The Governor also claimed to be leading the resistance: “I have good news, despite the challenges we’re facing in the country. No state in the country is doing more to stand up to this administration and this autocrat than Washington State.”

Besides attending protests, what is Ferguson doing while the Republican Congress refuses to fund food stamps for almost one million Washington residents and while Trump has cut Head Start funding for 4,000 children in our state? Thousands of federal employees in our state are either working without pay or laid off. 

Food banks have already started to limit services and food for people in need as convicted felon Trump has cut $500 million in deliveries of U.S.-produced meat, dairy, eggs and produce to food banks.

The federal government is cutting an ever increasing amount of human services for Washingtonians, education funding for Washington students, clean and renewable energy development, Affordable Care Act subsidies and Apple Health coverage, mental health grants, and disaster mitigation funds. And that is just a start.

Standing up to Trump includes standing up to the corporations who put him in office and adulate him at every chance. Standing up to Trump includes standing up to his billionaire friends — Amazon and founder Jeff Bezos, Microsoft and president Brad Smith and CEO Satya Nadella and co-founder Bill Gates, and T-Mobile and former CEO John Stanton.  

But how could the Governor stand up to Trump and his corporate minions? In this climate of killing public services, Governor Ferguson, State Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen, and House Speaker Laurie Jinkins should immediately call a special session of the legislature to put in place progressive taxation, taxing the very people who are benefitting from Trump’s tax cuts to the already wealthy, and using those revenues to fund the services which the federal government has cut.

We have to build our own commonwealth, separate from and, indeed, seceding from the fascism of the Trump administration. 

We can tax the wealthy and realize immediate revenues. A statewide excess compensation tax, like that which Seattle voters passed last February, would generate over $2 billion a year. The beauty of this tax is that it has already withstood a legal challenge, the Department of Revenue knows what corporations to tax for excess compensation for which employees, and the revenue could be forthcoming within a couple of months — if it was passed in a special session.  

If the Governor got a little more creative, we could extend this tax to corporations that have a nexus to our state – like Tesla. We could tax excess compensation proportionately to sales in Washington as compared to global sales. That way, when Elon Musk gets his $1 trillion in compensation, Washington state would receive $2 billion in revenue.

What could the Legislature and Governor do with these new revenues?  

• Make up for all gaps in food stamp funding.  
• Restore child care for toddlers which they repealed a few months ago. 
• Expand child care for working class and middle class families, something they said they were intent on doing but instead denied state-supported child care for these families.  
• Fund universal school lunches, which they have said for years they wanted to provide but just couldn’t find the funds.  
• Take over the tax credits for working class families who get their health coverage through the health benefit exchange, the tax credits which the Trump administration has repealed.  
• Boost the housing trust fund and expand it to housing which is available for low income, working class, and middle income Washingtonians.  
• Fund the state law for child care workers compensation, which they passed in 2005 and ran away from in 2014.   

Another revenue source should be the workforce education investment tax. Amazon and Microsoft boast about this tax, and how it funds higher education and apprenticeships. What they don’t say is that they are excused from paying hundreds of millions of dollars in proportional taxation. Instead, they made sure that the law has a ceiling in place for those companies with more than $25 billion in global revenue.   

If this ceiling was removed, so that Amazon and Microsoft would pay proportionally the same amount as all other knowledge-based companies, the state would realize $800 million more a year. 

With this revenue, the legislature could decrease college tuition and enable students from middle class families to gain the College Grant to pay for their tuition. This could be an immediate benefit, as Representative Julia Reed (D-Ballard, 36th Legislative District) has already drafted a bill to close this loophole for these oligarchic corporations which are literally paying fealty to Trump.   

These new progressive revenues would come from Amazon and Microsoft, which are realizing record stock gains while laying off thousands of workers in our state. These are the elite corporate oligarchs, those who stood with convicted felon Trump at his inauguration, who gained billions of dollars in the Trump tax cuts, and who are financing the destruction of the East Wing of the White House for a Trumpian ball room.

Unfortunately, Ferguson fought tax-the-rich efforts during the last legislative session and is renewing his opposition. “I’m skeptical of additional revenue at this time,” he recently told the Washington State Standard.

We should be fighting with everything we have to block the pathway to fascism. Now is the time for Governor Ferguson and Democratic legislative leadership to realize true patriotism and stand up and tax the oligarchs who are destroying our democracy and our public services. That would go a lot further than just announcing that the Governor participated in a No Kings rally.

The post Op-Ed: Ferguson Must Back ‘Stand Up to Trump’ Rhetoric with Funding first appeared on The Urbanist.

In the next two months, Kroger will close multiple Fred Meyer stores across Western Washington, including those in Lake City (Seattle), Redmond, Everett, and Kent. The company blames a “steady rise in theft” and a “challenging regulatory environment,” and promises to reassign workers elsewhere. UFCW 3000, the grocery workers’ union, reports that more than 700 employees will be affected. 

Does crime alone explain these closures? 

Retail theft has risen in some places since 2019, but the story is not so simple. Even the industry’s own reports are debated, and locally, shoplifting was down at several of the stores now being shuttered. Profitability pressures, real estate costs, and broader corporate strategy clearly play a role. Theft may be part of the story, but it is not the whole story. 

The hunger link: food prices and theft 

What Kroger does not mention is just as important. Food prices have surged, more than 20% in Washington since 2020, with basics like eggs, milk, and produce climbing fastest. Pandemic-era SNAP boosts expired, leaving families with less buying power. 

When theft rises, part of it is hunger in action. When it comes to Kroger, people aren’t typically stealing flat-screen TVs; they’re stealing bread, cereal, and produce. In that sense, the grocery store is telling on itself. Its own price hikes fuel the desperation. And Kroger’s response is not to find a solution and maybe ease the burden, but to close doors, punishing entire neighborhoods in the process. 

How closures deepen food deserts and scarcity 

When a full-service grocer leaves a neighborhood, it doesn’t just take away a shopping option; it reshapes the local food landscape. Competition shrinks, which means prices rise and choices narrow. Families end up paying more whether they stay local or spend extra time and money traveling farther. 

For seniors, disabled residents, and families without cars, the impact is sharper: a grocery trip becomes a logistical barrier instead of a routine errand. In places like Lake City and Tacoma’s South End, where alternatives are already limited, the loss of Fred Meyer pushes these neighborhoods closer to becoming food deserts. 

And it’s not just about groceries. Fred Meyer closures also erase access to pharmacies, affordable household goods, and everyday essentials. What remains is scarcity: fewer fresh options, higher costs, and a community forced to stretch already thin resources even further. 

“Food banks can cover it” is a myth

Some claim food banks can make up the difference. But in 2024, food pantries in Washington logged 13.4 million visits, a 70% increase since 2021. One in four residents has turned to hunger relief. Food banks provide emergency support, not daily sustenance. They cannot fill the massive gap left by the closure of anchor grocers; they are already stretched to the breaking point. 

So why these locations? 

Look at the map: multicultural, working-class corridors (Tacoma South End, Kent, Everett, Lake City renters and seniors) plus a high-cost, tech-adjacent city (Redmond) where the building is expensive to maintain. Selecting these sites externalizes costs onto those communities, transportation time, delivery fees, and lost pharmacy access, while Kroger’s balance sheet improves, at least in the short-term, apparently. 

What helps in the short term 

There are steps that ease the strain. Diversion programs can ensure hunger-driven shoplifting is met with compassion while enforcement focuses on violent crime and organized theft. Safer store design, adequate staffing, and union guarantees of relocation can protect workers and shoppers. Transit support and waived delivery fees for SNAP users can bridge the gap until new anchors are secured. 

Local governments can also help fund co-op groceries or nonprofit takeovers of vacated sites. These “feel-good” fixes matter. They cushion families and buy time. But they don’t shift the underlying power imbalance between one corporation and entire communities. 

True transformation requires confronting the outsized influence corporations hold over essential necessities like food access. Communities cannot be left at the mercy of decisions made by shareholders thousands of miles away. Cities like Detroit and Minneapolis have demonstrated how co-op groceries, supported by public investment, can stabilize access when large chains withdraw. Stronger antitrust enforcement, such as recent federal actions against monopolistic pricing in agriculture, also demonstrates that corporate power can be checked when governments act with resolve.

And when local governments seed food infrastructure, whether through land trusts, nonprofit takeovers, or zero-interest loans for community grocers, they help build models of shared ownership and resilience. When families can shape, own, and govern the places where they shop, they are no longer at the mercy of corporate exit strategies. Only then do we move from patchwork relief to lasting food justice.

Changing Kroger’s calculus 

To truly put neighborhoods first, tougher measures are required. Kroger must be made to see staying as the better option. Right now, it calculates that abandoning working-class neighborhoods is cheaper than serving them. That math must change. 

Public subsidies and incentives should come with strings attached. Kroger benefits from tax breaks, zoning allowances, and fast-track permits when it builds or expands. Public subsidy databases show Fred Meyer (Kroger) received Washington state tax credits/rebates in 2014–2016, with details not publicly disclosed, illustrating how large chains can leverage incentives that smaller grocers rarely access. If it abandons underserved communities, public dollars should trigger automatic clawbacks, mandatory reinvestment into replacement food access, or funding set aside for community-owned alternatives. Public dollars cannot fund corporate abandonment.

