Seattle City Council Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers’ Rights Committee 81519

Well, good morning, everyone.

Today is Thursday, August 15, 2019. The Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee will come to order.

It is 9.02 AM.

I'm Teresa Mosqueda, chair of the committee.

Thank you all for joining us early.

I'll be soon joined by our council colleagues.

I know Council Member Juarez, who's usually here, is not able to attend.

But Council Member Bagshot is on her way, along with a few other council colleagues.

Today, we do have two parts of our agenda.

The first part, as folks may have heard in the last few meetings, is going to be devoted to issues that are outside of the hotel worker safety legislation, and this will be focused on two Seattle City Light efforts.

The first will be the solar program, which we are launching to establish a larger commercial solar program in the city, and a briefing and possible vote on the Seattle City Light Western Energy and Balance Authority ordinance related to Seattle City Light's ability or authorization to become part of the Western Energy Imbalance Market.

Both of those items have briefing and possible vote on them, and we will take public comment on those two items first.

The second thing we'll do is we'll talk about the hotel worker legislation.

So we'll do public comment.

That should begin approximately 10 o'clock.

If we can get through these first two items faster than that, we will take public comment earlier.

And then we will devote the rest of the two hours to the hotel safety legislation and the health care legislation.

So those are two components.

If you are following along, you know there's four parts of the hotel worker package.

This is part one on safety and part three on health care.

If there's no objection, and I see none, we will go ahead and adopt today's agenda.

It's adopted.

And we'll move into public testimony just on the first part of the agenda.

Again, those are related to our two Seattle City Light-related efforts, Solar Program and Western Energy and Balance Authority Ordinance.

I do have three people signed up for public testimony on that section.

And as you saw when you signed in, there was two areas to sign in.

If you didn't get a chance to sign in, there's still time for the hotel worker legislation.

The first person will be Jeremy Keller.

Hi, Jeremy.

And you're welcome to use that microphone as well.

Oh, let me just make sure it's on for you real quick.

Try again.

Good morning.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm a project development engineer with a company called Amoresco.

For the last few years, we've been working with Seattle Public Schools to develop 800 kilowatts of solar across six schools.

We are here on behalf of Seattle Public Schools and on behalf of Amoresco to support the commercial solar program as it is proposed.

Three years ago, if we had that program in place, we would have instead installed 800 kilowatts on one rooftop Ballard High School.

And it would have saved the Seattle Public Schools about 10% to 20% of the project cost and improved the ROI.

This program, as it's defined, gives solar owners the certainty that they need over 15 to 20 years, even with the low export rate that provides the ability to line up financing and third-party ownership.

It's a well-defined pathway for interconnection, and it'll provide clearly defined agreements for Seattle City Light.

Frankly, having to come before City Council to have every individual project approved just kills projects, so getting rid of that requirement is substantially beneficial.

In short, this program removes a lot of uncertainty, it's hampered the development of solar projects, and it'll allow a lot of investment in medium to large commercial rooftop solar programs.

We also appreciate the provision to reevaluate the export rate after about two years and look forward to that being a public process for us all to contribute to.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you very much, Jeremy.

Keith Weir, followed by Steve Gleb.

Good morning, Council Member Mosqueda.

Good morning, Keith.

Good to see you again.

Good to see you.

I'm here to testify in favor of the amendment for Seattle City Light and Solar Program moving forward.

These programs, obviously, I'm testifying on behalf of IBEW Local 46, the electricians in Seattle.

The Green New Deal, green jobs, right?

Construction jobs and particularly electrical jobs were green jobs with a blue collar, as we've stated many times in the past.

So this could be another piece to incentivize and help communities, driving apprenticeship and workforce standards, getting people an opportunity at a new career while helping green up our city and do the right thing.

And through the proposed language, I believe it'll help us to actually drive the incentivization and get some things actually done so we can get a foot forward and get ahead of our goals for 2030. So supporting, in favor.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Keith.

And I really love the phrase, green new jobs with a blue collar.

Love it.

Welcome, Council Member Bagshaw.

Hi Steve, welcome.

Good morning.

Good morning Councilmembers Mosqueda and Bagshaw.

I'm Steve Gelb, Director of Emerald City Seattle.

We are a collaborative of organizations working on clean energy and equity and especially focus on bringing renewable energy to affordable housing.

I'm here to speak about the large solar pilot program.

While we applaud City Light for piloting a large solar program to create predictable rate for renewable energy systems over 100 kW, we are disappointed that the export rate is very low and discourages more investment.

And that it doesn't seem to take climate change and future capacity needs into account.

We're also disappointed that City Light didn't really take stakeholders' concerns seriously in the development of this policy.

We think this is not acceptable from our public utility.

and that it's not in alliance with our Climate Action Plan that calls for carbon neutrality by 2050 and the Green New Deal that calls for accelerating carbon neutrality by 2030. We should be investing in distributed renewable energy now as part of what will be a dramatic increase in demand in the future.

We understand that Seattle City Light has done a great job with efficiency and has seen a reduction in current demand, and therefore is reluctant to really support renewable energy.

But we know that we need to electrify our buildings, electrify our transportation system.

We all need to get on the same page.

City Light needs to believe that the political leadership, the council, And the mayor are serious about electrifying the city and reducing fossil fuel use so that they can seriously invest in renewable energy and support businesses and community groups that want to do that.

We're thankful to Councilmember Mosqueda and her staff for addressing our concerns here, and we support the amendments that will be offered up today.

And we do look forward to working with CLC Light and Council to advance the goals of the Green New Deal for more renewable energy, and please support the amended version of the ordinance.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

Can I just ask a clarifying question?

So with the amendments, then you are supportive of the bills that passed today?

Yes.

OK, great.

Just wanted to double check.

Thank you for your work.

And thanks again to the folks at IBW.

I know the industry and the association has also offered edits along the way.

So thanks to the three folks who testified today and for your work to make these bills enhanced.

Is there anybody else who'd like to speak on Seattle City Light issues?

Okay, going once twice.

All right, great.

Councilmember Baxter, we have two opportunities for public testimony today.

One is now and one is when we get into the hotel worker legislation.

So I'm gonna go ahead and close out public testimony on the hotel worker legislation and Farideh, why don't we go, I'm sorry, on Seattle City Light, for the record, hotel worker legislation to come.

We're gonna close out public testimony on Seattle City Light bills and Farideh, why don't you read into the record items one and two.

Agenda item number one, Council Bill 119516, an ordinance relating to Seattle City Light Department authorizing a large solar program for customers with solar photovoltaic system size larger than 100 kilowatts and not greater than 2 megawatts.

For a briefing discussion and possible vote.

Agenda item number two council bill one one and nine five seven one an ordinance relating to Seattle City Light Authorizing the department to enter and participate in the Western energy and balance market for briefing discussion and possible vote Wonderful, so we will take items one and then we will discuss it and possibly vote and then we'll do item two But I figure might as well bring you all up here together And why don't we go ahead and introduce yourselves and then we'll get started with item number one Calvin child with council central staff

I'm Matt Gagnon, Energy Innovation and Resources Officer for City Light.

Deborah Smith, General Manager, Seattle City Light.

And Brendan O'Donnell, Manager of Strategy and Planning for Seattle City Light.

Wonderful, thank you.

And did you have some opening comments for us, Calvin?

No, I think just to note that we have worked with your office and with staff on a potential substitute bill that includes a lot of the amendments that will be talked about in the presentation.

So I have those materials here.

We'll let you guys go ahead and turn it over.

I have some comments potentially before a vote.

I just want to tee up these two items.

I think done right, as you heard Steve mention, and with the labor community at the table to talk about how green energy jobs are union jobs, as you heard Keith talk about.

These are really great components to our overall effort to try to reduce energy consumption, create more green energy options on the market and for consumers, both residential consumers and large commercial consumers as well.

And I think that this isn't very much in line with the conversations we've been having over the last few weeks about how do we create a greener economy and greener technology and fulfill our goals to meet a Green New Deal.

I don't want anybody to take away from that that these two elements equal a Green New Deal package.

As you saw in the Green New Deal proposal that the council passed, was that just earlier this week?

It is a long list of items.

And so I think that as we think of every single tool in our toolkit, Seattle City Light has been great at helping to identify some additional tools to encourage folks to consume less energy and to make that greener energy.

So I see these as complementary, not the Green New Deal itself, but complementary to it.

So thank you for your work on that, and I think it's great timing.

And I'll turn it over for you all to walk us through what we're going to consider today and possibly vote on.

Great, thank you.

And Brendan's really going to be our presenter.

I just wanted to make a couple of comments.

Number one, I really appreciate the testimony that Steve provided.

This is a step, and we have really, in fact, worked hard to accommodate input from a variety of different stakeholders.

And I would say that Seattle City Light is We are extremely interested in supporting and integrating distributed energy resources into our system.

When I think about, and Emeka, in fact, is part of a reorg that City Light did late spring, and Emeka is charged with all of these, well, basically, he is the future is now.

And the future for us is around electrification, and it is around the green energy future.

You know, we are always trying to balance the financial impacts of our choices and make sure that they are being absorbed by the right people.

And I don't know who the right people are at times, so there is no one answer.

And so I would say that this is a step.

But I want to assure folks that we are very committed to distributed energy resources.

In fact, when we think about resource planning in the future, we think about that as a distributed model.

I think the days of large-scale generation that goes into the top of a funnel and flows out to our customers are certainly on their way out, and we want to be in front of that move, and that's a lot of why we've organized the way we have.

So I think my point there is to say we hear the advice.

We are looking to equitably balance the costs of these programs.

with the needs of customers, particularly our lowest income customers, and that is a constant challenge for us and one that we embrace and look forward to continuing to work on.

But know that, you know, even as the city embraces Green New Deal work, we have a whole body of work that is all around electrification, innovation, and all green all the time.

So more to come, and I think you'll see a lot of exciting things from Emeka and his team in the future.

And the ones that we're discussing today are two of them.

They're two efforts that, quite frankly, preceded both Emeka and I in their origin.

The second item that we'll take up later is one that I've been tracking in my former role.

This one is one that we've put a lot of heart and soul in, and I think that even Amek and I probably feel a sense of ownership and love for this.

So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Brendan, who has truly made this his love labor over the last almost two years.

Is that a fair assumption?

Not quite two, but at least a year.

So just before we get started, I also want to acknowledge and thank you all for being open and accepting of the amendments that we have been crafting with folks both in the audience and externally as well.

And Aaron House has joined us at the table.

Thanks for your work with us and stakeholders and City Light.

But just want to acknowledge the willingness to incorporate some of those items before we brought it forward.

So thank you for that.

Okay, let's go ahead and get started.

All right, so I'll get into the presentation.

And what I ask is if you have questions, please just interrupt me when we're on the slide.

We're not shy.

Good.

Yeah.

Okay, so I wanted to ground us in tangibly, what are we talking about when we say large commercial solar systems?

And it's not this.

There are many solar systems, there's over 4,000 solar systems that are on either residential or small commercial buildings, like multifamily, and they look something like this.

There are many of them out there, but that's not what we're talking about today.

We're also not talking about large megawatt scale generation in the desert.

So this is a solar farm, 500 megawatts in California.

That's not what we're talking about either.

This is actually very helpful.

Okay.

Well, when you say large solar, it's often unclear what you mean.

And what we mean are systems that look something like this.

So they're on larger commercial buildings, but within the urban core, so within our service territory.

This is about 130 kilowatt system on a VA facility in California.

So the systems that we're talking about here in this legislation look something like this.

So the first thing to know about the solar market is that it's heavily divided by the physical size of the system.

So things that look like that house that I showed first are less than 100 kilowatts.

And then systems that are large, we're saying, are over 2 megawatts.

But what we're talking about here is the systems in the orange that are above 100 kilowatts but less than 2 megawatts.

And when you look at how customers are compensated for the generation in each one of these system sizes, it varies very distinctly.

And 100 kilowatts really is a strong dividing line in the sand.

So for customers with systems less than 100 kilowatts, they receive what's called annual net metering.

Annual net metering involves banking kilowatt hours from periods of overgeneration and applying them to periods where customers need them, like the night or the winter.

So we offer net metering up to 4% of the utility load.

This was expanded by a recent bill in the state legislature, Senate Bill 5223. And so there has been an expansion for this net metering program that we supported in Olympia.

And so we feel there's a lot more certainty for these customers, at least over the next ten years, which is a great thing.

Conversely, on the other side of the spectrum, for these large systems, we have an established process for going through wholesale power contracts, public competitive RFPs, so there's an established process for these larger grid-scale systems.

What there is not an established process for is these mid-size systems.

So what happens when one of these customers like Jeremy, who testified in the beginning, comes to us is that we individually negotiate a contract with each one of these systems that comes forward.

There's currently four systems of this size in Seattle, but there is a lot more interest, and having this custom negotiated process is not a good place to be for City Light, and it is certainly not a good place to be for customers.

So what we're trying to do here and why we're bringing this legislation forward is that we want a standard set of terms for customers going forward.

So that everybody is clear about what deal they get and there's much more certainty in what we're offering to customers in this sort of, this middle part of the solar market.

I think of it as the mama bear of the solar sector.

So, okay, so that's the intent.

That's the overall intent of why we're doing this.

But before we talk about the nitty-gritty of rate design or project finance or any of the minutia of how these things get built and paid for, we want to be really clear about what our principles are.

