low redemption rates have been seen elsewhere when rebates around $300 were offered, citing a San Francisco bay area program and a Tacoma program, which was offered to residents who live along I-5 at the same time as the statewide WSDOT program.

“[T]he $300 rebate appears to have been insufficient for many recipients, suggesting that some explored purchasing an e-bike but ultimately found the cost prohibitive,” it concludes. “With prices expected to rise further due to recent tariffs […] these affordability barriers are likely to become even more pronounced for lower-rebate recipients.”

The limited program clearly did provide significant benefits. As part of the rollout, WSDOT partnered with the University of Washington to survey rebate program participants, finding that only 6% of residents who failed to win one of the $1,200 rebate went on to make an e-bike purchase. Only 8% of lower-income rebate program participants reported already owning an e-bike, a group that was found to be much more likely to use public transportation as their primary way of getting around. Across both the $1,200 and $300 rebate, 17% of program respondents reported owning no car at all.

“The program also measurably improved access for e-bike purchasers,” the report states. “44 percent of study participants who purchased an e-bike stated that owning an e-bike allowed them to go places that they previously did not visit. 68 percent reported using their e-bike for trips they would have previously taken by car, 46 percent for trips they would have walked, 36 percent for trips they would have biked, and 33 percent for trips they would have taken by transit. These results suggest that e-bikes expanded the range of trips participants could make and offered an alternative to vehicles, biking on a traditional bicycle, walking, and transit for certain trips”

What the UW survey did not find was any measurable impact on the amount of driving trips made by participants before and after purchasing an e-bike, a major question when it comes to gauging the effectiveness of the program as a greenhouse gas reduction tool. Survey respondents used an app to track their trips, with the program automatically determining whether participants had been travelling via bike or car with a 88% accuracy rate.

“Neither the $300 nor the $1,200 rebate offers produced a statistically significant change in daily [Vehicle Miles Traveled] relative to their respective control groups,” the report states, noting the limited scope of the study, which concluded after six months. “Overall, we found no evidence that rebate recipients substantially reduced their vehicle travel. […] These results suggest that while e-bikes may have expanded participants’ travel options and mobility, they did not replace enough vehicle trips to reduce overall driving.”

Other studies, conducted either by GPS or self-reported data, have shown a decrease in driving rates from e-bike incentives, including in Canada, Sweden, and Norway, and the report takes pains to note the limited amount of data from which conclusions can be drawn. But in context with the other data points shown from this initial round of rebates, e-bike purchases seem to be enabling Washingtonians who would have gotten around without a car anyway to dramatically improve their mobility and travel options.

“E-bike rebates may require longer time periods and/or complementary measures to translate increased e-bike adoption into measurable reductions in vehicle travel. Expanding funding for more types of load-carrying equipment or other bike-related accessories, such as add-on equipment for transporting children, might also affect the extent and type of e-bike usage,” it notes.

The chances of winning a rebate are likely to be much higher in the program’s second round, expected in 2026, after the legislature earmarked an additional $7 million for the program. Governor Bob Ferguson’s proposed budget for WSDOT, released earlier this month, rolls over unspent dollars from 2025 into that amount, bringing the total to more than $9 million. But it will be up to the legislature to decide whether to keep that amount in place, and the data learned from the initial round of rebates is likely to significantly shape that decision-making.

Correction: an earlier version of this story stated that Washingtonians who weren’t offered rebates had received rejection notices, when they were simply not notified.

The post Washington’s First Try at E-bike Rebates Leaves Thousands of Vouchers Unredeemed first appeared on The Urbanist.