Governments also have legal tools. Antitrust oversight exists to protect consumers when competition collapses, which is exactly what happens when anchor grocers leave. Local officials can also slow or block future projects, expansions, zoning changes, and permits until Kroger commits to equity in its existing stores.

Mergers are another pressure point, with Kroger hoping to expand into greater profitability. Kroger and Albertsons recently sought to merge, but the deal fell apart in the face of regulatory hurdles. In the future, regulators could require binding community benefit agreements as a condition of approval, ensuring that Kroger cannot grow while cutting off access to the very neighborhoods that sustain it. Unfortunately, the Trump Administration is very unlikely to go this route.

Collectively, consumers have leverage, and a reputational hit could hurt Kroger at the local stores that remain open. Kroger sells trust along with groceries. Broad media coverage of rising hunger alongside Kroger’s profits could raise the political cost of abandonment and make closure reputationally toxic. 

Finally, communities themselves can shift the landscape by building alternatives. Co-op conversions, nonprofit grocery takeovers, and municipally run “community groceries” show that neighborhoods don’t have to beg corporations for food access. The more real those alternatives become, the more pressure Kroger feels to stay engaged.

But alternatives can’t grow in isolation. They need supportive policy scaffolding, grants, low-interest financing, zoning preferences, and public procurement partnerships that provide community grocers with the same advantages as big chains. Just as important, workers and shoppers must be at the center of governance, ensuring that decisions reflect community well-being rather than quarterly returns. By leveling the playing field, governments can turn co-ops and nonprofits from fragile experiments into durable institutions that Kroger and other chains must now reckon with as real competition.

Closures are not inevitable. They are a choice Kroger makes because it believes the consequences are manageable. It is the responsibility of government and communities to raise the stakes, to make the political, reputational, and economic costs of abandoning entire communities higher than the costs of staying and doing business as if nothing happened. That is how Kroger’s mind can be changed.

Correction: The original version of op-ed has been updated at 1:48pm Tuesday to clarify that the Kroger-Albertsons merger appears dead.

The post Op-Ed: How to Confront Fred Meyer Closures and Guarantee Food Access first appeared on The Urbanist.

Congress passed Social Security into law 90 years ago thanks to Franklin Roosevelt and especially his secretary of labor, Frances Perkins. Since then, hundreds of millions of Americans, retirees, survivors, and children, have received the financial lifeline of Social Security. With this year’s anniversary, you might expect that we would truly celebrate this universal program, upon which a large majority of retirees rely for over half of their monthly income. 

Instead, politicians and mainstream media institutions  insist that Social Security’s Trust Fund will run out of cash eight years from now.  

This “sky is falling” rhetoric about Social Security’s downfall is nothing new.  What the media fails to explain is that the Social Security Administration calculates three different forecasts, one moderate, one conservative, and one in the middle. The one in the middle is what gets the press attention. But all forecasts are just that – forecasts, developed from different scenarios for employment, wage growth, population growth, the contributions of immigrants and overall economic trends. 

As a result, these annual forecasts vary. In 1997, the trust fund was predicted to run out in 2029. In 2004, it was going to be gone in 2042. In 2024 the prediction was 2035.  

How do we insure Social Security’s fiscal health? Sustaining low unemployment and ensuring that workers’ wages increase with overall productivity are the two best ways to extend the life of the trust fund. That should be the focus for policymakers, especially with a hostile president who is literally throwing people out of jobs and undermining the ability of workers to realize wage gains.

However, the financial mavens and their lackeys in Congress want people to believe that Social Security won’t be there for them. And yet, it has been and it will be. As it stands, 74 million Americans, one fifth of our population, receive a steady monthly check from Social Security, averaging $2,000 for retired workers. In Washington state, 1.5 million residents receive Social Security benefits.  

Even if the forecast is correct, and the Trust Fund is depleted, the payroll and income tax revenue will still finance four fifths of mandated benefits, and these partially funded benefits will still be equal to full benefits received in 2024, thanks to a projected (conservative) 2% annual growth rate in our economy.

The need for increased benefits

What the media focus on Social Security obscures is how we could increase benefits. We need to do this now. Future retirees will not be able to sustain themselves on dwindling pensions and pitiful 401(k) savings plan withdrawals. Half of workers don’t participate in retirement savings, and only one quarter of low income workers are in a retirement plan, according to the Pension Rights Center. Social Security provides only 37% of pre-retirement income.  

Seattle is one of the most expensive cities in the U.S., with the average one-bedroom apartment renting for $1,973 per month. That pretty much wipes out the average Social Security payment. On top of that, according to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator, a single adult spends roughly $4,975 per year on food, $9,502 on transportation, and $2,689 on healthcare in Seattle. Try keeping up with that, after your Social Security goes completely to rent!  

It is no wonder that one in four Seattle seniors are working past the age of 65. For future retirees, the financial forecast is even worse, with 37% of private sector workers aged 55-64 with no access to a retirement plan.  

Deciding to move out of Seattle to the suburbs won’t help much. Median rent in Auburn is $1,550 a month. Average rent in Burien is $1,890.  

So… let’s build up our Social Security.  The first thing to do is to scrap the cap – that is, make the payroll tax apply to all earned income. Right now, it only taxes employees and employers up to $176,000 in wages and salaries. Anything above that is a free ride from FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act) tax. That is a savings of 12.4% for the already affluent, while leaving one-sixth of total salaries totally insulated from FICA taxes.   

With this new revenue, Social Security could restore the student benefits taken away in 1981, decrease the number of years (now 35) for calculating full benefits — essentially recognizing time out of work for caring for children, and replace 100% (instead of 90%) of each worker’s first $1,000 of earned income. That’s just a start. Back in 2012, Senator Maria Cantwell drafted legislation for these improvements. But they went nowhere. 

Congress, whether controlled by Republicans or Democrats, has had 40 years to make these and other increases and has failed to do so. We can expect no help from the current administration.

A state-level fix

What can we do? The states can take the lead. They have done this before. Before Social Security was voted into law, 17 states had established old age pension laws. Washington state voters passed two initiatives, in 1940 and 1948, for Senior Citizens Grants which paid out the monthly equivalent of $808 to residents over the age of 65.  

How can the states do this now? They can institute state supplemental Social Security programs, funded solely through payroll taxes above the Social Security payroll tax cap of $176,000. While the federal government is becoming an enabler of crony capitalism, the states, at least some of them, can create true retirement security for its residents and finance this with equitable taxation of the already affluent and their corporate employers.

In Washington state, this approach could result in an annual extra payment of $1,500 to each and every Social Security recipient.  Washington and every other state which applies the payroll tax on all income earned above $176,000 will have the resources and tools to build an economy enabling workers and their family members to prosper, and in this way create a thriving political economy for all.  

The post Op-Ed: Let’s Patch Social Insurance Gaps with State Pension Plans first appeared on The Urbanist.

The average out-of-pocket cost for a birth in Seattle is almost $3,000 after insurance coverage. If you have Apple Health, then you are covered. But if your income is $85,000 — which barely provides for the essentials for a family of three — you are on your own for this payment. 

In Finland and Scotland every newborn gets a baby box, filled up with clothing, a mattress and fitted sheet to turn the box into a bed, blankets, a bath towel, washcloths, bibs, and a digital thermometer. This provides a good start for all babies. Baby boxes in Finland are associated with a significant drop in infant mortality. Indeed, Finland has the lowest infant mortality rate among wealthy countries. 

Back in the U.S., without the public and universal provision of these baby boxes and other social safety net provisions, you and your baby are on your own. 

In Washington state, we do have a distinct and crucial benefit that we did not have 40 years ago. That’s paid family and medical leave. Moms can take up to 18 weeks, and dads up to 12 weeks. We are a leader in our country for this benefit, but we still fall far behind most other democracies, which typically have one year of paid leave after the birth of a child.

However, in Seattle and across the state, if you have not worked 820 hours in the past year, you do not get paid leave. Which means if you are a college student working 15 hours a week, you are shut out of paid leave. The message for these student-worker-moms: you are on your own. 

When paid family leave ends, parents scramble for child care. And that is when the low pay of child care teachers collides with the tens of thousands of dollars required for tuition. Unlike K-12 education, policy makers have chosen to back and fill a private child care system, which pretty much leaves everyone in the lurch. 

Mayor Bruce Harrell would have you believe that the proposed Families and Education Levy will remedy this, with 5,000 child care teachers gaining annual bonuses of $500. That’s equivalent to a 25 cent hourly raise. It is not a raise, it is an insult. If we in Seattle were serious about creating a career in which child care teachers can thrive, we would at the very least propose an ongoing and permanent wage boost of $3 an hour. Without this, child care workers will be, as they are now, on their own.

How about the parents and the finances of child care? Seattle already has a pre-K program, with a sliding tuition scale so that if your household income is $100,000, your child gets free pre-K. If your income, with a three-person household, is $150,000, you would pay about $6,000. 

If we expanded this program to before and after school, made all kids eligible, included summer camp and added on infant and toddler care, the annual cost would be $150 million. Without this expansion, the majority of Seattle’s kids and their parents are on their own. 