What are we designing this program to achieve?

It's easy to get mired down by details, but the degree to which we can be very clear about what we're trying to design this to will make it a better program.

So I'm going to go through the program principles first.

So the first is that we are trying to provide these larger customers A clear rate structure for their solar systems that gives them more certainty in their investment.

So this principle is all about certainty.

You don't get projects on roofs and being built if you don't have clarity in what the deal is going to be long term.

So that's the first priority.

The second is that we want to offer customers a value proposition that is in line with our core resource.

And when I say core resource, I mean energy efficiency.

It's our longstanding priority energy resource for over 40 years.

And the degree to which we can align the value proposition for solar will make it a better value for the utility and our customers.

The third is that we want to ensure that whatever we cook up as a program design, we can actually implement with customers.

We want a seamless customer experience.

We do not want one-offs for every one of these systems from an IT and business process perspective.

So the simplicity of the program design and our ability to implement it was a core principle for us.

And the last principle was we want to minimize cost shifting between customers to the degree feasible.

So Deborah talked about this in the beginning.

There's always tradeoffs when you're designing rates.

Some people benefit, some people pay.

We want to minimize that cost shift to the degree feasible.

There is always cost shifting in rate design, but it's one of our principles as an electric utility to acknowledge that and try to minimize it to the degree feasible.

So these were our four principles, and at a high level, what we were trying to design this large solar program towards.

So I'm going to walk through with some visuals what we're proposing the program design to be.

So when a customer installs a large solar system on their roof and generates energy, there's two ways that that energy can be used.

It can either go to the building and be used for the loads of the lighting, heating, all the plug loads, or it can go to the grid.

And the way we compensate customers, it varies based on how the energy is used after it's generated.

So what we're proposing is that all energy that's used onsite, it offsets energy consumption from the utility.

And in doing so, customers are compensated at the retail rate of power.

For medium general service customers, that's about 7.5 cents.

So if you generate energy, you use it onsite, you're getting the benefit of 7.5 cents per kilowatt hour.

And for most, I should clarify, for most buildings, the vast majority of energy that's generated is used on site.

So for energy that is in excess of what the building needs and is exported onto City Light's system, what we're proposing to compensate customers at is an export rate.

The export rate comprises the value of the power and then also the benefits to the grid that City Light receives from this energy coming onto our system, so grid benefit.

We're proposing that this is lower than the retail rate of power, and it's about 3.5 cents a kilowatt hour in 2019. As Jeremy mentioned, we're committing to updating this every two years.

Market conditions change, the needs of our system change, and so we're committing to having this be a living rate that we update based on as things change.

So that's the design of the program.

Is there any questions on tangibly what we're offering the customers?

I'm interested in knowing, and maybe you're going to get into this, Brendan.

Sure.

How do you tell people that this is available to them, and what are the positive impacts that we're going to have from our system itself?

So obviously, if you don't have to spill water over the dam and generate electricity, that's a good thing.

In Seattle, you look out, and we've got a cloudy day today.

How are people going to know?

And how simple can we make it to explain to them what the benefits can be for them and whether they want to make that investment.

Okay, so I'll answer both parts of that question.

In terms of what benefit are we getting from the power, it's one, we don't have to generate it and either we don't have to generate it or we can generate and sell it to other people.

And so that's the power value component.

We also get a grid benefit if customers export energy onto the grid and it's used by one of their neighbors, we need less distribution and transmission infrastructure.

Those are the value questions.

How we communicate the customers is very simple.

So it'll be one, on our website.

And also, one of the benefits of the program design is it's just done on the bill on a monthly basis.

There's no shadow process.

There's no separate mailers.

We're communicating to customers directly on their power bill, both with what they generated and what they exported.

OK.

Good.

Thank you.

Okay, so I want to talk about some of the program changes because this, as Deborah alluded to, has been going on for a while.

And we've received a lot of stakeholder input.

And we have changed the design of the program based on some of the input that we received.

So I wanted to talk through, based on stakeholder feedback, some of the program changes that were made and the evolution of what we're offering in the ordinance.

So the first big change is that we initially were proposing to use a system of one megawatts as the cap.

We received feedback from customers that there might be a system larger than that, and our response was, okay, that's actually fine.

What's important to us is the design of the program, not necessarily the size of the system.

If you can fit a two megawatt system on the roof of a building in Seattle, go for it.

The second, and Jeremy alluded to this, is that we're committing to a 15-year term.

It's a lot easier and more viable to get project financing if you have a long-term runway of funding, and so we agree with that.

So we're guaranteeing to offer this program for at least 15 years.

Another thing is that we are updating the price every two years, which people wanted, but at the same time saying we'll never go below a floor.

We will guarantee that we'll at least offer you a certain price going forward.

And so we have set a price floor as well.

The third thing that we received feedback on was the greenness of the energy.

So our initial approach was if we were buying power, if we were buying the exported power from our customers, we want the greenness of that energy.

We're a carbon neutral electric utility.

As a matter of policy, we invest in renewable energy.

And so we were initially proposing to buy the renewable energy credits from our customers.

We changed direction on that.

We heard very clear stakeholder feedback that the reason people are doing this are for corporate sustainability goals, for building certification, and they need the greenness of that power.

Don't buy it.

And so we are not buying the greenness of the energy that retains to the customer.

And then the last thing is that we are adding an explicit incentive for buildings that are highly efficient with large solar systems in the Living Building Challenge.

So that's a building certification that aligns with city policy.

The Department of Construction and Inspection already has an incentive program for these buildings.

So we are proposing to offer the net metering, the more lucrative net metering structure for living building challenge participants with solar systems less than 250 kilowatts.

We also expanded that just yesterday in the amendment to include potentially affordable housing providers working with your office.

So wanted to note that as well.

But we made several changes over the year-long process of trying to bring this before council and getting stakeholder feedback.

So that is it for my presentation.

I'm happy to answer questions or hear any comments on the amendments.

Thank you.

Great.

So Calvin, you have a staff memo for us and you also have a draft of the amended legislation.

Do you have any additional comments on the overall presentation, or would you like to get into the heart of the bill?

Okay, that sounds good to me.

Okay, great.

Let's go ahead.

And for the viewing audience, all three of you who testified, there is copies on the podium over there as well.

Right, and this is labeled D5, version D5 in the top left.

Okay, great.

And if we do have the ability to put it up on the screen, that's great, so that folks in the audience can see, or you can just go ahead and grab it.

We'll go ahead and start walking through, though.

So the amendments, the first starts showing up on page three, and the first one is actually a correction to the export credit rate, and it was just a math correction, technical correction that had to be done.

Item six, halfway down the page, is the piece that recognizes the Living Building Challenge certification and authorizes that participation with the new language at the end acknowledging that affordable housing performance excuse me, affordable housing performing under high energy efficiency standards could also be considered for a higher net metered threshold on a case by case basis.

The next section has removed some language on the pilot basis and just makes some other technical corrections.

And then the new section two requests a yearly evaluation report in a year from now and in 2021. that would also provide recommendations for how the program should move forward.

And a new section three asks City Light to convene a bunch of labor, housing, energy, and environmental advocacy industry stakeholders to work on that evaluation and program development.

And it lays out a number of specific issues that council has expressed some interest in, ways to advance labor standards, impacts to affordable housing, the alignment of these programs with our climate goals, the Green New Deal, for instance, impacts of new technology, and also the applicability of other green building certifications.

So Council Member Bagshaw, just to summarize a few of these items, and Kelvin, thank you for summarizing those for us.

These came out of conversations that we have had with labor, affordable housing advocates, environmental and energy advocates, folks like IBEW, Emerald Cities, Northwest Energy Coalition, Spark Northwest.

And as we move forward, we're also encouraging those same entities to continue to give us feedback on labor standards, energy efficiency, affordable housing, and how we can make sure that we're serving the lowest income.

So some of the things I'm really excited about in this draft include the incorporating the language that incorporates projects performing under the highest green standards of living building challenges.

This is something that we heard directly from the county was really important and I want to thank April Petney and the folks at King County who've been working with us on behalf of the executive's office to also include some amendments here.

One of the things that we wanted to do was make sure that we're encouraging high-performing energy efficiency in our new construction, as you heard Keith talk about.

That also includes the provision of affordable housing projects that are performing at high energy efficiency standards.

We know as we build more housing, we want those to be affordable for the folks who are living there and also meeting our goals as a city to reduce energy consumption.

You heard Calvin mention a yearly evaluation and report back that gives us performance reports back to this committee in August of 2020 and then August of 2021. So again allowing for those same stakeholders to offer us feedback.

And then I want to thank Seattle City Light for your work to help in the future to continue to convene We've been working with a number of different stakeholders, labor, housing, energy, and environmental advocacy groups, including industry stakeholders to make sure that we are focused on ways to improve labor standards, impacts on housing and affordability participation, alignment with the program, aligning this program with Seattle's climate goals, and the application of other green building certifications.

So as we move forward, there's ways to continue to enhance and amend this.

And I think, Debra, you said it well.

These both are great first steps as we think about how we continue to evolve.

Great.

Can I ask a quick question?

And Debra, Brendan, these are for you.

What do you think about these amendments?

Oh, these amendments, in putting them in the bill, we support them.

I think that they are good.

One of the things that was revealed was that for these incredibly efficient buildings with large solar systems, our policy as written could be a little bit punitive.

And so allowing for a carve out for net metering for these buildings makes sense to me.

And living building challenge in particular is the city's policy.

And so it was easy to tie that in.

So.

It actually requires the building to overgenerate.

Sure.

And so we wanted to make sure that those buildings were not being penalized in any way.

So that was a great, a great amendment.

I think the evaluations, I mean, we certainly look at this as a first step.

And as we've had all of our internal conversations, we certainly expect that we'll learn from this first two-year period.

So writing that into the ordinance makes a great deal of sense.

And I think it is our goal to work with King County, with all the interested stakeholders to make sure that this program works for everyone.

So I think everything in here is great.

Good.

Excellent.

And if I can just ask about residences and affordable housing, how do you anticipate this working?

So let's just say we have a new project coming in.

How does the property owner or the developer reach out to you and become part of this program on the front end as contrasted to retrofitting?

Sure.

So one of the nice things is there's nothing different on the interconnection process.

So you heard Jeremy mention that as well.

The process by which we bring the solar system onto our grid and certify it is exactly the same.

And we have an established business process now.

So nothing changes on that.

In terms of compensation, so customers will sign up on the website.

And this is an actual rate.

So it'll be implemented by a current billing system.

and be a very straightforward process for actually getting them paid.

And Erin, if you have any other things you'd like to add from your conversation with housing folks, feel free to.

Yeah, we had heard in lots of discussions with City Light and affordable housing providers that likely right now there would be, it would be unlikely that affordable housing projects would meet the 100 kilowatt threshold, but there are projects underway.

both within City Light and the Housing Development Consortium to encourage solar production on site, and that in the near future, there could be some projects coming through the pipeline.

And so being able to incorporate that possibility through the amendment was really important to folks.

Great.

Can I add just one more thing on that?

Yeah, I just wanted to ask you a question, too.

Sure.

I appreciate the fact that you're here.

Do you have anything that you would like to add that would help us understand the program's direction?

I mean, I think my colleagues have covered it well.

I think one of the things that the balances we tried to strike here was to make sure that we're in alignment with the city's stated climate goals while also balancing the real value of that energy to the utility.

And so we certainly think that you know, the best value to the utility and to our customers is for buildings to offset their own usage.

And I think chances are most buildings will wind up sort of benefiting from this at that retail rate because they're offsetting their own usage.

So we think we've landed in a really good place.

Good.

Thank you for that.

Any other additional comments?

Yeah, so I just want to touch on, so for affordable housing providers, this is not the only mechanism to compensate them for their solar system.

And I wanted to touch on a couple things.

So one, we are supporting the upfront cost of solar systems with affordable housing providers through our Green Up program, which is a voluntary renewable program.

And so we are paying 30% of the upfront cost on several affordable housing projects directly.

So that's one other source of value.

Another is we're piloting a program called virtual net metering.

And what that does is on multifamily buildings, take the value of the solar and disaggregate it out to the individual tenants, which is a challenging billing problem, can be done.

And we're piloting that at Othello Square, at Othello and MLK, so.

Yeah, and that's the challenge is as we look at, and we're actually working with legal on this and some other potential projects, but the challenge is that the benefits on affordable housing need to accrue to the tenant.

And so that's why virtual net metering works.

So there are mechanisms that allow that to happen so that the individual tenant is receiving the value.

for the investment on the facility.

And that's important to us today from a legal and what we can do.

So that's.

So I see this as overall improving the consistency and predictability for some of our folks who want to have onsite solar production in the private market, including our nonprofit provider entities.

So that includes the nonprofit housing folks.

Some of the non-profit housing developments that I've seen are just gorgeous and some have some rooftop access.

And we were talking about how one of the ones that we saw recently, I think it was 23rd and Union, you know, that's a really big rooftop.

What if a portion of that were to be allocated to something like this?

You know, it's a great opportunity for us to think about across that size spectrum what it looks like to allow for this type of technology.

So I'm excited about it.

Good for you.

Thank you.

Any further questions before we consider it?

Not to digress too far, but you were saying that this is complementary to other programs that you have.

I know that there are some programs for individual homeowners where they can get a credit up front or they get some tax credits from the state.

Can you talk about how those individual homeowner programs will dovetail with this good idea you've got for sort of the middle?

Sure.

So for individual homeowners, historically there has been a state tax incentive, which has been very lucrative.

That program has largely ended.

So we're paying out to existing customers who are part of that program.

The utility administers it, but it's state funds.

So there is a state incentive program.

But we are also offering this net metering program design going forward more or less indefinitely, up to 4% of our load where we compensate customers at the retail rate of power for all their generation.

And you said it's lucrative.

Lucrative to Seattle City Light or lucrative for the customers?

No, to customers.

To customers, yeah.

So when you think about the compensation for residential customers, it's those state incentives and the net metering.

The state incentives are off the table, by and large, for new customers.

Net metering will remain at least until 2028 or 4% of our load.

Great.

Thank you.

Well, I really appreciate this, and I know you have one more Seattle City Light piece that we want to get to before 10 a.m.

I am wondering, Madam...

If we can go ahead I'd like to amend I'd like to move to amend council bill 1 1 9 5 1 6 by substituting this version 5 for version 1 second Excellent.

Are there any other comments?

Okay, seeing none all those in favor of substituting Version 5 or version 1 please raise your hand.

I No opposed.

Okay, great.

The version 5 is adopted.

Are there any other comments before we consider final vote?

No?

Okay.

I'd like to go ahead and recommend the committee pass Council Bill 119516 as amended.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed great, so we have passed this and we will bring this forward to full council on our first meeting back, which is September 3rd And thank you again for all of the work that you've done on this and to help Help me understand this issue as well as bring it forward to council Can I just say because he's not at the table.

I really want to appreciate Craig Smith who's a Brandon's boss, and he's the director of Customer Energy Solutions, and probably the grandfather.

If you pop a bear, he's the grandfather bear to the, would you say, Brendan?

Yeah.

He kept everyone on task, and also Maura Brugger, who's been really, really helpful working with Aaron and making sure that we could move this forward.

So thank you very much for your support, but kudos to those two as well.

Great.

Excellent presentation today.

Thank you for this.

And we do have one more.

So we have Deborah Smith, Amika, Sarah Davis, Rob Mahoney, and Calvin, you're going to stay with us as well.

OK, great.

And we've already read into the record item number two.

So why don't we go ahead and tee up the second presentation.

And Deborah, if you have any additional comments leading us in to item number two, please go ahead.

Sure.

The large solar project rate is super exciting and important.

And this piece that we're about to do now, I think it's extremely complimentary, and we've talked about that.

And I think, Erin, you and Maura were working on some comments, and I can't overemphasize that.

As we think about, I always have to do my little spiel just because I like to remind people that the city of Seattle is incredibly blessed.

to have an abundant source of carbon-free resource in the form of its hydro system, both at Skagit boundary and then smaller projects at Tolton, et cetera.

Anyway, that is something that can't really be overstated.

And we are, in our world, we are long.

And when we say long, what that means is that we generate more power over the year or over the month.

There are times when that's not true.

But in general, we generate or have the capacity to generate significantly more power than the people of Seattle use.

And as we've talked in the past, our loads do continue to decrease due to our long-term investment in energy efficiency, solar, and quite frankly the fact that as we are rebuilding Seattle and we are increasing its density and up-building, the work that other departments in the city, especially OSC, et cetera, have done to require building codes that support energy efficiency.

We are replacing old stock with new, far more efficient stock.

So that contributes to this trend as well.

So that's my educational plug.

So what that means is that for us to effectively integrate increased amounts of solar and distributed generation and the things that our customers want, and that we want for ourselves and for our customers, we need to have an effective way of marketing that surplus energy in a way that brings maximum value to our customers, our customer owners.

That's part of the grid integration value that Brendan referred to.

So EIM is part of that, and it is a big deal because we are the first public utility in the Northwest who will be joining the energy and balance market.

And it has been an incredible piece of work to date.

And this is the final legislative step in that process.

And we are incredibly close to making this long-term vision real.

And there's been a lot of people who've been involved in it.

And a lot of people who have been don't even work here anymore.

So kudos to each of them.

And I'm going to turn this over to Sarah.

And it's just a really, really exciting day.

Excellent, thank you.

Thank you, Debra.

So we'll move into the presentation.

And I'm Sarah Davis.

I'm the EIM program manager.

So what is the Western Energy?

Sarah, just pull a little bit closer to the microphone, please.

Yeah, you can pull it right up.

Yeah, there you go.

So the Western Energy Imbalance Market is a real-time market operated by the California ISO, which is the independent system operator, that finds the lowest cost energy to serve real-time customer demand across a wide geographic footprint throughout the entire West.

And you can take a look at the map to see the current and planned participants that span now the entire West.

And the design of the market not only provides for intra-hour energy balancing, but it also compensates capacity resources like hydro that provide system reliability and flexibility.

So why is Seattle City Light joining the market?

Well, we've identified four primary benefits.

And again, one of the most compelling benefits that we've discussed already today is the environmental benefit.

And again, I want to echo what Deborah said.

City Light is the first public power entity to join in the Northwest, and that's a big deal.

It not only demonstrates our environmental leadership, but also, again, our commitment to the Green New Deal.

And participating, sorry.

Yeah, yeah.

And participating with our flexible hydro can allow for offsetting, I'll lean in closer, our non-renewables.

It also allows for renewable energy that is cleaner, such as solar and wind to stay online.

And this allows for greater carbon reduction overall, again, across a wide geographic footprint throughout the West.

And at Seattle City Light, we're extremely fortunate to be so hydro heavy.

We're green on our own, but participating in this market allows us to leverage our resources and make them go further.

So in addition to the environmental benefit, it also allows us to further our mission of putting our customer owners first.

It's an additional revenue stream, there's enhanced system reliability, and it's better grid visibility.

And finally, it also allows for improved transmission planning and management.

The third benefit that we've identified is a core business benefit of employee growth and improved coordination.

So this is what it does for our people at Seattle City Light.

The first employee growth component, there's significant training that goes along with joining this market.

We have new tools and systems that we're implementing.

And we're also updating our new business processes.

We have added eight new positions as part of the EIM implementation effort.

And also participation through the project has allowed for employee growth and to stretch some of our current staff and allow them to gain new skills throughout the project.

And this again allows us to not only retain our current talent but also to attract new talent.

And then the improved coordination piece, this project impacts a significant number of divisions across the entire utility.

And it's really requiring us to talk more and work more closely in a coordinated fashion.

And so what this will do, not only will this put us in a position to be successful in the new market, but it also lays a strong foundation for upcoming projects in the future that we will need to have this improved coordination.

So it really sets us up for success now and looks forward into the future.

And speaking of the future, the fourth benefit, it positions us for additional readiness for greater market integration.

So this is a mechanism really to enable an integrated grid, especially with the increase in nontraditional resources.

So moving on, where have we come from?

So this is no small undertaking, the implementation effort, and we've been working on this project since 2016. So in October of 2016, the council passed and approved an ordinance for us to prepare to join the market and execute agreements with the California ISO.

Then we came back and did some briefings in March in 2017 and throughout that spring and summer completed our gaps analysis and also hired a experienced project manager who took a look at the gaps analysis and our current budget.

So what we did during that time, we decided to increase the budget for our project to be successful.

We added additional labor.

software, integration, consulting, support, and then contingency.

And that budget was approved by council in November of 2017, and right around that time as well.

We, during that spring and summer, we were also looking at our current software system, which is our energy trading and risk management system.

That's what ETRM stands for.

And so this is our day-to-day software that our marketing group, our settlements group, our system operations group uses to transact in the bilateral market.

So this is a really critical software piece.

Together we came to the determination to replace our current system, and you can only join the energy and balance market once a year, and that's April 1st.

So initially we were anticipating joining the market in 2019, but making this software determination pushed the project out an additional year.

So with that additional year, we entered into a full RFP process, we selected a software vendor, and I'm happy to report that we just cut over our new ETRM software on August 1st successfully.

So that was a big, major project milestone.

So in addition to software, what have we accomplished?

So our team has been doing a significant amount of work, and we are making great headway through the project.

We are either on time or ahead of schedule with all of our different work streams, and we are also on budget.

So, together with our team, we have executed all of our agreements with the ISO.

We've done significant metering work, so we've completed all of our metering installations.

These are at our generation and at our inner ties.

We're finalizing the programming.

Our risk policies have been accepted.

The network model, which is the model of our entire system, has been completed.

The resource data template has also been completed, so this goes through all of the characteristics of our generators and our inner ties.

We have started training, and that will continue through the life of the project.

And then again, we cut over our energy trading and risk management system successfully on August 1st.

we've got about eight and a half months left before we join the market.

So really the big push and what we'll focus on is the implementation of the EIM software And then all of the connectivity testing with the California ISO.

And again, I want to highlight, it's not shown on this, but training will continue throughout the life of the project.

So there's just significant training required for all of our staff so they're up, ready, and able to be successful in this new market.

And that, for the most part, is where the project is.

So take questions.

Yeah, we have about eight more minutes, and I know Calvin has some amendments, too, that you want to walk us through.

Is that true?

No.

No, we're good on this?

Okay.

So anything else you wanted to add, Calvin?

No, I think this project has been on the books for a long time, and I think the This is the way that the whole grid, the whole industry is going to more and more of these types of agreements.

So the idea of building capacity is definitely something that the utility needs to keep working on and this is the wrong time coming.

And I'll just offer from the stakeholder perspective, I think a lot of people are excited that Seattle City Light is going to be really entering into this new market, be the first and leading in terms of a public utility to join the Western Energy and Balance Market.

And we've heard from a range of environmental advocacy organizations that have been strongly supportive of us entering into the energy and balance market, such as from the renewable Northwest folks who were early and strong supporters of EIM participation by all Northwest utilities, and the Natural Resource Defense Council, our biggest environmental law organization that has supported the EIM and the expansion of the Western energy markets to facilitate transition.

of the energy sector to a less carbon intensive portfolio.

I think overall we're really excited about being able to participate given our green energy that we produce here in the state and through Seattle City Light and to be participants and also I think contributors to this market in a really positive way.

So that's great.

Congratulations.

I mean, go live April 1st in your software program and project is working.

That's great.

Thank you.

Good for you.

So if I may just quickly interject, I did want to emphasize the tie between these two projects that we've presented today in terms of how they represent the transformation of our energy system.

Really what we're talking about, and Sarah alluded to, is the ability of things like the EIM to help us further unlock the value in things like the distributed energy resources we talked about earlier.

So these are all really pieces of a puzzle that we're putting together, and I think we're really excited about the direction that we're headed with that.

So other questions?

Okay, I know that this is something that I've heard about since day one here and as we will with every piece of legislation continue to check in with our stakeholders and make sure we're getting feedback along the way, but I'm happy to go ahead and move forward the authorization of this participation.

I'd like to move the Council recommend passage of Council Bill 119571. Second.

Any additional comments?

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Not opposed?

Great.

So it has passed.

And again, I want to thank you, the community partners that we've heard from, Erin, for your work on this, as well as the leadership of City Light and the executive's office, and look forward to hearing how things progress.

We know your timeframe is ongoing, so looking forward to updates as we maybe head into the beginning part of next year.

With that, we will bring this forward to full council on September 3rd for consideration after the recess.

Thank you so much councilmembers, and can I just do my other shout out so Rob Mahoney who I think is behind me was the technically the Eaton project manager, but he's been Sarah's partner All through this and so you know really really outstanding work in one of Seattle's very best And I don't know that he's in the room, but Robert Cromwell who is now doing customer service operations has certainly been a huge part of of the behind-the-scenes engine for this work and turned it over to Emeka in really great shape.

So kudos to both of them.

Great.

And I really want to appreciate your leadership as well, and all of you at the table, because putting Seattle City Light up front like you've been doing with all of the green energy work is making a big difference for our city, but it also demonstrates leadership in the Northwest that I appreciate.

So thank you for that.

Thank you very much and that will conclude part one of our agenda today and we have concluded prior to 10 a.m.

so that's good news we're on time.

Thanks to Seattle City Light for your patience as we brought this forward as you can tell we have packed agendas through the summer and fall so appreciate your getting us all teed up for those bills.

At this point we will entertain public comments on the remaining items on today's agenda.

which all relate to hotel worker legislation.

Again, part one is hotel safety for workers in hotel buildings, and part three is related to health care.

We do have a number of people signed up to testify, and there may be more people signing up, so we'll make sure to get you signed up there.

And we will also have copies of various amendments that are going to be posted online.

and will be available in hard copy.

We do have a number of people signed up again, and Council Member Baxhaw, you were great in the last committee suggesting how quickly maybe we can move through this.

I'd like to limit this to 20 minutes.

We have about 20 people signed up, so that would be one person.

a one minute per person.

And if you need more, take more.

Okay.

And you know what I'd like to hear from the audience is something different than what has happened in the past.

If there are specific events that you would like to describe to us, particularly violent or harassing behavior, I'd like to know what those are and when those occurred and what happened.

That would be helpful rather than you're just saying we support the bill because we got that.

I'm really deeply interested in what has happened to you if you're comfortable in telling us some examples.

And thank you very much.

And we also acknowledge that for folks who are sharing those stories, it can be hard to share those again and again.

So appreciate you all sharing those.