Adding up birth expenses, baby boxes, child care worker compensation, child care, pre-kindergarten, before- and after-school care, and summer school, we need somewhere at least $400 million a year in increased funding. Some of these expenses might have been offset in the past by city and state child care subsidies for low income kids, Head Start (which the Trump administration is cutting), early ECEAP, which is the state’s inadequate version of Head Start (and which the Ferguson Administration cut), and an expansion of kids qualifying for ECEAP (which has been frozen by the state legislature). 

So we need hundreds of millions of dollars in new funding… Is that a problem in the fourth wealthiest metropolis in the United States? Why not just pass the $1.3 billion six-year (that’s $200 million a year) family and education levy and be done with it?

While the Mayor’s rhetoric is all about making “every child ready to start kindergarten by investing in affordable, high-quality early learning opportunities,” the reality is that it funds only half of what kids in Seattle need. It leaves out half of four year olds from pre-kindergarten, it does nothing for before- and after-school care, it fails to provide for summer camp, it provides child care, on a first-come first-serve basis, only for kids well below the median income, and it insults child care workers with a 25-cent raise. 

This is why Democrats fail: they claim a policy helps workers and the middle class, and then the income boundaries exclude these very workers. They claim something like the Family and Education Levy will enable all young children to thrive and their parents to survive, when the income qualifications leave the majority out. A true democratic policy would be universal and inclusive… and expensive.

Of course the affluent and the oligarchs and corporate monopolists will oppose any taxes that they would pay to fund a city for our kids. And the mainstream Democrats will search for a compromise that undermines the promise of universal advancement, and then congratulate themselves with their ability to compromise (bow to) the powerful elite. 

That approach does not work any more, if it ever did. In the Trump era, we must build our own assertive universal commonwealth for hope and progress. 

It is time to put aside Seattle nice, to throw into the trash heap the “you are on your own” mantra that embeds false hopes and promises, and get down to the brass tacks of taxing the wealthy. A tax on the wealthy by itself would be a good thing. The wealthy corrupt the market and undercut the politics of our city. They build palaces of extravagance. They starve public services and cordon off regular people from what would have been the benefits of these public services. 

Taxing wealth to fund care infrastructure sends a clear message: none of us are on our own. We in Seattle are building a future for all of us. We are creating a city for our kids – all of them.

The post Op-Ed: Creating a City for Our Kids first appeared on The Urbanist.

On Wednesday, April 23, with four days before the end of the Washington state legislative session, educators gathered in Olympia to support progressive revenue and fully funding our schools as the state balances its budget. They were joined by healthcare workers, rural fireland workers, and by a group of mourners for Ayşenur Eygi, the American citizen and Seattleite killed by Israeli soldiers in September of 2024 – whose calls for an American investigation into her death the U.S. government has thus far ignored.

At the rally on the capitol steps, speakers like Senator Rebecca Saldaña and Seattle Mayoral candidate Katie Wilson spoke to the need for new progressive revenue. One educator from the rural Raymond school district, which has roughly 40 educators, reported they could lose up to half of their staff for the coming school year. Though disparate on the surface, these movements were unified in opposition to Bob Ferguson’s threat to veto the proposed wealth tax.

It is precisely this selective deafness that motivated socialist Representative Shaun Scott (D-43rd, Seattle) and a group of Seattle educators, independent of that protest, to stage a sit-in at Ferguson’s office.

Educators across the state of Washington are straining themselves to meet the needs of children struggling to navigate an often hostile and confusing political environment, to say nothing of how Covid lockdowns have affected their mental and social development. Speaking as one of those educators, I can say the situation is far from hopeless if education institutions receive the resources necessary to meet this significant and ever-evolving challenge.

However, fully funding education will only support one pillar of the state’s social foundation: children’s lives do not begin and end at school. How can I expect a student to concentrate on writing essays about poetry when they tell me they’re worried their mother “will work too hard and faint again” just to support their family? What bright future do they have to look forward to when the average price of a home exceeds the lifetime earnings of many workers? Do not even the best schools sink when built upon a social foundation of quicksand?

Educators grew fed up after Ferguson ignored pleas given through proper channels by the people who helped him into office. They wanted clarity on why the governor feels these cuts are appropriate. Ferguson is opposing the majority of his own party by threatening to block progressive revenue, ignoring former Governor Jay Inslee’s warnings against the drastic cuts Ferguson supports as the Seattle Times reports that Ferguson’s popularity is rising amongst Republicans — and plummeting among Democratic and independent voters. In an TVW interview, Senate Minority Leader John Braun (R-20th, Centralia) said that Ferguson was a “breath of fresh air.”

After the rallies on April 23rd, workers from across the state left postcards at Ferguson’s office requesting a meeting. They hoped the new executive might demonstrate his appreciation for their concerns. Instead he blew them off. In one of the final days of the 2025 session, the governor was not in Olympia but instead at a fundraising luncheon for the Housing Development Consortium in Seattle. 

That’s why three educators, along with Scott, stayed seated in the Governor’s office beyond 5pm, when security warned the office would be closing.  

Capitol security informed everyone that the governor wasn’t present and that they needed everyone to leave or they’d be cited for trespassing. 

“Could his staff come out so we could get a meeting with him, get him on the horn?” one of the educators asked, but to no avail. Scott and the educators remained in the office after a security officer notified them that they would be cited for trespassing.

Despite their threats, security did not force anyone from the office, instead entering into a dialogue and listening to their concerns (unlike the governor).

“We’re sitting,” Scott said. “We didn’t come here with weapons, we didn’t come here with the intent to disrupt. We came here with the intent to have a conversation.” 

Shane Esquibel, the governor’s interim chief of staff, soon arrived to direct Scott to the governor’s website to schedule a meeting, and said that he couldn’t guarantee one before leaving to answer a call coming in on his smart watch.

“Maybe [a meeting with the governor] would help him save him from himself in the sense that many of the cuts that are facing the people of our state are very unpopular,” Scott said after Esquibel had left. “We feel he should probably have a sense of urgency around making sure that he doesn’t go down this road. Nobody here would prefer to be here. We’re taking this action because we believe, with the session almost being done five or six days from now, many of the other alternatives have been exhausted.”

Educators couldn’t help but feel like their voices didn’t mean much next to the richest in the state, which seem to be driving the governor’s political stances.

“We’ve come down so many times this session asking to have a conversation with the governor,” an educator sitting beside Scott said. “But Brad Smith (the president of Microsoft) gets a little bit mad, can get Bob Ferguson right on the phone and say ‘hey, don’t do that,’ and he says ‘okay cool,’ because he can spend a couple million dollars to fund a PAC. We don’t have that ability, sadly. As a public school teacher, I don’t have enough money quite yet to do that.”

Scott recalled some of the recent cuts that have come before the legislature in the preceding days: child care and early learning access, clawing back benefits from the blind and disabled, delays to public pensions, and the closure of disability centers. “The question a lot of people in our state are asking is why those cuts are even being considered before even implementing a test case wealth tax at a very low level,” Scott said.

Cuts to social programs will have big impacts on working families.

“If the governor can’t meet with us, there is the expectation that he would also not be able to meet with the families who had kids that got kicked off childcare. He probably would not be able to meet with the retirees who are going to see declining pension investments in the coming years, nor with the teachers who are going to be taking delayed pay due to another bill that passed,” Scott said. “These are going to present a lot of problems to a lot of people who are never going to get an opportunity to travel down here to say anything to the governor.” 

“There are many people who are still asking for answers about these questions,” Scott added. “This [sit-in] is a mechanism to see if we can get the accountability that is being denied through other means.”

“I think it’s great that these decisions matter to you that much,” a capitol security officer said in reply. “So is the wealth tax one of your main concerns at this point?” the officer asked.

Scott answered, “Well there are a number of issues. Number one: the fact that you’re more willing to have this conversation with us, as somebody who’s going to see pension reductions, than [Ferguson] is. The second issue has to do with the fact that we’re not even considering passing a wealth tax that tests levels. It’s not about the wealth tax in and of itself, it’s about harm reduction” 

Scott went on to emphasize the seriousness of the situation while recognizing the political irony of a Democratic governor as committed to austerity budget cuts as Ferguson: “The frustration being felt among lawmakers pales in comparison to the pain that is felt among public sector employees, retirees, kids, and people depending on our institutions to work for them. In this climate, there is very little difference between the course of action being taken in this Washington and the other Washington. We see mass layoff of public employees and ransacking of the social safety net federally, and as of yet there is no distinction between that policy direction and the one that is being pursued here.”

“I wish I had answers for you,” the security officer replied.

Eventually, security decided to leave the office, and Representatives Natasha Hill (D-3rd, Spokane), Lisa Parshley (D-22nd, Olympia), and Darya Farivar (D-46th, Seattle) left the floor to join Scott and express their solidarity with his cause. 

With votes still pending on the house floor, Scott and the other legislators returned to the floor at 7pm. Hopefully, the work these and other legislators have done to provide the governor with plans to balance the budget without significant cuts to the social foundations of the state will not be squandered by a veto.

Millions of voters elected Ferguson at least in part because they believed he would protect Washington from a Republican administration in the other Washington. However, it appears the governor has more in common with the slash and burn tactics of Elon Musk and Donald Trump than the passionate and hardworking people who are trying to keep this state functioning, like Scott and the representatives who joined his demonstration.

When I was in the governor’s office just before the sit-in, a security guard said it would be impossible for Scott to obtain a meeting because “the governor has no intention of returning to Olympia.”

“Ever?” I quipped.

Now I speak seriously: If the governor still has no intention meeting with those legislators working tirelessly to hold this state together, if his priority is cozying up to the megarich, if this so called “Democrat” governor can support no cuts to highway expansions but billions taken from social services, he should never return. Would it not be better if those who feel the cracks in society’s foundations occupied his office indefinitely?

The post Op-Ed: Why Educators Staged a Sit-In in Governor Ferguson’s Office first appeared on The Urbanist.

Local governments are continuing to struggle to respond to the continuous chaos that seems to characterize the current presidential administration. 

President Donald Trump’s tariffs have caused the stock market to tumble, the risks of recession to grow, and Washington State’s trade-dependent economy to brace for hardship to come. At the same time, sweeping cuts enacted by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) are gutting the country’s public health, human services, housing, and emergency management programs, among many others, while universities are having their research funding frozen or cut and immigration enforcement activities are ramping up.

Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown has now filed or joined 11 lawsuits against the new Trump administration, including most recently for delaying and cancelling medical and public health research, to protect election integrity, and to protect libraries and museums.  

While waiting for these lawsuits to wend their way through the courts, a process that can easily take months, city and county governments have to grapple with current realities while also trying to plan for the future against a landscape of deep uncertainty. 

King County resolves not to comply

King County receives $200 million in revenue every year from the federal government, in addition to many federal dollars passed through the state government, much of which is through the Medicaid program, which is called Apple Health in Washington State. 

Last week at the King County Council’s Health, Housing, and Human Services committee meeting, King County’s Director of the Office of Performance, Strategy, and Budget Dwight Dively explained that there are three kinds of risk the county is currently facing with regards to the federal government.

The first risk is the county not receiving money that’s already been allocated through grants and contracts. Many lawsuits have been filed to try to prevent promised money from being frozen, withheld, or otherwise stopped, but not all agencies have complied with federal court orders to continue to dispense promised funds. 

“These cases are inevitably headed for the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court is going to have to decide whether the Constitution and the impoundment Act apply to this president or not,” Dively said.

The second risk, which is just starting to appear, is county grants that are routinely renewed every year now having conditions applied to them that violate county ordinance and/or state law, for example, by requiring the grant-receiving agency to comply with all executive orders. The county is not planning to accept funding for grants with stipulations like these, meaning the money will be lost until the matter can be litigated. Dively referenced the fact that many recent executive orders are “probably illegal.”

This second risk will likely lead to critical services being either reduced or eliminated and county jobs being lost. “I share the view that we have to stand on principle. Somebody has to,” Dively said. “But there are very dire real world consequences, at least in the short run, from taking that position.”

While King County Metro and the climate office have been able to access funds for current grants and certain grants have been renewed without new conditions, $4.4 million in grants to Public Health – Seattle & King County and the Department of Community and Human Services (DCHS) have been canceled in the last few weeks. The county will have to decide whether to enter into litigation for this money, and whether to backfill the amounts missing in the meantime while not knowing if their legal actions will be successful.

The third risk centers around future federal dollars for domestic discretionary programs, especially Medicaid. The U.S. House passed a budget resolution in February that only seems achievable through substantial cuts to Medicaid. Dwight said that much of those funds go to fund programs at Public Health and DCHS. 

“That’s not a sure thing yet, but that’s a very risky sign about what might happen in the future,” Dively said.

Congress would need to pass 12 appropriations bills by September 30 in order to make these cuts to Medicaid and other discretionary programs. If they do, cuts could go into effect as soon as October 1. However, Congress has only managed to pass all its appropriations bills on time four times in the last 50 years, the last time being 1996. Any cuts that occur due to congressional budgetary action would not be eligible for litigation. 

In addition, several federal agencies are looking at either having their workforces deeply reduced or being completely eliminated, which would also have large impacts on local municipalities. Agencies that could be on the chopping block include the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the National Weather Service, the Department of Education, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). 

Between cuts to essential services like Medicaid and the potential loss of entire federal agencies, local governments would be on the hook for a huge amount of money if they wanted to continue to provide public services at a similar level. Federal cuts could lead to less money to help people recover from natural disasters, an increase in homelessness, an increase in health issues, fewer people able to get substance use disorder treatment and behavioral health treatment, and more. 

Medicaid expansion in the past has been shown to be correlated with a reduction of violence.

“The pressure on state governments, local governments and nonprofits will be intense, and unfortunately, none of us have the federal government’s ability to tax and to borrow, and so we will be in a situation where we probably can’t replace all of those cuts,” Dively said. 

Cuts to or disappearance of these agencies would not only threaten local governments’ budgets but would leave large amounts of valuable and sometimes essential work undone, much of which Americans have grown accustomed to. 

“Even though we have one of the best local public health departments in the country, we don’t have thousands of researchers. We don’t have people who are trying to figure out what the next best vaccine we need to provide is. We don’t have people who can track worldwide epidemics and figure out when they’re going to show up here so we can be ready,” Dively said. “That’s the kind of information that we’re going to lose if the federal government continues down this path.”

King County Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda asked Dively to return to her committee to give updates every month and expressed her support for taking a principled stance when responding to the federal government. 

“I think one thread that we’re hearing is not complying with executive orders immediately, not being complicit in these actions, because many of them will either be rolled back on their own accord because they’re too confusing and nonsensical, or they will be found illegal, as we are seeing many of the executive orders that are currently being challenged,” Mosqueda said. 

Funding cuts mean more unaccompanied children face ICE without attorneys

Last week at the Seattle City Council’s monthly Select Committee on Federal Administration and Policy Changes meeting, councilmembers began discussing a draft resolution declaring Seattle to be a welcoming city. In addition to stating specific intentions around being a welcoming city, the resolution expresses a commitment to add $300,000 to Seattle’s Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs to meet emerging needs of those running afoul of the Trump administration’s new aggressive anti-immigrant policies.

That money might be best used to try to fill some of the gap caused by federal funding cuts to the Unaccompanied Children Program and the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services (CIS) citizenship grant program, both of which supported legal assistance for unaccompanied immigrant and refugee children. 

Tim Warden-Hertz with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project said that the number of detainees at the immigration detention center in Tacoma has grown from 800 to 1,400 people since Inauguration Day. He said other federal funding for legal defense work is also at risk. 

Meanwhile, due to federal funding cuts, the Seattle Office of Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) is closing in May. As a result, they are having to withdraw from almost 250 cases of unaccompanied children. 

“Data shows that immigration judges are almost 100 times more likely to grant relief for unaccompanied children with legal counsel than with those without,” said Jessica Castellanos, KIND’s managing director. 

KIND is able to continue representing 55 children’s cases due to funding from the City of Seattle. With the $300,000 in the council’s proposed resolution, they could represent an additional 60 children or more. 

“Now more than ever, we really need local funding to continue to support the children and youth in our communities,” Castellanos continued. “These are children and youth who have been abandoned, abused, and neglected, who are fleeing terrible things in their home countries, and have gone through so much to be here and to stay here, and this is not the time for our community to abandon them.” 

Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, who chairs the select committee after lobbying for its creation, appeared swayed by that line of argument.

“These are Seattle kids, and I know I’m not the only one whose heart breaks at the thought of a six-year-old needing to appear before a judge to defend themselves in immigration proceedings by themselves,” Rinck said. “We know that we will not be able to make up every financial gap, but we must do our best to do right by them.”  

Councilmember Martiza Rivera, however, cautioned that the council is not able to do anything immediately. While the mid-year supplemental budget could be the most likely opportunity for the council to take concrete action, Rivera emphasized the council would need to find somewhere in the budget from which to redirect the funding. 

The resolution will not receive a committee vote until May 16 at the earliest. 

Attacks on HUD likely to deepen homelessness crisis

Leaders in Seattle and King County have long battled with homelessness, with no clear end in sight. Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and King County Executive Ron Sims launched a 10-year campaign to end homelessness in 2005, which failed to deliver. Mayor Ed Murray declared a homelessness emergency in 2015, but he and his successors faced similar hurdles. Uncertainty, cuts, new restrictions to receive federal funding, and tariffs could all greatly exacerbate the crisis, both through decreasing the housing supply and available services and leading to more people becoming unhoused.

The Trump administration recently ramped up duties on Canadian lumber imports, which account for about a quarter of supply in the U.S., and has additional tariffs planned for lumber and steel. The moves have already spooked investors and led to a selloff of stock in homebuilders. A trade war on lumber, steel and other building materials appears poised to spike costs for homebuilders — which would soon raise housing costs as supply constricts.

Reduced capital and spending power among private-sector builders will not be offset by public sector investment, which Trump is also slashing.

In February, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development announced they would be reducing their staffing by 50%, which will create difficulty in awarding and administering their funding programs. The Trump administration has withdrawn grants from organizations that enforce the Fair Housing Act, stalled funding for affordable housing, and halted its $1 billion Green & Resilient Retrofit Program. 

Also recently dismantled is the federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) program, which helped low-income people pay their utility bills and access energy efficiency upgrades. Jess Blanch of Enterprise Community Partners said it is too soon to say what will be happening to the funding attached to the program, of which Washington State had been receiving $66.5 million per year.

Uncertainty is causing difficulty around the financing of local affordable housing projects. The pricing for federal tax credits that is used to finance affordable housing is dropping dramatically due to federal policies, while the upfront cost of building projects is going up. The uncertainty around Trump’s tariffs leads to fluctuation in financing because of the possible increased price of key building materials. The tariffs could also lead to increased inflation, which would in turn lead to higher interest rates, making financing more expensive.