And also for the industry folks for being here.

We know a lot of people are coming every single time, and we appreciate all the testimony.

So I'm going to ask the folks from City Light out there, if they can hear me, to maybe take the conversation around the corner.

And we will begin with public testimony here.

The first three people that we have, and if folks could line up today to get us through this in 20 minutes, that would be great.

Michael Hirscher, John Igber, and Sean Virk.

Welcome back.

Let me make sure it's on for you.

Try again.

OK.

Yep, we're good.

Good morning.

My first job in the hotel industry was as a room attendant.

I proudly served employees as a hotel HR director for 11 years until August 1st.

It is necessary to call out the lack of a process without a fundamental understanding of the nuances in these ordinances, which amount to a collective bargaining agreement between the city of Seattle and non-union hotels.

Even the president of the council admitted recently to not understanding the most elementary terminology of our industry, checkout versus stay over room.

As for the healthcare ordinance, changes to this very complicated legislation are presented today just before you vote.

I ask one of many questions.

Where is the provision to address premiums?

Nearly every healthcare plan requires some type of employee contribution to premiums.

I-124 addressed this, albeit in a very complicated way.

Union represented employees must pay into the Health and Welfare Trust in addition to their monthly dues.

Virtually every plan offered to city employees requires a premium contribution as well.

100% employer paid gold level healthcare, only for non-union hotel employees.

I wonder how our non-profit friends, food service workers, retail cashiers, or even your own city employees feel about that.

can I ask you to wrap up, because we had a clock issue, but go ahead and wrap up.

No problem.

Slow this down, treat it with the time it needs, and use experts to craft this legislation, because the consequences are too great if you don't.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Madam Chair and committee member, good morning.

I am John Ingber, and I'm the director of the Retail Industry Coalition of Seattle, a grassroots organization of 130 retailers.

I appear before you today to urge the committee to narrow the ancillary hotel business provisions in Ordinance 119555. The explicitly stated intent of this ordinance is to improve hotel employee access to affordable medical care.

Yet the language of the ordinance would apply to a completely independent retail business based solely on the fact that it leased space within the hotel.

If passed, this ordinance would create strong incentives for retailers to relocate to non-hotel space.

This could result in large, vacant retail spaces in hotels across the city.

We urge you to narrow this definition to only those businesses providing services essential to the operation of the hotel.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And John, I appreciate that testimony.

I want to flag for folks that what you'll see in the health care bill today is the hold language so that we can come back on September 5th to really refine that language.

But your comments are well taken, and I know it's part of the entire thing.

So we will continue to keep that in mind.

And I'll review the new language.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Sean Burke, followed by Christy Smith, and then Terry.

Welcome back, Terry.

Go ahead.

Hi again.

I'm back and I just want to reiterate the same thing.

I think ancillary business should be excluded from this conversation.

We are not a part of the hotel and you guys can go ahead.

and do what you have to do.

And it seems like since we are not a part of it, we are a small business, so it would kind of help us that if we are excluded from this conversation.

And even we were never a part of this conversation at the first place because we were never told about this.

So I don't know where it is coming from.

So I would appreciate if it can be you know considered and the changes you are making for to the answer of businesses does not answer that because I was reading the changes you amended say it's like if any space open in the hotel which is almost all the case every time and we are not a hotel.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Christy Smith, Terry and then Michael Hirsch.

Good morning.

My name is Christy Smith, and I'm the general manager at the Crowne Plaza Hotel.

I've worked in hotels for over 35 years.

My first job in the hotel industry was as a cashier, and I have worked also as a banquet bartender and a front desk agent.

I know the value each employee brings to their position and to the success of the hotel.

employee safety holds tremendous importance to our hotel.

We believe every employee has the right to work in a safe and healthy environment.

We equipped ourselves with the knowledge of safe methods and train our employees in the safe way of doing each of their jobs.

That is why we supported the passage of the statewide panic button requirements and provide them to each of our team members.

We also provide gold level quality insurance coverage now at rates that are lower than the cash expenditure being proposed in the health care requirements.

How much you spend does not determine the quality of coverage and I urge you to remove the arbitrary expenditures and ensure any changes do not reward employees for turning down health care.

I understand now that we've been discussing for months the challenges and unintended consequences created in the draft ordinance.

We believe the amendment you are considering today differs substantially from what we have previously provided feedback on.

Given it was just shared with stakeholders last night, we haven't had the opportunity to fully review it and provide meaningful feedback.

So we really request that you hold off on voting on this amendment today until you get all feedback.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Terry?

Good morning.

I have a restaurant called Lulay.

It's in the Sheraton Hotel.

Actually the building, not in the hotel.

It's actually in the same building as Sheraton and Been in business for about five years, and if the ancillary position stays as is, it probably won't be there anymore, mainly due to the extra cost and this involve due to the mandatory price you're putting on insurance and on what you require me to do as a, I'm just a tenant.

I'm not involved with the Sheraton more than just being there.

It needs to be reviewed, and I would really, really appreciate if we could possibly have a position at the table and discuss this between all of us.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Terry.

Michael Hirsch, followed by Linda Morton, followed by Anne Vanderhaey.

Hi, council members, good morning.

My name is Michael Hirsch.

Michael, could you just pull it up a little bit?

There you go.

I'm always told to stand up straight, so now I'm standing up straight and putting out the microphone straight as well.

Michael Hirsch, representing the family ownership of 13 Coins and of the Lodge Sports Grill.

We have two impacted properties with the ancillary hotel language.

Concerned about the lack of definition around that.

Also concerned that it would be defined for an amendment that is being considered to be passed today that 12 hours ago just had substantial change.

So there's a cascade there that we would ask that there just be a little bit of a break put on.

Let's talk about it.

We would love to also, the Mosquitels would be happy to come with me in a conversation that we can have if you would be open to that, to talking about all of the the potential impact just on what we would need to make as a business decision.

We only think that the business decision we made to locate near or in spitting distance of the hotel has now made it maybe potentially difficult for us to continue in operation.

I think that's also going to create a situation for the city that you're going to have vacancies that I'm not sure anybody's going to want to come in with the new past amendments.

So thank you.

Excellent, thank you.

Linda?

Linda, followed by Ann, followed by Michael Clark.

I'm going with the tall microphone.

So I'm Linda DeLillo-Morton, and I am president of Seattle Western Alliance, and I'm also on the board of the GSBA.

And together, just those two organizations represent well over 5,000 small businesses in Seattle.

This legislation is about hotel workers, it's about hotel employees, and it's about hotels.

Ancillary businesses that sign a lease with a hotel are not hotels, their employees are not hotel employees, and ancillary businesses need to be removed from this legislation.

One other thing that I'll say, as a small business owner myself, there has been a lot of changes in the city in the last five years that's come out of this council.

And it's been a lot of straws, and we've been able to handle many of those straws one by one.

But if I have a lease in a hotel property, this is more like Rather than death by a thousand cuts, it's more like using gun power.

So I would appreciate if you would consider what the real consequences are and what this legislation was intended to do in the first place.

Thank you.

Thank you, Linda.

Welcome back.

Good morning.

My name is Anne Vande Hei, and I'm the Director of Sales at the Hilton Seattle.

I've been in the hospitality industry over 35 years in a multitude of roles, both hourly and management.

In our industry, if we do not take care of our team member family, it has a direct impact on guest satisfaction.

Keeping our housekeeping staff safe is a priority, and the legislation for panic buttons was inspired.

Unfortunately, the additional ancillary hotel business tacked on impacts a broad range of non-hotel employees and small business, and has not had the proper due diligence or unbiased review to make it effective.

In fact, it is destructive to what it is intended to accomplish.

The amended health care ordinance being introduced needs further review.

It's not in anyone's best interest to rush this amendment today.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Welcome back, Michael.

Thank you.

Good morning.

My name is Michael Clark.

I'm the General Manager of the Renaissance Seattle Hotel and sit on the board of the Seattle Hotel Association.

We received an amended ordinance dated last night at 5.15 p.m.

and it is significantly different from the solutions and the feedback that we've been working on together.

And with this new draft, it doesn't give us a chance to look at it at all.

A good example of that I'd like to point out is ancillary business discussion is deferred to September.

Nobody in this room even had a chance to understand that because this was published last night.

And so I would urge you to, we're disappointed, you know, as a group of stakeholders that we haven't had a chance to discuss and review this further and it could have unintended consequences.

So I would urge you to take a little bit more time.

It's very, very important and none of us want any unintended consequences.

Thank you.

Thank you, Michael.

The next three people are Jergen Oswald, Esaiah, I might not be able to read this one, Esaias, if that sounds familiar, and then Tsering, T-S-E-R-I-N-G, B-H-A-R-T-S-O.

Hi there.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Jurgen Oswald.

I work at the Hilton here in Seattle.

And I came here today to give you back some time.

Panic buttons, I think everybody's for it.

However, the ordinance is really not necessary, as it's already state law.

I really call this busy work.

It's like as if you worked on a mandatory seat belt ordinance.

Wearing seat belts is important, but it's already the law.

Healthcare, hotels already provide high quality health coverage.

There is a federal law and the council seems to be trying to skirt federal law.

Good lawmakers don't break laws, so please be good lawmakers and I know that's your intention.

Council Member Mosqueda, you'll put forth an amendment that's quite filled with inconsistencies today.

It requires gold level coverage for a certain dollar amount.

If the employee is able to negotiate a better deal, they still have to pay the difference to the employee in cash.

Why the extra penalty if the goal of high quality healthcare coverage is fulfilled?

As you can see, no need to really continue working on these two ordinances.

We all need to use our time wisely.

We focus on the big things that really matter, public safety, housing affordability, homelessness, and transportation.

What will you do?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning.

My name is Isaias Hailomariam.

I am Assistant Executive Housekeeper in Hilton Seattle, and I have been 10 years in the hotel industry, which is five years in Africa, and five years here in Seattle, Washington.

So specifically talking about the Seattle hotel industry, which personally I'm impacted in a good way.

And the first time I moved to Seattle, which is the Hilton, Bolivio opens the door for me in this industry.

And they helped me in many ways, so I can personally develop my career, which is the result of where I am now.

So the hotel industry employers, which really impacted individually, even for those first-time workers with no experience, they train and they give opportunities so they can get more.

opportunity carriers in different departments and in different positions, which is a very golden point we need to just understand and underline on that.

Coming to the general ways, as a housekeeping manager, I'm involving personally with a large number of employees, which I have seen many ways.

Could you wrap up, sir?

Yes.

Okay, thanks.

So, let's go ahead and just wrap up for us.

Okay.

So, I have seen and noticed many professionals in this industry have been assisted diversely in different levels.

Industry really assisted not only the guests, but whatever we apply for the satisfaction of the guest, which considers the employee as well, so they are safe and they know how they can apply, which is very important and we need to consider on the plan of this amendment.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for being here, sir.

Council Members, my name is Serene Parso.

I work at the Edgewater in housekeeping for seven years.

Housekeepers like me often experience harassment by guests.

When harassment like this happens, we wish that we never see the guest again.

Many of my co-workers and I are immigrants and women, and too often we stay quiet because we think that nothing will be done.

There are victims of assault in my hotel that have stayed quiet for years.

The law must believe housekeepers have significant consequences for guests.

And last but not the least, before I leave, all hotel workers need health care for their families.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next three people are Melody Swift, Stefan Mertz, and Juan Carlos Barajana.

We have Melody?

Hi, Melody.

Thanks for being here.

You can pull it on down.

There you go.

Yeah, my name is Melody Rowland-Swett.

I work at the Wesson Hotel in the main lounge for 44 years.

I've experienced sexual harassment, as a lot of us in the food and beverage industry have, okay?

Just because we're in the food, and I see here where they want to exclude food and beverage people from protections for health and also from harassment.

What makes us different and worth less than anyone else in this room?

I'm as valued as anyone else in this room.

You do not have the right to sit there and exclude us because we're food and beverage people.

We work hard, okay?

We're there on the holidays when you guys want to take your families out.

We work at night.

A lot of us can't even take the bus services because They don't run.

We have to drive.

There's all kinds of issues.

I mean, I've actually been picked up by customers before.

I've had them grab my arm.

I'm 69 years old.

Two days ago, I had some man rubbing my arm up and down trying to put his arms around me.

What?

You know, we need to change the whole attitude towards food and beverage service, okay?

And the people that work there.

We work hard for you.

I see my time is up.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Stefan followed by Juan Carlos.

Good morning council members.

I want to applaud council members Mosqueda's work on the health care piece of the ordinance.

I think there was actually a lot of issues that are addressed in this draft and obviously there's going to be more work to do and we're looking forward to being part of that.

It is disappointing to see, however, that there are proposed amendments that would potentially exempt thousands of workers who desperately need healthcare and would create an incentive to subcontract and outsource jobs to employers, possibly very large in size.

This is not only about small employers.

who would now be exempt.

The private equity firms, the real estate investors, the developers that own almost all of the hotel buildings in Seattle.

If you look at the list, it's almost all hotel buildings in Seattle will make money because of that, while workers miss out on healthcare.

On the issue of guest misconduct, I'm almost done, so I'm gonna refer to some other folks.

I think we need to do better.

Some of the amendments that I've seen basically take away any kind of accountability for guests.

Guests will not even be informed anymore that there was a complaint against them.

There will be no accountability and that's just not good enough in a city like Seattle.