Federal policy around homelessness is also changing. 

The King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA) receives $66 million annually from the federal government, both directly and indirectly through King County. The agency now faces a choice as to whether to accept their next batch of funds that come with the requirement of verification of immigration status for the population it serves. 

“These funding delays or reductions could prevent states and communities, nonprofit organizations and homeless individuals and families from receiving the critical resources needed to address the crisis on sheltered and unsheltered homelessness,” said KCRHA Deputy CEO Simon Foster.

“We expect continued shifts by the administration to federal homelessness policy, including movement toward treatment first approaches that require services and treatment as a precondition to housing,” said Jess Blanch of Enterprise Community Partners.

Hampered by federal pullback, governments are providing insufficient money across the country to maintain current levels of homeless services because of fair-market rent adjustments, Blanch said. She added that the amount provided for Section 8 rental assistance is also far short of what is required, leaving 32,000 additional families at risk of homelessness nationwide. 

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has said it will release all remaining emergency housing voucher funding in late April. While this funding might be enough to last into 2026, it was originally intended to be provided through 2030. This puts an additional 60,000 people at risk of homelessness.

Enterprise has recently had Section 4 HUD funding canceled due to what Blanch referred to as their “supposed noncompliance with the DEI executive order.” This prevented them from releasing their most recent planned round of grants that were slated to go to many local organizations such as Chief Seattle Club and the Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC). 

DESC executive director Daniel Malone said his organization has recently lost some health and human services funding they had been receiving to support outreach and engagement services for people with opioid use disorder. Much of DESC’s funding goes to support social worker staff, so a loss of funding will directly lead to fewer people available to offer services.

And if Medicaid should be significantly cut, that would impact the services DESC is able to offer, including outpatient behavioral health services, substance use disorder treatment, case management services, mobile and facility-based crisis response services, opioid treatment work, and housing services in permanent supportive housing.

“Simply put, the solutions to our challenges have never been simple, and they grow more complex with every passing day,” Rinck said. “It will take all of us, every member of this body, every community leader, every resident of our neighborhoods, to work together to carve a path forward, to protect residents and create the future we all want to live in.”

While Rinck has been determined to daylight the increasingly grave problems facing our local region, it remains to be seen whether the rest of the council will be willing to do more than pay lip service to the destruction being wrecked by the Trump administration. Reportedly, Council President Sara Nelson has been reluctant to even schedule committee meetings to discuss it. 

Ratifying the Welcoming City resolution would be the first step of many necessary to make a substantive difference in the lives of those who are being most impacted by Trump and Musk’s rampage through the federal government. 

The post Trump Shreds Social Safety Net, Creating Perfect Storm for Homelessness first appeared on The Urbanist.

During the council’s discussion last month, Councilmember Jared Mead touched on the importance of childcare siting and permitting reform and seeking to make childcare “a little bit more affordable for families.”

“Snohomish County is one of the worst counties in one of the worst states in the country when it comes to childcare affordability and accessibility. Snohomish County has grown rapidly over the last couple of decades, and so we’ve seen some growing pains with that; and one of those growing pains is childcare accessibility for families,” Mead said. “And so this ordinance is really about trying to address some of those issues, it’s not going to cure the whole thing.”

What’s in Snohomish County’s ordinance

Under the county’s adopted ordinance, childcare centers for more than 12 children will be permitted outright in all urban zones, except mobile home parks, when such centers are no greater than 8,000 square feet. County code had required conditional use permits for such centers in low-density residential zones. 

Conditional use permits will still be required in low-density residential zones when a childcare center exceeds 8,000 square feet. A similar change will apply to the R-5 zone, the most prominent rural zone in the county.

Another change in the land use regulations is the elimination of a condition limiting location of childcare centers only in connection with a school or religious institution when allowed in low-density residential zones and certain rural zones. That had been a significant barrier to childcare centers. However, providers seeking to locate childcare centers in low-density residential zones and certain rural zones will still need sites that front an arterial road.

In addition to typical development standards, such as setbacks, access, frontage improvements, and impact fees, several special development standards will also apply to childcare facilities. These include landscaping buffer requirements from urban residential zoned lots, modifications to off-street parking and loading space requirements, and outdoor play area fencing and noise control requirements.

The county’s land use regulations allow for an even less burdensome path for family home daycares. Traditionally, this applies to daycare facilities that serve 12 or fewer children. The adopted ordinance offers new flexibility for family home daycares to serve more than 12 children if a special waiver is granted by the Washington State Department of Children, Youth, and Families. And the adopted ordinance allows these daycares in a few urban and rural zones where they hadn’t been allowed before.

Jason Turner of Mill Creek Preschool spoke in favor of the ordinance.

“We have a family home childcare, and we have families that also have other small family home childcares. It’s been difficult being under the threat of the removal of the waiver where we have been allowed to have more than 12 kids for a while in some of our home daycares in the state due to Covid, and it seemed like that’d be permanent,” Turner said. “So I really like this ability to not take years to go through other permitting processes that are already burdensome… So, this opens up a possibility for our current homes to be able to convert without having to try to get millions and millions of dollars of loans that we probably don’t qualify for.”

State reforms

Right now, the state legislature is considering legislation to mandate that cities and towns allow childcare centers in all zones, with the exception of industrial and open space zones, as an outright permitted use. That means cities and towns couldn’t impose special conditional use permitting processes on such centers. Cities would still need to allow childcare centers in most industrial zones under conditional use permitting processes, if desired, but that at least ensures that childcare centers could happen in those areas, too. 

Nothing in the proposed legislation, however, preempts cities and towns from otherwise imposing land use regulations on childcare centers, such as requirements for setbacks, height limits, design, landscaping, and parking.   

The legislation already passed out of the Washington State Senate on a bipartisan 42-7 vote earlier this month. It now is in the hands of the Washington House of Representatives where it passed out of committee last week, but still needs final approval by the chamber.
Interested parties can send a comment to state legislators via the Senate Bill 5509 page.

The post Snohomish County Permits Childcare Providers More Places, State May Follow Suit first appeared on The Urbanist.

We are not in a typical struggle. The health and wellbeing of every single person in our state is imperiled by a federal government intent on taking away our rightful benefits and a state government that forecasts budget deficits with no funding solutions.  

We need a Bob Ferguson like we had in 2017. We need a Bob Ferguson who stands up to and confronts Trump. We need a Bob Ferguson who will build the commonwealth of our state, enabling all of us to thrive, setting an example of what is possible as the federal government descends into a kleptocracy.

How do we enable a thriving citizenry? By providing health coverage, parks for recreation and escape into our natural environment, child care, and higher education. By meeting our state’s paramount constitutional duty for the education of all children. By building transit systems that get us out of our cars, by providing lunch and breakfasts to all students in all of our schools, so that all children can learn without hunger dulling their energy, intellect, and interest. 

We will not build such a commonwealth of thriving citizens by cutting the budget here and there and finding efficiencies, as Ferguson has proposed. But we can turn Washington State’s social safety net into Swiss cheese with shortsighted cuts. Ferguson’s budget would hit a lot of important social programs hard. For example, it would:

• eliminate the employer child care assistance program (cutting $1 million)
• eliminate the Health Home Program (cutting $55 million)
• eliminate a rate increase for foster families, keeping their reimbursement at 2020 levels (cutting $12 million)
• eliminate funding for a nursery for substance-exposed and medically fragile newborns (cutting $2.5 million)
• eliminate the early childhood care program (ECEAP) for infants and toddlers from families with less than one third of the median income (cutting $9 million)
• increase, for families with less than 60% of the median income, co-pays for Working Connections Child Care to 7% of family income, doubling co-pays for thousands of families, some exceeding $400 a month for one child (shifting $15 million onto poor families), and 
• eliminate $50 million from foundation public health (just when the measles epidemic is ramping up).  

That’s just a sampling of Ferguson’s proposed cuts – these are not efficiencies, but direct attacks on the people of our state. And to add salt to the wound, the governor eliminated funding for administering the wealth tax, which could bring in $3 billion a year and fill all these funding gaps.

The Washington State Legislature is getting into shifting costs to middle class families as well. One Democratic bill will increase tuition by more than 10% for students in our public higher education system, while decreasing funding and shifting costs of the college grant program onto working class and low income students. In the Senate, the Democrats have run away from universal school lunch funding. The $120 million needed to fund it, out of a budget of $71.5 billion, is just too much. 

Meanwhile the Trump/Musk/Vance coup accelerates, with the $1 billion elimination of the local food for schools programs. On top of that, under the Republican proposed budget, almost 1000 schools with half a million students in Washington will lose universal free lunches for their kids – a direct attack on middle class and low-income students. Half a million Washingtonians will lose health coverage through Apple Health as it is defunded in the Republicans’ budget proposal. If the Republicans eliminate the enhanced premium tax credit for health coverage, middle class families can expect to see their health care costs increase by $3,000. 

This is no time for Governor Ferguson to cut programs, whether he uses a sledgehammer or a scalpel.

So what should the legislature and the governor do? They could actually tax the affluent.