Thank you.

Thank you, Stefan.

Carlos, do you guys have a group?

Yes.

Okay, we'll give you a minute and a half.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Oh, okay, you're translating?

I'm sorry, then you do get two minutes.

And Juan Carlos, if you could speak directly into the microphone, that would be better.

My name is Juan Carlos Barahona.

I work as a cook in the restaurant Eshware.

For the last two years, I've worked in several restaurants in Seattle.

My name is Juan Carlos Barahona, and I work as a cook in the restaurant of the Edgewater Hotel during the past two years.

And before that, I worked in various restaurants around Seattle.

Yeah, this job at the Edgewater was actually the first time that I was able to get an affordable health insurance plan for my family.

And it's important to keep in mind that the insurance plans that restaurants usually offer tend to cost a lot for employees and offer very poor coverage for medical expenses.

If the law doesn't require our hotels to offer a good medical insurance plan, hotels like mine are going to figure out how to subcontract their restaurants.

Todos los trabajadores en los restaurantes de hoteles merecen un buen seguro de paga.

Nuestros gastos, está la ley, es una oportunidad para seguir, que yo y mis compañeros de trabajo no pierdan nuestro seguro.

All restaurant workers in hotels deserve a good health insurance plan that actually pays our costs.

This law is an opportunity to ensure that myself and my coworkers will actually have access to good health insurance going forward.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Gracias.

Gracias por estar aqui.

Gracias por la traduccion.

Emily Dawson, followed by Entre Viejankul and then Portia White.

Welcome.

Good morning.

Morning.

I'm Emily from Embassy Suites in Pioneer Square.

I have two kids and a husband that I'm paying insurance for, and I'm paying about $500 a month.

Sorry, 500 a month for me, my husband, and my two kids.

That's a large chunk of my paycheck every month.

And if the health insurance was better and cheaper, I'd be able to buy my son new shoes, which he just complained were too tight just a few days ago.

And I wouldn't have to struggle to put food on the table at times.

This is so important to me that I'm planning on striking with my coworkers.

So I would appreciate it if you please supported us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Both the next two speakers are around the corner and are running late, so.

Okay.

So we're going to, you know, as we've done before, we're going to go ahead and move to public test, I mean, move to the heart of the discussion today.

If there is any folks who do have opportunity to testify at the very end, we did talk about coming back at the very end for public comment.

So if they're able to stay through the conversation, they will be welcome then.

Was there anybody else who did want to sign up to testify at this point?

Please go ahead.

And Dan, just as we're doing that, could you tee up item number three for us?

Thank you, Councilmembers.

My name is Natalie Kelly, and I want to talk to you about my experiences with sexual harassment from my years spent as a front desk agent at the Hyatt here in downtown.

It was a constant and rampant problem for us working at the front desk of the hotel, and I want to make sure that front of house workers are also included.

I would say that when I worked the night shift, It was a daily experience, particularly during happy hour, when many, many guests would come to the front desk, see the young women working there, and assume that our pleasant conversation and flirtation was a part of what they were paying for for their guest experience.

A problem that I had in bringing this to my management was that my managers would often contribute to this problem.

I had one male manager who would welcome guests in the front door of the hotel, escort them to the front desk, and say, which of these two beautiful women would you like to have check you in today?

You can pick which one you think is prettiest.

When I would try to address these kinds of problems with guest harassment and sometimes guest violence, when I had a guest reach across the front desk and place his hand on my forehead, I didn't know what he was going to do and I fell to the floor.

I recorded the incident in an incident log and found later that my manager had erased it because he didn't want to be embarrassed in front of the general manager of the hotel.

I had zero support as a frontline worker in dealing with these issues and had a system with the bellman and the fellow front desk agents of taking turns hiding in the bell closet when a guest that had harassed one of us was coming back to check out.

So it's very important that people in that position have the support and the protection as well.

Thank you.

Thank you for sharing that story.

So we do have two more folks and then I'm going to call it good.

We have Leah Laver and Mike Barnett.

Hi, good morning.

I represent several hotels from the human resources side in the city.

Could you say your name for the record for us?

Sorry?

In your name for the record.

Leah LaVar.

Thank you.

The draft that we received last night, the healthcare expenditures piece is what I'd like to talk about.

The numbers that are in there are currently 24% higher than what we're currently paying.

And we do offer gold level coverage currently to our team and continue to do so.

And that's for the 2019 rates.

So I'm nervous that the 2020 rates will continue to grow and make that number higher.

In the years I've been working in HR, I've never seen a 24% increase to benefits year over year.

That's dramatic.

I also believe that the draft, if I was reading it right, said that an employer can make a contribution to an HSA or a health savings account in lieu of that.

But my understanding, and again, need time to research this further, is that an HSA is tied to a high deductible plan, and I'm not certain that a high deductible plan qualifies as Washington Gold level coverage.

So I'm not sure that that makes sense to have that in there.

So as you've heard, we'd love to have more time to look into this, to talk to the people who are experts in this type of thing and be able to provide some more feedback.

Thank you.

Thank you, Leah, and I really appreciate your work on this.

Hi, Mike.

Good morning Councilmembers, good to see you all again.

I'm Mike, thank you.

In October of last year, Long Beach, California was considering similar hotel ordinances.

We've seen many examples and comparisons between our city and theirs considering this legislation.

Long Beach City Council commissioned a study on the long term effects of various hotel ordinances.

If you have a chance, I invite everybody in the room to take a look at it, but for time's sake, let's skip to page 20, where the study found the following.

Although some of the items in this legislation could be easily absorbed by hotels, the humane workloads requirement fundamentally changes how a hotel operates and dramatically impacts the profitability of hotels.

This may dampen the ability for investments and improve properties and on sales prices as hotels change hands in the future.

The most significant impacts flow from the potential for ordinance provisions to make future hotel projects financially infeasible.

Essentially what the study is saying is that with this type of legislation, the incentive to keep building hotels in our city would be gone or much lower.

These proposed amendments, in my opinion, are short-sighted but have massive long-term impacts to the economic health of our city that are not being considered.

This is totally unbalanced.

Implementing this amendment, and I'm almost done here, so thank you for your patience.

Implementing this amendment provided less than 14 hours ago for comment at this quick of a pace is irresponsible.

It may impact tax revenues in the long term, which help fund our city streets, public services, and paying off the debt of the Washington State Convention Center.

One last note, and again, thank you so much.

My understanding is that the City Council has spent $12,500 to study this, but outside money north of $150,000 is being used to impact your decisions.

Thank you.

I don't understand where those numbers are coming from, so I'll follow up with you.

Okay.

We have a lot to talk about today, and I would like for central staff to walk us through the two parts that we will consider today.

One is part one, and one is part three.

Before we read items into the record, I want to thank Councilmember Hurdle, Councilmember O'Brien, Councilmember Pacheco for joining Councilmember Bagshaw and I.

Dan and Karina, we're going to do hotel worker healthcare first, and then we're going to do hotel worker safety, as I understand it from our agenda here.

Farideh, could you read into the record item number three and four while we're at it, and then we will do items three, which is medical care, and then item four, which is our hotel safety protections.

Agenda item number three, council bill 119555, an ordinance relating to employment in Seattle, requiring certain employees to make required healthcare expenditures to or on behalf of certain employees for the purpose of improving access to medical care for briefing and discussion.

Agenda item number four council bill one one nine five five seven an ordinance relating to employment in Seattle requiring certain employees Employers to take certain actions to prevent protect and respond to violent or harassing conduct by guests for briefing and discussion

So, I would like to first ask if we could identify what amendments we're talking about this morning.

I've got a stack of things that came in at 5 o'clock, read them at 10 p.m.

last night, picked something else up at midnight, was reading it this morning at 6.30 a.m., and I am really confused about what's in front of us.

So, Council Member, we're gonna have...

We're gonna have...

going to be projected onto the screen.

We have two striker bills.

One is a baseline striker bill to hotel health care, and one is a striker bill to the safety ordinance.

So my understanding is that first we're going to walk through the draft that has been offered as a striker to the baseline bill.

We also have red line diversions, and I hope in the future we can have these on different colored paper, which is something I've seen in Olympia, which helps people understand which document we're looking at.

But for the purposes of this first discussion, we're talking about D2, as you can see on the screen.

This relates to health care expenditures.

And we're going to walk through the base of the amended legislation.

And then we are going to consider various amendments that have also been proposed by council colleagues to the ordinance itself.

And we're going to see where those fit into this base amendment.

For the record, Dan Eder with Council Central Staff.

I'm the Deputy Director.

And I am Karina Bull, also with Council Central Staff.

Chair Mosqueda, would you like me to start with a high-level overview of what the bill does and call out some of the key changes before diving into the particulars?

That would be good.

And before we do, I just want to acknowledge we have had a number of folks that we have engaged over the last few weeks, and many of us were on the same page in terms of what the desired language was.

And as we run these items through our legal team, there's always the risk that they reword things and offer suggestions that are slightly different.

And I want to acknowledge that it's frustrating when you spend time working on legislation and don't see that exact language reflected.

So I just want to say thank you to the people who have been involved in providing us an immense amount of feedback over the last month.

and we have hopefully included some of the core components here and we'll keep accepting feedback just as an overall message for folks today.

Please remember, we are not going to get into amendments on the ancillary business section.

That is what we are saving for September 5th.

We are gonna consider healthcare and safety protections today, but we're not gonna vote anything out of committee.

So there may be a vote on various amendments, But nothing will leave committee so that we can all hold it again for us to consider all four elements together so we can see the full package before voting it out of committee.

Go ahead, Dan.

Okay, so in brief, as Council Member Mosqueda said, this bill is one of the suite of bills that would provide protections for hotel workers that replace the Initiative 124, which has been put on hold by the courts at this point.

This particular bill would affect access to medical care, so it's healthcare expenditures related.

The bill would require that qualifying hotels, and with a discussion about ancillary hotel businesses to follow on September 5th, make a monthly required healthcare expenditure, and that the amounts are set to approximate a percentage of the cost of the individual plan on the Washington Health Benefit Exchange.

The amounts depend on whether an employee has either a spouse or a domestic partner, and it also depends on whether the employee has dependents or no dependents.

Can I just ask a question, and maybe you want to hold until the end?

So we heard some testimony today on two sides.

One is we really want to make sure that employees are covered, but on the other hand, depending upon the language here, it's going to have an impact on the hotels, and some of which have negotiated gold-level plans.

So will you explain what the current language is, how we're going to get coverage for the employees, but also not put the hotels in a situation where they are paying more for less?

Yes.

The term of art that's created in this legislation is required healthcare expenditures.

That is, as I was just describing, a dollar amount that varies by the typology of the employee's family situation.

The dollar amount in the base legislation that was introduced and referred to the committee was intended to be a value that is 100% of the dollar amount for individuals who are buying gold level plans on the health exchange in King County.

Does that mean 100% with no deductible?

It is 100% of what a gold level plan costs, and that is typically one that would have an expected 80% coverage for the employee, and then the employee would be responsible for the remaining roughly 20%.

That's a deductible.

And some combination of deductible, copay, premium responsibility that comes out of the pocket of the employee.

The other 80% is of the anticipated total costs are covered by the employer.

So let me give a quick example here.

We know both from experience and from the folks who've come to testify that the individual market on the Washington Health Benefit Exchange is not apples to apples with what coverage would cost for large employers.

Absolutely, I want to acknowledge that.

What this draft attempts to do is to basically take a haircut, a haircut from the Washington Health Benefit Exchange looking at the gold plan as a benchmark for what high quality care is. want to acknowledge and appreciate the businesses who have offered a gold-level plan after and prior to passage of initiative 124. If gold-level plan is our standard, and we know that this is tied to an actuarial value that's around 80-20% And frankly, according to the Affordable Care Act, it is well-defined in there.

There can basically be a six-point spread of difference, so it can be as low as 76% actuarial value.

If you use the actuarial value that is allocated to the gold-level plan in the individual market, and you recognize that being a good plan, but we also recognize that it is more affordable for large employers to offer that equivalent quality plan to their employees at a discounted rate.

What we have done is discounted the amount that is being required in this piece of legislation to more accurately reflect the numbers that we see for what employers will pay.

And I want to again express my interest if individuals in the insurance world or the industry would like to share with us information that doesn't have to be assigned to any plan or any employer that can give us a baseline understanding of what you're seeing.

If it's 24% less than what we're talking about here, we would love to take that aggregate.

But from the numbers that we've seen so far with the analysis that we've contracted out for, about 20% less than the individual market in the exchange for a gold level plan is about the dollar amounts that we've seen.

We want to be accurate in how we've discounted that.

So that's why you see about a 20% haircut, a 20% reduction in the amounts we were originally talking about, with the emphasis of wanting to strive towards this gold level plan, which you see defined in the legislation as gold level equivalent.

And that acknowledges that many of the industry has already offered gold level, and we want to continue to encourage that.

And then for those who don't, we do need some sort of alternative for compensation.

And so maybe I'm interrupting too much here for Mr. Eder's presentation, but one of the speakers, Leah Barnes, said that the premiums are a 24% increase.

Can you explain that?

So I believe, and Aaliyah, if I can please correct me if I'm wrong, I think what she's saying is even with the reduction in the amount that's been offered here, that the experience that she has for the plans that she works with is about 24% less than the dollar amounts listed here.

And so the conversation I think would be are we able to get sort of a baseline understanding about the dollar range for other hoteliers in this sector who are our largest group employers, and can we do grab an average of this area?

Now what we had originally looked at was the largest four, I guess, plans in King County to try to get a baseline understanding.

and also to be accurate, and that we would definitely like this to be tied to the kind of quality that's offered in a gold-level plan, which you see reflected in the legislation.

But having those types of numbers is very helpful, and I think trying to get an average from some of our largest employers would be good, and if it is 24% less, then I think we still have the ability to offer even a further haircut, if that is something that we can calculate.

And I really appreciate your testimony, too.

Yes.

This required it to be 25% higher.

Yes.

And so the amount that she's paying is 24% lower.

Yes.

Okay.

We're good.

Go ahead.

I have to say, I'm apologizing here.

I am really confused.

And I felt like I'm coming into this, you know that I'm supportive of making sure that employees get a high quality health plan.

So I'm, maybe this is just first impression that can be explained, but I don't understand how we're getting this quality healthcare that we need for the workers at a price and as a reasonable approach that hoteliers are going to be able to understand.

So maybe you can clarify this for us.

Okay.

Well, I'm going to continue with my presentation and hope that that begins to address some of the confusion that you were describing.

But I can certainly dive into more details if I don't check the box.

So the legislation, as the chair was describing, established dollar amounts for different types of family situations, the substitute bill that's before you would change those dollar amounts by reducing each category of expenditure by 20%.

Reflecting an understanding that employers, particularly large employers with many, many employees, may have access to, as you've heard testimony in this meeting and in others, to more favorable rates than are available on the individual health exchange.

So the dollar amounts that were in the original legislation have been decreased by 20% for this term, the required health care expenditure that has to be spent for each qualifying employee each month.

The dollar amounts, whatever level they are at, may be spent at the choice of the employer.

The employer has the following options.

They can either provide qualifying healthcare itself to their employees in the form of insurance premiums, reimbursement for qualifying out-of-pocket expenses, or healthcare savings account contributions.

That's one category of how they can An employer can choose to meet the required healthcare expenditure amount.

They can also make additional compensation available to the employee.

They can do that instead of, entirely instead of, providing the qualifying healthcare expenses.

Or they can do some combination of the two so long as the combination adds up to the dollar amount under the required healthcare expenditure amount.

Employees are still able under the substitute bill, as they were with the original introduced bill, to opt out altogether from the provisions of this bill if they have a gold level equivalent coverage and they want to avoid potential complications, potential complications of coordination of benefits.

That's the big picture of of what the bill does and the main thing that I wanted to emphasize of what the substitute bill does is that it changes the dollar amounts for those four different typologies of family situations for how much the employer is responsible for under the required health care.

in terms of monthly amounts.

If the chair wishes, I can go through page by page and describe all of the detailed amendments that are in the red line version.

It's up to you.

Let's hold for one second.

Council Member Herbold.

I just was hoping that you could restate again the circumstances under which an employer can opt out.

I'm sorry.

If I said that, I misspoke.

An employee can opt out.

An employee can opt out.

You probably didn't.

I misheard.

So the employee can opt out.

in those instances where the employee already has a gold-level equivalent plan from somewhere else.

Either they've purchased it on their own or they have a second employer or they're married to someone or have a domestic partner who has provided them with health care insurance.

So long as they sign a waiver that says they have gold-level equivalent coverage, they can opt out of receiving any further insurance or payments from their employer.

And an employee would only rationally do that if they didn't want to deal with the hassle of switching doctors and maybe even hospitals altogether because they like the healthcare providers that they get under their own insurance that they already have.

But it allows the employee to opt out in those instances that the employer's offer meets the healthcare expenditure rate for the employee.

So if the employer is offering a gold plan, the employee can opt out.

That's correct.

So one of the things that we heard in...

I'm sorry, it is correct, but that's an additional requirement.

They also have, the employee themselves already have to have in place gold level equivalent plan, a separate one from the one that was offered by the employer.

A separate one.

A separate gold level equivalent health care plan.

They have to, the employee already.

It could be coming from the employer.

It could be a plan coming from the employer.

Separate from the employer.

So either a secondary employer or a family member who has covered them or they've purchased their own health care.

That's a precursor to being able to waive coverage.

I'm just trying to get at whether or not there is a circumstance under which the employer offering a gold plan could have their obligations.

under this ordinance fully addressed.

If an employer offers a gold-level plan...

Without having to pay any extra money.

Yes, and the gold-level plan costs the amount of money...

It doesn't cost.

Then they have to pay the extra, they have to top up.

I think that's the issue that we're trying to get around and I'm just wondering...

I have a suggestion.

I have a suggestion, and I'm going to go out on a little bit of a limb here because I haven't had the chance to chat with our central staff about this, but that is the ultimate goal.

We know that it is healthcare that we are striving to offer here, not an X dollar amount.

We have been tied to X dollar amount, whether that's the 20% haircut that we've talked about today or potentially 24% on top of that 20% healthcare.

haircut that we've offered.

It's not the dollar amount that we're striving for.

It's the quality of the health care.

All right.

I think to legislate a dollar amount does not anticipate a change in the market in the future.

But we have, thank you for that, and we have also included in other places in the legislation a medical inflation rate that is tied to a published amount that comes from CMS, or Center for Medicaid and Medicare Studies, that looks at the private market and the large group market.

So in terms of inflation, I believe in other areas we have the ability to look at that going forward.

However, I do have a suggestion because My goal is the same as your goal, is the same as Council Member Baggio's goal, which is the same as I think folks from the industry and Unite here, which we've heard about, which is we want to get at the quality of the plan.

So because I happen to chair this committee, I'm gonna go ahead and tell you what I'd love to see as a verbal amendment to this because I think we've gotten a lot of feedback included.

We've also gotten great advice from our team, but in order for us to be very clear about that desire, There's language that I'd like to amend, and Dan, please don't come and slap me on the hand over here.

But at the top of page 10, and I don't know if we can do this in real time so people can see it, at the top of page 10, line 1 and 2, basically what we are saying here is that if an employer provides employer-sponsored coverage, with an actuarial value equal to or better than a gold-level plan offered in the Washington Health Benefit Exchange, comma, that employer has satisfied the monthly health care expenditure as calculated, period.

And then you would put a period after C, and then you'd cross out and, and then you would go on, if an employer automatically enrolls.

And this allows for automatic enrollment, and it clarifies what the waiver language looks like.

This is my desired language at this point, and I think it is more in line with sort of the attempt to get the high quality care that Councilmember Pacheco, I know you're interested in, and we included another amendment there, but that is really the intent to get at how an individual could receive high quality care and how an employer can satisfy the requirements under this law.

I love where you're going.

Will all the rest of this be eliminated?

I'm just wanting to make sure that we've got adequate time to see what's here rather than jumping to a conclusion at the end of today.

But I like the direction you're going.

So would you read that again?

I love that.

I love the enthusiasm here.

So the language would say, and I don't know if you want to amend in the moment, but it would say, actual value equal to or better than a gold-level plan offered in the Washington Health Benefit Exchange, and then at the comma there it would say that employer has satisfied, so you can cross out whether in full or partial satisfaction, and then cross out of that employer has satisfied the monthly health care expenditure as calculated, and then a period behind C, and then it says if an employer has And then you can continue with automatically enrolls.

And the rest of the content is really important because it does basically acknowledge that in many ways for some of our employers, it is we are going to be able to facilitate enrollment if they're allowed to do automatic enrollment.

However, we want to make sure there is a waiver requirement.

so that any employee and their dependents, their spouse, their domestic partners who may have other coverage that is equally as good, we want to give them the opportunity to opt out.

And there's clear language in here that we've also heard from various entities is important to recognize that it is not necessary for some employees to have health coverage if they have great coverage through their spouse or if their kiddos happen to have coverage through something else or If they're on VA assistance, maybe they don't need this health coverage, right?

But that is my goal.

And Dan, I'm sure you're nervous about that, but I'd love to amend on the spot.

I'm not at all nervous, Council Member.

What I would suggest and offer up for your consideration is that we understand, Karina and I have heard and understand what your intent is.

Rather than drafting on the fly, if you'd be willing to have given the staff direction for what to bring back at the following meeting, we can bring you several options offline and decide exactly what you want to bring forward at the next committee meeting.

My suggestion is that you have given us the redirection but not included in this amendment insofar as the legislation is going to remain in the committee and not going to be voted out.

I'm going to not agree to that yet.

I will take your consideration before we move forward to the next bill today.

But I think there's a lot of concern that we've heard both from workers and the industry that this is not hitting that shared goal that we just articulated.

I would feel more comfortable if we did have language that envisioned where we all want to head before leaving today so people don't feel anxious over the next two weeks.

That said, we also know we're going to get feedback from our legal team and others, but I'm going to hold on answering that question for right now.

I appreciate your advice on it, but we may want to amend on the spot like we've seen other committees do.

Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Pacheco.

I'm sorry, you had your hand up a moment ago.

Oh, I did, but I'm good.

Thank you.

Okay.

Did you want to continue walking through?

I think it's probably best for Dan to continue with presentation of this proposed legislation.

You've got another belt.

Thank you.

I like to do what I want to do.

Okay, go ahead.

Okay, so did you want me to go to the top and go page by page?

I think that describes the substantive elements of the bill and the key changes that are included in the substitute bill.

If you or your colleagues would like me to walk through page by page, I can do that as well.

I fear that it may take a bit of time because it's a long bill.

Well, I think that if we're going to be asked to vote on something today, we ought to have some clarity about what the dollar numbers are.

And then also, just to make sure I understand, if the employer has satisfied the health care expenditure, is there still a requirement for a contribution to an employee?

that would not be the intent here.

And I think that the way that we have both drafted that and also suggested to amend it, it would mean that they've satisfied that amount.

Do you want to do a little walkthrough?

I think that would be good because even though Mr. Eder is describing what he's discussed as sort of the substance of the changes.

It seems like there's a lot of pages of changes.

So I think a little walkthrough would be reassuring for all of us.

I'm very happy to do it.

And Dan, are you comfortable doing the scrolling through and talking?

No problem.

Thank you.

And we can zoom out a little so you can see more text at the same time if you'd like.

Colleagues, thank you for, this is now the eighth Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee that has focused on this work.

And so I appreciate your flexibility and your willingness to sort of think through these items.

And again, wanna thank the stakeholders across the board who've been engaging as well over the last three months.

Yes, Council Member Pacheco.

No, I was just gonna say thank you.

I know that this has been a lot of work, both for central staff and for Council Member Mosqueda's office.

So I appreciate just getting ready to go through the walkthrough.

Okay, on page one, there is a new recital that I won't read out loud, but I'll just draw your attention to.

It helps establish the intent of the bill and the council, if they support it.

As the chair mentioned on page 2, ancillary hotel business, the definition that was in the introduced bill is stricken and it's replaced with a note that this subject will be taken up at the 9-5 committee meeting.

On page three, there's a new definition for a covered employee and a new definition of dependents, and I just draw to your attention that dependents has the same meaning as in the Code of Federal Regulations.

And both of those suggestions came from stakeholder feedback, just wanting clarity on those two sections, so happy to include that.

Gold level equivalent is a new definition that means what it means effectively in the Washington Health Benefit Exchange and the ACA.

And that means at the passage of this ordinance, just in case there's future changes to the federal ACA.

Essential health benefits that are shown up on line 20, that is known, those benefits are known.

Those are included in the Affordable Care Act, yes.

Also a suggestion from some of the stakeholders that we clarify that in there as well.

There had been a defined term, rate of inflation, and that's been replaced and modified with a new term, medical inflation, which clarifies and calls out exactly how the medical inflation index will be determined annually.

Later in the bill, when we get to it, you'll see when the change in the dollar amounts that flow from the medical inflation rate how and when those get posted and communicated to employers so they know what the responsibilities are before those come into effect.

And are these rates regulated in such a way that the only thing that would affect them is inflation?

Or, like I mentioned earlier, could there be an unintended consequence of the city setting minimum insurance payment requirement, that that in itself would have an impact on the insurance market?

Or is that prohibited and is the only thing that can affect the rate of insurance inflation?

I believe the expectation is that the growth in spending in the private health insurance market generally is what we would be tying to here, so I don't think that the expenditures in the hotel industry are significant enough to materially influence that rate of inflation.

Of course, if over time the city finds that the inflation rate is either too high or too low and is not matching your expectation for what it ought to be, then future legislation, of course, could tie it to some different rate of inflation.

But this is an acknowledgment that there have been historically, and they're expected to be in the future, increases in the costs of providing medical care.

And I get that for individual coverage, but what I understand for when you're, when a large employer is negotiating with a provider to cover a lot of employees that there's, it doesn't follow the same, there's a negotiation.

And so that's what I'm trying to, I'm trying to get a handle on it.

Maybe we could just put it, we don't have to figure it out now.

We can put a pin on it because, I mean, there's a question of whether or not we're going to go with a dollar amount at all.

Right.

I believe sort of the issue you're describing is the individual experience, that individual plan's experience because of who they have in terms of covered lives, each belly button.

How has that changed the inflation for that plan versus how have we changed in terms of cost for that market overall?

The goal here is to look at the market cost, which CMS publishes annually, that will give us a baseline percentage for medical inflation only.