• A wealth tax on residents who have over $50 million in intangible assets (stocks and bonds) would generate $4 billion a year. 
• Closing a tax loophole for Amazon and Microsoft and other global behemoths, a loophole lobbied into law by Amazon that stymies college funding, would raise $250 million a year. HB 1839 would do just that.
• Instituting an excise tax on earned income (we have one on unearned income), while exempting the first $270,000 – taxing fewer than 5% of Washington residents – with a tax rate of 5% (less than the 7% tax on unearned income) would generate $4 billion a year.  
• Closing the estate tax loophole for the extreme wealthy would generate $150 million annually. 
• Putting an inheritance tax into law, so that when privileged people receive inherited wealth in the tens of millions of dollars, they too can contribute to public services for all of us.

Taken together, these taxes on the affluent, super wealthy, and oligarchs could raise $8.5 billion a year. 

We will need every penny. First there is the $3 billion annual shortfall for current services. Then the state needs a minimum of $1 billion a year for child care compensation, to enable child care workers to actually earn their way out of poverty. K-12 is underfunded by $4 billion a year, including a $500 million shortfall for special education and the catch-up needed for inflation. Higher education tuition must be driven down through increased state appropriations. A tuition decrease of $1,000 per student FTE will require $200 million. Universal free lunches in K-12 will cost $60 million a year. Just these budget items add up to $8.3 billion. 

This math depends on federal funding for public services in our state being sustained. It won’t. Washington’s 2023-2025 biennium budget (ending June 30 of this year) has been financed with over $45 billion in state taxes and over (a projected) $26 billion from the federal government. (Of note here is that Washingtonians paid $22.5 billion more to the U.S. government than we got back in 2022. We are subsidizing states like Idaho and Mississippi through our taxes.) Millions in expected revenues from the federal government have already gone missing this year. It will be much worse in the next fiscal year. 

So rather than carve out “efficiencies,” we need to build up our own ability to deliver public services. That means we need new robust progressive taxation, bringing funding for public services and equity in taxation to the citizens of our state. We need the bolder Bob Ferguson from 2017 to lead us forward.

The post Op-Ed: We Need a Bolder Bob Ferguson as Governor first appeared on The Urbanist.

The City of Seattle and King County, like cities and counties across the nation, are reeling from both immediate and anticipated impacts from the second Trump administration. From precarious local budgets to the loss of civil rights of our most marginalized communities to the risk to basic services many people depend on, we are living in a vastly different landscape than we were a few short months ago. 

But local elected officials are stepping up to try to chart a course forward. 

Seattle’s new Committee on Federal Policy Changes

On January 31, less than two weeks after Donald Trump took office as President of the United States, Seattle Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck proposed creating a new Select Committee on Federal Administration and Policy Changes. 

“Many organizations, programs and people within Seattle rely on federal funding to carry out their work and live healthy lives,” Rinck wrote at the time. “What is clear is that major changes are underway on the federal front, and local leaders must be tuned in.” 

President Sara Nelson agreed to form the new committee, with Rinck serving as its chair. Its first meeting will be this Thursday, March 6 at 2pm and will feature round tables for community partners and City offices focusing on the issues of LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights, immigrant rights, and labor protections. 

“As the chair of the select committee on Federal Administration and Policy changes, I’m focused on how federal policy shifts directly impact Seattle residents’ everyday lives,” Rinck told The Urbanist. “This committee was specifically established to address all the cascading effects from these federal administration policy changes on our community services and protections. We’re trying to take a more proactive approach to identify challenges and develop local responses that safeguard Seattle residents’ rights and well being.”

Financial impacts on Seattle

Last week Seattle joined a lawsuit with 15 other cities and counties that is challenging retaliatory actions of the Trump administration against so-called “sanctuary cities,” which include withholding federal funds from municipalities that don’t cooperate with federal immigration officials carrying out civil immigration enforcement.

“The loss of millions in federal grants and support would have an immediate and devastating impact on these vital [safety] programs,” Mayor Bruce Harrell said in a press release. “When Seattle’s local values, policies, and priorities are challenged by illegal federal actions, we will not hesitate to do everything in our power to defend our people and our rights.” 

Seattle received $207 million in federal funds in 2023, although $50 million were one-time Covid relief dollars. Of the remaining $157 million, $26 million were allocated to transportation, $23.5 million to medical assistance, $12.25 to public safety and security programs, $11.5 million to housing, $9.2 million for programs to assist the elderly, and $8.9 million to the clean water state revolving fund. 

The report on federal funds received by Seattle in 2024 should be completed in the next few months. 

Rinck highlighted two different streams of funding that her committee will be considering. “There’s the funding that the City of Seattle as a government receives directly from our federal government, and then there’s the ways in which federal funding is showing up within our city broadly, whether it be at research institutions or any of our service providers that have direct federal grants,” Rinck said.

An example of the latter is funding for food programs. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a budget resolution last week that would slash the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Also last week, Governor Bob Ferguson proposed a $52 million cut in funds provided for food banks by the state in the 2025-2027 biennium. If either or both of these cuts proceed as planned, people throughout Washington State, including in Seattle, will experience greater food insecurity.

Across the region, the hit on housing could be severe. Rinck referenced Enterprise Community Partners’ recent announcement that they have lost their Section 4 nonprofit capacity building grants. They’ve deployed these grants, along with technical assistance, throughout the country to build and preserve affordable homes as well as community resources like child care centers, health clinics, and homes for the elderly. 

Rinck also expressed concern that Congress might not reconfirm some of the area’s housing vouchers. 

“We are talking about people becoming homeless, a major loss to our housing resources,” Rinck said. “We’re talking millions of millions of millions of dollars, thousands of people that are housed through federal resources that flow through local agencies. That is a frightening reality to just think about the precariousness of all of that housing.” 

Rinck’s worry over housing dollars seems well-founded given the recent news from King 5 that the Trump administration intends to make major cuts to Housing and Urban Development (HUD) programs and offices in the Pacific Northwest. In HUD’s Seattle office, 150 people are expected to lose their jobs, and King 5 reported that two sources believe the targeting of this region could be due to Washington’s politics.

Harrell’s press secretary Callie Craighead was more optimistic about Seattle’s exposure to loss of federal funding. “Strong constitutional protections exist that limit the federal government’s ability to coerce cities by conditioning funds,” Craighead said. “We will continue to assess actions that impact Seattle’s access to federal funding that supports all of our residents and respond appropriately.” 

But if federally-funded programs are simply cut across the board in the federal government’s next budget, local municipalities will be unable to avoid potentially disastrous impacts on their residents.

What will a cash-strapped Seattle do? 

Craighead said the City is not aware of any federal funding to their departments being frozen or impacted at this time. 

However, there appear to be some public works projects that have already been affected. The Native American Carving House project, set to build a Northwest Native Canoe Center in South Lake Union, is having trouble unlocking some federal funding, causing the winning contractor on the project to be asked to hold their bid longer than usual. 

The Seattle Center Monorail Station reconfiguration, a $15 million project of planned accessibility improvements, has not yet had its federal funding released. Its schedule must be planned around the World Cup games next summer, meaning that further delays at the start of the project could cause complications.   

And if future federal funding gets cut, whether that’s direct funding to the City or to programs within Seattle more broadly, the City will be on the hook to figure out if there’s a way to bridge the gap. 

Last fall, Rinck campaigned on the need for more progressive revenue in Seattle. “A lot of folks see that there’s a tremendous amount of wealth in this community and a real need to be investing in our basic services, and we’re not meeting the needs of our full community,” Rinck said. 

The recent success of Seattle’s Proposition 1A at the ballot has set a new corporate tax in motion that will invest in social housing. The 26-point win could also indicate public support for additional progressive taxation to invest in community needs

“There is a real appetite from Seattle voters to be making sure that billionaires and corporations are paying into the solutions to address our most pressing challenges,” Rinck said. “We’re going to have to keep talking about progressive revenue solutions because the funding will need to come from somewhere, and if we’re in a place where we need to reduce our reliance on the federal government, to keep services and life as we know it going, then that’s what we need to do.”

Raising taxes often stirs up backlash  and contentious conversations, but Rinck referenced the gravity of the moment as requiring leaders to lead. 

“We’re talking about a direct assault on working people, immigrants, LGBTQ folks, and reproductive freedom. People are struggling right now. Federal workers are facing uncertainty. Families are worried about losing health care, housing, and so many marginalized communities are under an unprecedented attack,” Rinck said. “With so much on the line, it would be irresponsible if we did not consider the full range of funding options to be able to keep our services and programs going. So that’s what people can expect from me this year trying to go about addressing this.”

King County’s budgetary woes

Worries about federal dollars for King County come as it is already struggling to address a $150 million budget deficit over the 2026-2027 biennium. Executive Dow Constantine has been preparing a budget proposal that includes large cuts across the board and would eliminate all county general fund revenue ($17.6 million) going to Public Health – Seattle & King County (PHSKC). Constantine’s proposal cuts $25.2 million from King County Community and Human Services (DCHS).

The largest departmental cut proposed is to the King County Sheriff’s Office (KCSO), where the proposal would cut $30.2 million. Around 72% of King County’s General Fund is used for criminal legal and public safety services including the KCSO, the King County Superior Court, the King County Prosecutor’s Office, Adult and Juvenile Detention, and the Department of Public Defense. Total anticipated cuts for public safety in Constantine’s proposal add up to over $85 million for the biennium.

One hope to begin to staunch the ever-worsening outlook for the King County budget is HB 1334, currently in the state legislature, would increase the amount the county could raise property taxes. Were it to pass this year, it is estimated to bring in an additional $25 million for the 2026-2027 biennium. The rate increase would compound over time, meaning it would help alleviate future budgetary strain that would otherwise continue to worsen.

At the end of January, King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci called for a “stress test” of King County funding sources to analyze the county’s exposure to federal funding volatility and plan a response. 

“The most alarming thing I heard was from one of the organizations in my district that serves youth in homelessness. They said that if their federal disbursements were stopped, they would have to close their doors within days, not weeks. And you know, that means putting young people directly onto the street,” Balducci told The Urbanist. “That was the thought about what we could do to just show people that we are going to be as ready as we can be.”

King County Budget Director Dwight Dively presented before the King County Council last week about the county’s access to money already appropriated in current or past federal budgets. In 2025, King County is expected to receive over $200 million in operating funds from the federal government, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars in current and future capital projects. 

Many of those capital dollars are for King County Metro, which is expecting two $50 million federal grants in 2025. Metro has about $130 million in federal revenue budgeted in 2025, much of which is for the purchase of new buses. 

Several other county departments have a lot of exposure to federal dollars. The Climate Office is supposed to receive over $50 million in federal grants for their work. DCHS is set to receive $100 million of non-Medicaid federal funds.

“Federal funds primarily support housing and homelessness efforts and behavioral health services, with some additional federal resources coming through the state to support individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities,” said Kelly Rider, DCHS’s department director. “Any loss of federal funds will have harmful impacts on the people who rely on those services.”

PHSKC is supposed to receive $70 million of non-Medicaid federal funds, and about 100 of their employees are at least partially supported by federal grants. 

“Reductions to federal funding for these services overall would contribute to higher costs for people needing care and may lead to people going without important health services they can’t afford,” said James Apa, PHSKC’s Communications Director. “It would increase the likelihood for more and larger local outbreaks of preventable communicable diseases, like measles, and leave us less ready to respond to future pandemics and emerging diseases, like bird flu.”

Balducci said that it doesn’t appear at this time that the federal government is talking about stopping funding that is already congressionally committed. But she said the County will need to be careful with anything that is counting on new federal funding going forward.

“As of today, we’re budgeting for the gap that is in county funds, not budgeting for a gap in federal funds. If a gap in federal funds appears, that will be an additional challenge,” Balducci said.

As the county moves to address future impacts, they will have to contend with the fact that both PHSKC and DCHS are extremely reliant on federal and state Medicaid funds for various programs, including community public health clinics, the behavioral health system, and other health programs. For example, the most common insurance that patients use to pay for behavioral health treatment at the Connections Kirkland crisis center is Medicaid. 

And Medicaid might be on the chopping block. Last week the U.S. House of Representatives voted to approve a budget proposal that would include $2 trillion in cuts over 10 years, which could result in $880 billion of Medicaid cuts. More than 20% of Washingtonians receive their health care through Medicaid, and the total cost, currently split between the federal and state governments, is $22.1 billion. Meanwhile, the Washington State budget is already facing what Governor Bob Ferguson is now saying is a $15 billion deficit over the next four years. 

In 2024 King County received $310 million in state and federal Medicaid funds, and DCHS receives an additional $57 million from the federal government and $15 million indirectly through the state that supports other human services programs. If Medicaid were to be cut, Balducci said the County would need to come up with a very different way to help people get health care, and it would be unlikely to be funded at the same scale. 

King County departments attempting to withdraw their federal funds in the last six weeks have had mixed results. Some funds have remained accessible, while others have stalled. Some departments have received responses that appear to indicate the relevant technology has failed. Different funds are at different levels of risk depending on whether they are subject to certain types of congressional budget resolution or already have an existing contract. 

“The questions are not just about policy-based pressure using federal funding. It’s also just, if we fire a whole bunch of federal employees whose job it is to process things, how will they get processed?” Balducci said. “Every week we’re learning more about what does this really mean.” 

Dively is getting weekly status updates from various departments as to whether they have been able to access their federal funds. He said the situation continues to change rapidly. 

Looking forward for Seattle and King County

Balducci plans to continue focusing on this issue. “We can keep our eye on the horizon, see the threats coming over it, and potentially be ready to backfill or support especially critical services that people rely on if we have to do that,” she said.

While the County lacks the resources to backfill all federal funding, they still have agency, Balducci said, with the ability to borrow against their cash flow reserve, go to the voters, and go to the state. 

“Knowledge is power, knowing where our risks are, and working to make sure that we are actively coming up with plans to address them. We should be ready,” Balducci said. 

Emphasizing the importance of relationships with local, regional, and national partners, Balducci suggested setting up reserve funds where possible, guarding any excess funding in case the County needs it for an emergency.

And in Seattle, Rinck is eager to get to work through her new select committee.

“This committee is not just another government meeting. This is going to be a platform for community and civic power against the arbitrary and capricious forces that are trying to roll back our rights,” Rinck said. “When the federal government abandons its responsibility to protect people, we and the City of Seattle will not stand by. We’re going to fight back at the local level, and I reject the idea that we need to water down our values or compromise on fundamental human rights. People can count on me to continue to champion these protections and work on solutions that are going to keep our neighbors safe.”

The post Seattle and King County Grapple with Federal Disinvestment and Threats first appeared on The Urbanist.

This June, the bombshell of the Supreme Court’s Grants Pass decision dropped with the revelation that arresting or fining unhoused people sleeping in public places who haven’t been offered alternative shelter is, in fact, legal. This overturned prior precedent from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit that held that blanket homelessness bans were unconstitutional because they entailed cruel and unusual punishment. 

Only a month prior to this decision, King County’s latest Point in Time Count reported the largest number of homeless people ever recorded in our region. With more than 16,000 people estimated to be experiencing homelessness, the report found the local homeless population has increased by 23% since the last count took place in 2022. 

The report also found that 19% of those unhoused in the area are Black, while only 6% of King County’s total population is Black, highlighting the racial inequities within the homeless population. 35% of the unhoused population said they suffer from substance use disorder.

Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison wrote a “friend of the court” brief in support of Grants Pass. In response to the Supreme Court’s ruling, she released a statement saying, “Today’s ruling makes it clear that determining policy to address homelessness is a task for locally elected leaders.” 

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell said the decision would not impact the way Seattle’s Unified Care Team operates. “Our approach to resolving encampments is based on data, best practices, and our values – and the Supreme Court decision will not affect that approach,” Harrell said in a statement.

The city removed 2,827 encampments in 2023, up from 922 encampment sweeps in 2022, according to Real Change. The United Care Team has a budget of $26.6 million for 2024.

Real Change also reported that 99% of sweeps in 2023 were obstruction sweeps, meaning the City is not required to give three days notice nor offer shelter before the sweep. The City’s homelessness dashboard shows 1,535 shelter units currently open for use in Seattle, well below the city’s estimated homeless population.

“It’s hard to tell if the Grants Pass decision made Mayor Harrell’s sweeps even worse, because they were already so horrific,” Anitra Freeman, the founder of the Women’s Housing, Equality and Enhancement League (WHEEL) said. “It does seem to have relieved any pressure on the new City Council to do anything to rein in the sweeps… to increase shelter, services and housing, or to pass more progressive taxes.”

Jay Jones from Stop the Sweeps said they have been seeing an increase in “brazenness” since the Grants Pass decision was passed down. He said the city already usually doesn’t offer shelter. 

“Essentially, it seems like they’re just more okay with there not being enough shelter beds for people at sweeps,” Jones said.

Current legal cases

In spite of the Supreme Court ruling, there is plenty of legal room to move against further criminalization of homeless people in Washington State. This is partly because the Washington state constitution’s eighth amendment omits the word “unusual,” instead forbidding punishment that is simply considered to be cruel. 

There are several cases in process right now to defend the rights of people experiencing homelessness.

In Kitcheon vs the City of Seattle, originally filed in 2019, the ACLU attacked Seattle’s sweeps policy, arguing that it is unconstitutional: “The Washington State Constitution mandates that the government shall not disturb our “private affairs” or invade our homes “without authority of law.” When the City tosses a tent and all its contents into the garbage, it disturbs a homeless person’s private affairs and invades their only source of privacy and refuge from the rest of the world—their home. And it does so without first obtaining a warrant.”

The ACLU also argued the policy constitutes “cruel punishment,” saying the City has criminalized living on public land despite a severe lack of shelter availability.

In the summer of 2023 the King County Superior Court ruled against the city, finding that its definition of obstruction is overly broad, and that encampment removals that rely on too broad a definition also constitute cruel punishment. 

The case is now before the Court of Appeals, but the ACLU hopes to transfer the case to the state Supreme Court.   

Meanwhile, the City of Burien is facing at least five lawsuits due to its homelessness policy. 

Last fall, Burien narrowly passed an ordinance allowing criminal penalties for people who camp on public property overnight. People found living or sleeping on public property between 10pm and 6am can be charged with a criminal misdemeanor for “unlawful public camping.”

The Seattle Times reported that Burien’s camping ban is one of the most restrictive in the state.

In response, the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness and three unhoused plaintiffs sued Burien in January, making similar arguments that the camping ban constitutes “cruel punishment.” The case is currently in discovery with a court date set for January 2025.