Well, that will then be tied to those dollar amounts that you see in there for, you know, now employers who don't offer health coverage or some combination of health coverage.

What you see in the CMS level is supposed to be for the industry and that helps us avoid having individual experiences or individual employer plan experience fluctuations.

And again, one of the other areas that we were looking at was, Does the city potentially contract with known and experienced actuaries or consultants that could crunch those numbers for us?

Having this number at CMS level was sort of advised because it's a federal number that's published annually that people can point to and know.

But I appreciate your question because it is definitely trying to get us away from that individual plan experience and more to the industry as a whole.

Okay, there's a definition for a qualifying life event, and this essentially opens up what would otherwise be a regular change in benefits period if something unusual happens, like you have the birth of a child, et cetera, you get married.

And that's good for if an employee has decided that they don't want the health coverage when they begin working and they've signed that waiver.

If there is a change in circumstance, if there's a life-changing situation and they have a baby or the death of their spouse occurs and they no longer have health care, that qualifying life event then allows them to come in and get health coverage.

It also then, in many ways, mitigates people from just saying, oh, I'd like health care now when they then get diagnosed with cancer, for example, which we have to watch out for in the health industry world so that people don't just come when they're sick.

we do need qualifying life events and appreciate some folks both in the industry and the worker advocates who have been asking for this language to be included.

In section 1428030, the bottom half of page 5, I would describe these as essentially technical improvements that maintain the original intent of the language.

I think that's true of the balance of this section.

There are no changes until we get to 14-28060 on page 8. This is where The required health care expenditure term that I described in my introductory remarks was and continues to be, but the order of the language has changed.

So it looks like there's a lot of changes, but I think I would describe much of the cause of the red ink on the page to be a reordering of similar language.

As I described in my opening remarks, there are a variety of ways that an employer can meet their required healthcare expenditure.

This is the section that describes the ways that that can happen, and they are substantively unchanged.

I'm on page 9. Sorry, I'm happy to go back to page 6 if you have a question.

So I saw you went through 030 and then I think you said that there was no further changes until 060. Yes, 040. I just want to clarify on the waiver that if an employee receives health care from someplace else or from a spouse, the employee, if I said that wrong, that the employee can say that he or she wants not to be covered by the employer.

Yes, and that was in the original as introduced bill as well.

So the substance of that is the same in the substitute.

The waiver is still available to an employee.

I'm just seeing a lot of new red language.

Yes, yes.

What's that about?

It is intended to be clarifying language that helps elucidate the same intent as the original bill.

That's my sense if others have

That's right.

And one good example is there is language in sub A here, for example, on page six, where we wanted to acknowledge that there may be a spouse who doesn't have employer health coverage, but they have great health coverage through the VA, for example.

If that employee says, hey, I don't want this health coverage to be something that I pay for and I don't need it for my spouse because they have VA coverage, that we've clarified it doesn't have to just be employer sponsored health coverage.

So I'm going to go back to 14-28060.

It begins on page 8 and continues on.

On page 9, there is a similar description using different, hopefully clarifying words for the same intent about how an employer can meet their required I think that is a good question.

I think that is a good question.

I think that is a good question.

I think that is a good question.

Whatever the committee decides to do, whether you vote on amended language now or take it up on the 5th, I will be trying to figure out how to answer that question.

My initial take is that if you look at A sub 3, It is saying that one of the ways in which we can look at whether or not an employer has satisfied the requirements of this bill is whether or not they're offering comprehensive coverage to their employees or their dependents.

It does go on to describe employer self-insured or self-funded insurance programs.

And so then I think the language that you see then in the subsequent section B explains what that looks like, what type of coverage that could look like.

So should we put that, and I'm asking this question just for clarification, should we be stating that up front so that if the employer has satisfied that monthly amount for health care expenditure if they offer a gold-level plan?

So we basically do that because you have described what the amount is, and then you've shown B as being one exception to that is.

OK.

Are we?

OK.

Well, I'd like to spend some time making sure that this is clear and readable.

But I think we're going in the right direction.

That sounds good.

OK.

Items B and D together provide, I was describing in my opening remarks that some employees may choose to opt out of healthcare coverage and receive no further compensation.

There's no change to this, but there's different language describing it.

Those employees must have access to other health coverage for themselves that meet certain criteria, namely they have to be gold-level equivalent for themselves or their families.

That's not a change, but there is different language to address the same policy intent.

Employers may rely on the employee's statement that they're covered by such a plan, and this is, again, different language, but it's the same policy intent.

There is a new waiting period for new hires, so employers can take up to 60 days in which to begin making the required healthcare expenditure.

And that allows both the employee to figure out what their options are and for the employer to make a rational decision about what they want to offer the employee.

That is new to this provision.

In item C, on the bottom of page 10, is where the new dollar amounts are established that are, again, a 20% haircut, as the Chair described it, from the dollar amounts that were included in the as-introduced legislation.

So just for clarification here, and the chair is trying to help me understand this as we go, but do these dollar amounts not apply if the employer has provided a gold level plan?

That's the intent of the amendment that the Chair was speaking to.

Will CC be just eliminated?

Well, you see C is, sorry, Council Member, I'll just answer if that's okay, because I can point at the page.

You see line 3 on page 10, it references C in here, so it's basically clarifying exactly what you said, that C will not affect those employers that have offered a gold-level plan.

But if an employer has not offered a goal level plan, then C would kick in.

And I don't love healthcare savings accounts, for example, and healthcare savings accounts, as the person who testified, are exactly right.

They're more like emergency health coverage, and I wouldn't even call them coverage.

They're kind of a, in case of emergency, backstop.

We have offered it as an alternative if anybody is not offering a gold-level equivalent and they're offering something like an HSA.

That's a great example of where our criteria then sets in and says, If you're not offering that goal level plan but you are offering an HSA, you still need to meet these dollar amounts so that we keep the worker whole because we recognize that the HSA type of coverage is not high quality, high value.

Okay, I appreciate that.

And if an employer, let's say it's a large employer.

or employees that can invest in a pool together, if they offer a gold-level plan, irrespective of how much they have to pay, have they satisfied?

With our new language, yes.

I talked about D already.

I'm going to skip to E now on page 12 of the red line version.

This is a new, the new language that's added to E would establish a, essentially the timing for the required healthcare expenditure amount to be paid, especially and in particular with respect to the employers who choose to use compensation to meet some or all of the required healthcare expenditure amount.

This establishes that the payment can't essentially be saved up over time and paid ten years from when it's owed.

It has to be paid in the month that the employee is receiving the rest of their compensation.

Item F, from the bottom of page 12 going on to page 13 again of the red line version.

discusses the medical inflation rate and it uses this new defined term medical inflation rate and as I described earlier, provides some specificity about when the new rate has to be published so that employers have some heads up and advance notice before it goes into effect for the following year.

And in particular, it has to be posted, calculated, and then posted before the end of the third quarter of each year.

And to clarify, we want to make sure that it's clear that the agency, meaning Office of Labor Standards, is not doing the calculation itself, right?

There were some folks who asked that question.

This is really posting and sharing the information with the clerk so that it's available for the industry and workers so people know what the rate is, but that will be done by CMS.

Yeah, exactly.

There are some other provisions in the bill, but I think that's the substance of what's changing.

And if you want to look at page 16, I think that this one's important as well.

Some folks have said, so about enforcement, if somebody calls Office of Labor Standards, are they expected to determine the actuarial value of a plan?

That's not something we expect OLS to all of a sudden be expertise in.

They can work with a known and competent broker or consultant.

to ask people to do that work, but it wouldn't be done in-house at the City of Seattle or Office of Labor Standards.

We recognize there's professionals who currently do that work.

Did you want to talk about the implementation date, Dan?

I can, if you like.

I'm just going to skip down to...

Page 33. Thank you.

I'll just mention a few comments.

So our original implementation date was April 1st, 2020, which is, you know, approximately six months or so from the time of passage.

But we also recognize that many people in this moment in fall and winter of 2019 will be finalizing the plans that they will offer to employees for calendar year 2020. We don't expect any employer to have a special enrollment period because of the change in this policy.

So we're basically saying for the next annual open enrollment period, we expect these to be kicked in.

If you don't have an open enrollment period between now and April 1st of next year, then it needs to kick in at least by the end of that calendar year.

So that's feedback that we received from the industry and have also talked to the worker advocates about that too.

I know we'd prefer it to be as soon as possible.

Any other questions on this?

I want to thank Council Member Pacheco real quick before questions.

You had a suggested amendment for adding high quality in as we talk about health care and appreciate that we've included it.

I don't believe there's any other amendments to this bill besides the one that I worked up here with you guys.

And as it relates to the dollar amount, I think we can continue to get feedback, appreciate folks from both the worker and the industry side who have offered to give us some of their, what is it called?

Redacted a name so that it's not tied to any employer.

We don't need proprietary data, but if folks have examples of how much they pay for high quality care that is meeting the sexual value, I'd love to see that.

At this point though, we do have that 20% haircut included to reflect the numbers we have seen from the brokers that we've been working with and Again, would love to at least get the opportunity to amend this section so that people have a sense of understanding that we've heard them and that we all have shared goals and it's on page 10. Do we have clarification on the premium split?

So when we say gold level equivalent, the amount split is 80-20, so 80 being picked up by the plan, 20 being picked up by the individual, and that's defined in the federal law.

Gold level equivalent means that ideally you have an 80-20 split, though we recognize that there is some variation.

I believe that the ACA says that you can have anywhere between a 76-24 split or an 82-18 split, so there's a little bit of a range there that is defined in the Affordable Care Act, and we've mirrored that language here.

It's been hearkening back to my exchange days.

Councilmember Herbold and then Dan.

So can we go back to page 10?

Yes, let's do that.

And again go over what it is that we're talking about doing here.

I'm resisting the urge to come type.

So it would be after health benefit exchange right there.

We would keep the comma in and say that employer has satisfied.

And then strike all the way through of.

Great.

And then we would put a period after C.

After 14-20-06-0C.

And we would write in if an employer.

And then strike and.

Yep.

This allows for us to say that they have satisfied the requirements in the legislation, and then it goes on to allow for the employer to do auto enrollment if they'd like, and also allows for the clear language around waivers for any employee or their dependents and how that data needs to be calculated or compiled.

Dan, I'm sure you love when council members amend at the table, but I appreciate your willingness to do that for us.

Maybe I'd just put a placeholder in that, as Council Member Bagshaw was asking about the implications for other sections that there may, There may be implications for other sections that we on the fly are not quite able to discern.

And so I'd love to have an opportunity to revisit this with an eye to smoothing things out at the 9-5.

Me too, 100%.

And I'm sure our attorneys would say the same.

So that's how it would read as amended.

Any comments or questions on that?

I appreciate the enthusiasm from the stakeholders and I think that that just underscores what Council Member Herbold and Bagshaw and I have been saying, this is our goal in terms of value versus dollar amount and gets to the high quality point that Council Member Pacheco has raised.

Comments, Council Member?

I was just going to say, you know, thank you for, I know this is a very nuanced subject and I just appreciate the work by central staff and everyone different offices that are spending their time to legislate and draft this ordinance.

Appreciate that and a thousand percent.

I know you guys been working through burning through the midnight oil.

So thank you.

Yes, I would love to amend this legislation and Keep it in committee But allow for us to acknowledge that this is a work in progress amend it today Keep it in committee and bring it back on September 5th hearing more from our central staff and legal team I'm sure at that point as well, but we will keep all of these bills in committee and that would allow us to go on to the next piece, which is pretty meaty as well.

Council Member Herbold.

Just a clarifying question about the procedure that you're recommending.

We are making an amendment to replace the introduced bill with the substitute.

That's correct.

And that's it?

Yes.

A substitute as amended.

Yeah, amending the substitute and then the substitute would amend the base bill.

But we're not voting on the bill after.

That's right.

Okay, I'm cool with that.

Just procedurally, I don't think you have moved, maybe I missed it.

I haven't moved anything.

So I think you can move this version of D2, I'll call it D2A or something like that.

and then it'll be clear what the committee is taking action on.

So Dan has amended version D2 to now make it D2A, and what I'd like to do is move that the committee recommends amending Council Bill 119555 and substituting 119555 with amended version D2A.

Although, any additional comments?

I want to read the whole thing.

So I'm going to be abstaining from this vote.

But I really like where you're going here with the employers being satisfied or their responsibility being satisfied.

So don't take an abstention as that I don't like the direction.

I just feel I want to feel comfortable in really reading where we are before I vote on this.

Understood council member Ryan.

I'll be voting for this, but similar recognizing.

This is a work in process of progress and The action to substitute this is just to get us all on the same page once again where we are There's still work to be done for sure agreed council member

Just appreciate the forward movement and also appreciate your willingness for us not to vote on the underlying bill yet because I think that's a nice compromise between continuing just to talk about amendments and not moving on them and moving something out.

So thank you.

Okay, all those in favor of amended bill D to a please raise your hand I Any opposed none any abstentions one?

Okay, three votes to amend one vote to abstain and we will keep this bill council bill one one nine five five five in committee and we will move to item number four which has already been read into the record and That's Council Bill 119557. Again, thanks to the folks who stuck around with us.

We have about 40 minutes left, and we are getting to another really important piece of legislation, and that's related to hotel safety.