“It shouldn’t be a crime to be human and homeless,” Alison Eisinger, Executive Director of the Coalition on Homelessness, said in a statement. “Burien is better than this. We want to repeal this unjust law that effectively bans homeless individuals from living in Burien. This law is the opposite of helpful.”

In March, the King County Sheriff’s Office (KCSO) and King County also sued Burien, asking the court both to decide whether the camping ban is unconstitutional and whether the Sheriff’s Office is required to enforce the ban as part of their interlocal agreement with Burien. While the case is pending, the KCSO is not enforcing the ban. 

Most recently, in the first related case since the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Grants Pass decision, the ACLU sued the City of Spokane at the beginning of August. Their lawsuit targets three ordinances that criminalize homelessness and allow the city to remove, destroy, or sometimes store individuals’ personal property. The case also asks for these ordinances to be declared unconstitutional as “cruel punishment.”

“This Spokane case serves as another opportunity for us to build out those protections under our state constitution, which is more protective than its federal counterpart,” Jazmyn Clark, director of the ACLU of Washington’s Smart Justice Policy Program, told The Associated Press. 

Fears for the future

Some homelessness advocates are raising the alarm for what the Grants Pass decision could mean going forward on a local level.

“If they’re legally allowed to criminalize people for living outside, why would they provide services?” Jones asked. “I just imagine we’ll see a lot of cuts to services as a result.”

Eisinger had a different take, pointing to the government inefficiency inherent in a ‘sweep it under the rug’ approach. 

“I think that the readers of The Urbanist should be outraged at what is currently happening, not focused on what additional bad things might happen,” Eisinger said. “Currently, the approach is to rely on law enforcement to respond to human beings who are poor, disabled, ill, or in crisis. This is not working well by anyone’s terms. It is the wrong tool for the work, it is expensive, and it indicates a failure for people who live, work, and pay taxes in cities large and small to come to grips with reality and do what government exists to do: marshal resources, accurately assess the issues, and develop and implement a plan that meets the scale of the need.”

In California, Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order soon after the Grants Pass ruling directing state agencies to “move urgently” to clear homeless encampments and providing guidance for local municipalities to follow suit. As a result, many Californian cities and counties have been passing a variety of ordinances criminalizing homelessness. 

“We are going to be very aggressive and assertive in moving encampments which may even include criminal penalties,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed said in August. “The problem is not going to be solved by building more housing.”

Washington Governor Jay Inslee didn’t feel the need to make a similar executive order, but Attorney General Bob Ferguson and former U.S. congressperson Dave Reichart, both currently running for governor, have expressed agreement with Newsom’s actions.

“I support the aims of the Newsom executive order, and will issue one if necessary,” Ferguson said in a statement to the Seattle Times. 

Still, Freeman was more optimistic about Ferguson’s candidacy than Reichert’s. “Obviously, sweeps will get much worse across the state if Reichert becomes governor,” Freeman said. “If Ferguson is governor, local jurisdictions across the state may be encouraged to invest more in shelter, services and housing, and the state may help more.”

Seattle’s proposed SODA/SOAP ordinances

On Tuesday, Seattle’s public safety committee voted unanimously to pass legislation creating new Stay Out of Drug Area (SODA) and Stay Out of Area of Prostitution (SOAP) exclusion zones. 

They also passed amendments expanding the proposed SODA zones to several new neighborhoods. As well as the originally proposed downtown zone, they approved an expansion of the Chinatown-International District zone and new zones in Belltown, Pioneer Square, Capitol Hill, and the University District. 

The SOAP zone bill received an amendment that means sellers of sex cannot be given SOAP orders, only buyers and promoters. However, the reinstated prostitution loitering law, originally repealed in 2020, remains part of the legislation, and no funding has been attached to the bill to provide additional services for sex workers.

Public Safety Chair Bob Kettle ended public comment before everyone in the chamber had been allowed to speak in what is becoming a pattern for the new council, leading to frustration from the audience. The meeting ended up being postponed by over an hour, a stalemate only ended by Kettle calling the police. An eyewitness told The Urbanist that at least 14 officers responded to Kettle’s call, including a “staged task force.”

The majority of public comments were in opposition to the new legislation. 

Ryan Disch-Guzman, the Chief of Staff of the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, said, “The SOAP conflates sex work with gun violence, yet gun violence along Aurora Avenue is not driven by sex workers. Targeting them fails to address the root causes of gun violence and serves to further marginalize vulnerable communities.”

Christy Huntsman Stern, an attorney with the Sexual Violence Law Center, said, “We share the stated goal of stopping sexual exploitation and trafficking. Criminalizing the people victimized by violence does not achieve this goal. Stating a preference for diversion and record sealing is not enough to mitigate the harm this proposed ordinance will cause to an already incredibly vulnerable, stigmatized, and isolated population by state statute.”

“Adding these barriers will increase the vulnerability to trafficking,” Stern continued. “If you want to stop sexual exploitation, please support funding for housing support.”

And a commenter going by the name Tees said, “I’m here to speak out against the SODA and SOAP laws because I’m sick of using city resources on some weird vendetta against poor people.”

However, the councilmembers remained unmoved, even while noting some problems with the legislation.

About his proposed SODA zone in Pioneer Square, Councilmember Rob Saka said, “Given that two SODA zones will be on either side of Pioneer Square, it’s critical that we also create a zone in Pioneer Square, specifically to prevent what is a guaranteed migration down into this historic neighborhood.” His comment acknowledged the history of expansion of exclusionary zones in Seattle.

About her proposed SODA zone in the University District, Councilmember Maritza Rivera said, “I have discussed this bill with constituents, and I recognize that at first we might have limited ability to enforce the legislation, but as we hire more police officers, we will be able to utilize this mechanism as another tool to support University District residents and businesses with this difficult issue.”

Her statement glosses over the Seattle Police Department’s recent announcement that it will once again lose more officers than it can hire in 2024. 

Council President Sara Nelson said, “It is clear that we need both sides. We need new law enforcement tools, and we also need services to go along with them.”

No additional funding for services for either sex workers, people suffering from substance use disorder, or unhoused people were attached to either of these bills. Councilmember Cathy Moore has pledged funding in the upcoming 2025 budget, though the deficit could make that challenging.

About the SOAP ordinance, Moore explained that if she removed the prostitution loitering misdemeanor law from the legislation, the City wouldn’t be able to hold pimps accountable. “If loitering, the underlying activity, is not illegal, then what [promoters] are doing is not illegal,” Moore said, “And we were left again to rely on the felony law, to rely on King County and to rely on victims coming forward. And we are not going to do that.”

However, The Urbanist spoke to a practicing lawyer who said there is already a misdemeanor crime for sex buyers that is prosecuted at the Seattle Municipal Court. The promotion of prostitution is a felony that must be tried through the King County Prosecutor’s Office, but such a prosecution doesn’t require testimony from a sex worker.

The council is also ignoring the limitations of the Seattle Municipal Court’s currently packed schedule. A shortage of jail beds is also an issue for the crackdown that the council’s push to contract for 20 jail beds from a private facility in Des Moines would do little to address.

The link between SODA/SOAP and the Grants Pass decision

Eisinger pointed out that the proposed SODA and SOAP zones in Seattle are an example of how local governments feel emboldened by the Grants Pass decision. 

“Things like banning people from huge areas of the city where health clinics, housing, treatment providers, social services, public transit, government agencies, are located is stupid enough,” Eisinger said. “Thinking that the court systems, without enough public defenders or judges, will issue customized individual orders that have “carve outs” and then expecting police to enforce them is a fantasy.”

“It’s about the government trying to control who can exist in certain spaces,” Jones agreed. “Those sweeps are about getting homeless people out of spaces. Now [the SODA and SOAP zones are] about further criminalizing generally the same kind of population, because they don’t have a real solution when it comes to solving the problems that put people in these sorts of precarious states.”

“It’s the boogeyman that Harrell won power in office making everyone afraid of,” Jones continued. “It’s the reason SPD can continue to scare people into giving them 24% raises.”

Freeman concurred that the City was ignoring root problems in its haste to provide temporary fixes. 

“I see it as a direct parallel: avoid spending the money on real solutions, addressing the root causes of homelessness, drug use, and other social problems (because to have the money you would have to tax the rich),” she said. “Instead, blame the victims and target the victims with strategies that move them temporarily around.”

Jones from Stop the Sweeps saw the SODA and SOAP ordinances as part of a larger assault on the social safety net and solutions that might expand it. He pointed to social service cuts likely as Harell and a closely aligned City Council attempt to address the City’s looming $260 million budget deficit without raising new revenue, which the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce has fought and sought to take off the table.

“We are looking at a pretty dire City budget this next budget season,’ Jones said. “Massive austerity, massive cuts to social programming is ahead of us, and the solutions that are being put forward to try to create long term plans to get us out of this – social housing, increasing the State Housing Fund, funding voucher programs through Medicare and Medicaid spending – are being attacked by these same people.”

The City Council will take their final vote on the SODA and SOAP legislation on Tuesday, September 17. Mayor Harrell will present his proposed 2025-2026 city budget on Tuesday, September 24.

The post Seattle’s Stay Out Orders and Encampment Sweeps Continue Trend toward Criminalization first appeared on The Urbanist.