So we'll let you tee up whatever you'd like, and just want to say thank you to my colleagues for allowing us to move this amended version of the healthcare piece forward to keep the conversation going.

Carina, thank you for your work on this.

Yes, you're very welcome.

So today at the table, there's going to be discussion of a substitute bill for hotel safety protections.

It's version D2.

This is one of the four ordinances and the package of ordinances that have been proposed to protect hotel workers.

This version has a number of changes from the original version D1 that was proposed earlier, and it also has some changes from a version that was shared last night with certain stakeholders.

So I will do my best to highlight both of those types of changes.

And what council members have before them right now is a track changes version of this legislation, a clean version of the legislation, and then also a chart that highlights some of the changes and the key components of the revised version.

So what I can do is go through this chart and then along the way highlight some of the differences from the D1 version and the version that was shared last night with some folks.

So, to begin, a broad overview before I dive into the details.

This new version doesn't have a requirement for an employer to conduct an investigation when there's been a report of violent or harassing conduct by a guest toward an employee.

It does not require an employer to keep a list of guests that have been alleged to engage in that misconduct or to ban services for five years, nor does it require the employer to limit guest services beyond the guest current stay.

So there are some significant differences from the original version, and I'll go into more detail with those later, but I just wanted to say that at the outset.

So there is no ban, and there is In terms of recommendations that we've had from the law department, do we think that this particular version deals with some of the constitutional due process questions that have come up?

Yes.

That is the thought behind these changes.

And to clarify the word ban, there is a limitation on some in-room guest services, which we'll discuss later.

But what was discussed as the, quote, ban in the past was a declining of all services to guests for a period of five years.

Not in this legislation at all good and the Hotelier still reserves the right to trespass anybody that has not been changed.

That's current law right now So we're not impacting that.

Correct.

Hotels have discretionary authority to trespass their guests at their own decision-making and they can always do things that are separate from this that might provide more protections, decisions that might be made under Title 7 or local and state anti-discrimination law, etc.

Okay, so to begin, there still is a panic button requirement.

And the change in this legislation is that the panic button requirement, as was noted by one of the folks providing public comment today, it's got a difference from the panic button requirement that is now state law for isolated workers.

The difference is that the panic button in this legislation requires the employer to provide immediate assistance to whoever triggered the panic button.

The state panic button says that the button just has to be able to summon assistance.

It, quote, may summon assistance.

This panic button must summon assistance.

So, in short, a whistle's not going to work for this piece of legislation.

Do we know about the technology that's available for this?

I mean, whether it's a Bluetooth kind of thing, if you push the panic button, does that go down to the...

I mean, I guess the question is, who's going to respond?

And I think you and I talked about this yesterday, particularly a big convention size hotel.

As we all know, we've been there, you can walk down the hall and see absolutely nobody.

So how does this work and what do we think the response will be by whom?

Well, I imagine that these panic buttons can work in a multitude of different ways depending on how they're configured.

And I imagine that if it's an electronic device, which is likely going to need to be with this new definition, that it could go to the employer's security department, it could go to someone in HR, it could go to whoever the employer has designated to receive the signal that someone needs immediate assistance, and then someone would always need to be on call and available to receive that signal.

So it couldn't be just blinking in a room where maybe someone stepped out, right?

Someone always has to be able to receive it and then react immediately.

So, just to that point, I just want to say...

I think that's a really important, significant reform in this legislation.

I don't think it's busy work of this council to make this reform because of the practices and the experiences that we know people have had trying to summon help in a case of an assault of an employee at a hotel.

So I think this is really important.

I also appreciate the fact that Many hoteliers had come into compliance with the law and need additional time to come up to this new level of expectation and appreciate Council Member Muscata including this amendment in the substitute bill.

It was an amendment that I was interested in bringing forward, so thank you.

I want to give a quick shout out to our friend Councilmember Gonzalez who is probably watching from Copenhagen.

Her and her team worked as well with Sejal from my team on some of these amendments with central staff.

So I want to say thanks to their work as well for including these various amendments.

Yeah, and to build on what Councilmember Herbold was saying, what's different in this D2 version from the D1 version is not the definition of panic button, that remains the same.

What's different is, as Councilmember Herbold noted, is that there is a one-year extension for employers to comply with this new definition as long as the employer is providing a panic button that meets state requirements in the interim.

So on January 1, when this law would go into effect, if the employer has a panic button that's compatible with state requirements, they are fine as long as they improve it with the Seattle requirements by the end of the year, January 1 of 2021.

Maybe this is a question, Council Member Herbold, you obviously know more about this than I do.

What is allowable now?

I mean, the whistle is one thing you brought up.

What else meets the current state requirements?

What kind of?

Again, the difference is whether or not the device results in a response.

Karina, maybe you could speak a little bit more to that.

Yeah, I mean, the state requirement mirrors the same language as Initiative 124, what was in the original hotel protections legislation.

And so with this new bill, from the beginning, there was a decision to make the panic button stronger than it was under I-124 and stronger than it is now under state law.

It doesn't really say much.

That's why I'm asking these questions.

124 just said the employer will provide a panic button to each hotel employee.

It doesn't really describe what it does.

Does it emit a horrible sound?

I'm just interested in what is the technology that's allowable by the state law now or was originally passed and what are we going toward?

So my understanding without having initiative 124 directly in front of me is that there...

I can offer it to you if you want it.

Thank you.

Let me look at the end.

Because I believe that there was a definition of panic button.

We have a definition in our own legislation.

We have a definition in the...

I think you just need to look at page 3, at the bottom of page 3 starting.

of the new one.

And so the definition of panic button and I-124 is the same as this proposed definition, except for one very important word.

The I-124 in state definition says that the panic button may summon immediate on scene assistance.

R says must.

Yeah, and R says must summon.

It is that word.

It's an important word, and that changes how the panic button is going to operate.

So Karina mentioned that a whistle would suffice as a panic button.

know of any hotels that are using a whistle, but we have heard about some hotels that are using a panic button that emits a noise that is a localized alarm from the panic button device itself that may or may not be heard outside of the room, may or may not be heard by someone who can, from the hotel, an employee of the hotel, come and assist.

It may do that, but it may not do that.

The change of the word to must means that the device must now communicate affirmatively with a designated person in the hotel, who works for the hotel, whose job is to send help.

So we've got some security.

We have security guards.

I mean, it's like if we were to push our panic buttons here, security knows about it.

Correct.

Okay, we got about a half hour, and I think we're on box one.

Yeah, so we've done box one.

We've done box two.

We're on box three for policy.

Okay.

This provision actually has not changed from the D1 version, but I felt it was important to highlight again that employers still must develop a written policy against violent and harassing conduct, provide the guest with a copy of that policy at check-in, and also provide it to the employees at hire and on an annual basis.

What has changed significantly is the next row, employer requirements for situations when there has been a report of violent harassing conduct by guests toward an employee.

So you'll see now that these requirements are much shorter than they were under the D1 version.

The employer must first provide the guest with written notice of the discontinuation of services required by this law.

This notice does not contain factual allegations.

So it's a very bare bones, minimal amount of information.

There is a discontinuation of your services as is required by 14.26.

The employer also must immediately take preventative action to safeguard all employees from any future potential violent or harassing conduct by the guest and at a minimum what this preventative action must include is discontinuing the in-room guest services for that guest for the duration of their stay unless an investigation determines that the alleged conduct did not occur.

It's very important to know that this the situation where an investigation determining that the conduct did not occur, that is if the employer decides at their own discretion to conduct an investigation, or if there happens to be a law enforcement investigation.

This ordinance, under no circumstances, requires an investigation.

It's just recognizing that if one happens, certain things can happen, can flow from it, depending on the determination.

All right, I know this is an area that we have been wrestling with.

Two things.

One, so let's just assume for a second that the harassing conduct happened at 2 in the morning and the guest checks out the next morning.

Does the hotel have to send a letter to Omaha chasing the individual down and saying there has been a complaint?

I mean, is that a requirement?

The second requirement, and I really want to be careful about this investigation business, the prosecuting attorney's office and our police department have alerted us that we've got to be very careful around these investigations, not to taint any evidence, not to compromise a future investigation.

And I'm talking about something that's violent and obvious, not the subtle ones that we've been talking about.

I just want us to be paying attention here, make sure that whatever language we come up with passes, not just our city attorney scrutiny, but the prosecuting attorney's office and our investigating police departments.

Up above, we say that an investigation is not required, though, correct?

I heard that.

So this is only if there is an investigation that is not required.

Well, I think that's part of the problem, is that if somebody takes on an investigation under their own volition, but it turns out to be a criminal matter later on, what I'm hearing from our police and prosecuting attorneys is that we can really compromise a future criminal investigation.

This would be like hotel security or something.

This is not something, and we can't Yes, that's the problem.

I mean, the idea is that there are hotel security practices now that might involve investigatory practices.

We don't have any control over that, but we're saying that if those practices occur, that the employee needs to be reassigned.

I just want to spend a little more time on this.

I think we've got some concerns that have been raised and flagged.

I'm not sure we've met or that we are yet addressing the concerns that I'm hearing from those professionals who do this kind of investigation.

Dan and Karina, could you comment a little bit about the current requirements that employers have when an employee flags an issue of harassment or assault in the workplace?

Not out of any direction from city government, but what are their current requirements as an employer?

Well, there is direction from city government, but it's not under this law.

It would be under the anti-discrimination law that the Office for Civil Rights enforces.

And so that's 14.04.

There is a state corollary, the Washington State Law Against Discrimination.

And of course, there's the federal corollary, which is Title VII in that law.

requires employers to take immediate preventative action to correct situations when they receive information that an employee has been subjected to harassment that is severe or pervasive.

And so that exists regardless.

of this ordinance and employers decide what they do to make sure that the employee is removed from that situation and that it doesn't happen anymore.

So employers take a variety of actions to address that.

If the harasser is an employee, they might put them on paid leave and separate them from the employee.

If it's a guest, maybe they'll decide on their own just to immediately trespass them.

They might choose to investigate it.

They might not.

They might just get rid of the situation.

So all of those provisions remain in place, and I think the conversation around if the employer decides to call, you know, police to come and help them with that responsibility, they already have.

That is not something that we are either mandating or messing with in this ordinance.

Correct.

What this law is mandating is that the guest be given a written notice of the discontinuation of services.

So there was very careful thought into what would go into that notice and how it would be worded in this legislation.

It was intentional that the notice does not include the requirement to have factual allegations.

It is simply a discontinuation of services.

And I imagine that OLS maybe could provide a template as something to provide to employers to have a minimally worded plain language notice for guests.

So as we move away from sort of the original language, which I think raised some concerns from some of our friends about, you know, quote unquote lists, we also do want to recognize that there does have to be protections for those workers.

And even a worker whose claim might not be substantiated, we don't want to put that worker back in that same situation.

But we don't want anybody to be in a harmful situation while that investigation that the employer is doing on their own under existing law continues.

So having the room not clean for that duration seemed like a good sort of hybrid approach to making sure people were safe and that we also respected that employers may be doing their own investigation or they may be contacting the police, as we've talked about, which is already their existing right to do.

Anything else, Council Member Herbold?

Just a question.

I know that Alex in my office had worked with you, Corina, on an amendment as it relates to confidentiality for a reporting employee, and it's not clear to me whether or not that's included in the substitute.

It is.

It's in the next section that I'll be talking about.

It's got its own letter.

It's definitely in there.

Before we move on, though, I want to make sure that Council Member Bagshaw's questions are answered, and I'd like to point out what it means to discontinue in-room guest services.

And what that means is that employees are no longer assigned to work in that room or to make deliveries to that room.

However, the guest can always go down to the front desk to get their towels and the guest can go down to the front desk to get their food.

And do we have any legal concerns about interfering with a contract between the hotel and the guest?

And again, I'm coming back to an unsubstantiated, it's 2 in the morning, nobody else has seen it.

Where are we from a legal standpoint if we say, we've decided that we're not going to provide you services tomorrow morning?

Well, I think that the sum total of this legislation vastly reduced the concerns that we heard about from ACLU and from the King County Sexual Assault Network and other legal concerns.

We would have to explore more what you just asked about.

I do want to note we have received some communication this morning as well from our friends at ACLU who have said that this is a good first step.

They appreciate that many of their concerns were addressed.

Regarding this section that we're talking about, they did not have any comments on that.

So we do look forward to working with them, though, before it moves out of committee.

But that was a really good indication.

So the two items that we're going to be working with them on are further refining violent and harassing, which they gave us some RCWs to cross-reference.

And we'll also be working with them on alleged allegations.

But I think that this is really good indication that we're on the right path.

Great.

Thank you.

So the next set of employer requirements address what the employer needs to do for an employee who was an alleged victim of violent harassing conduct.

That addresses employees who make a report themselves, or maybe it's a report that was made by a third party that addresses conduct that was made toward another employee.

So the employer must reassign the employee to a different work area.

This is regardless of, this doesn't include a step one of offering the employee reassignment.

This just needs to happen.

And so that's a difference from the D1 version that was originally proposed.

So the employer immediately will reassign the employee and will maintain that reassignment even if there is an investigation that determines that the alleged conduct did not occur.

There is language in the actual law that's not in the summary that says that the employer doesn't need to maintain the reassignment if it were to conflict with an employer's obligations under a collective bargaining agreement.

But the gist of it is this employee reported very egregious conduct by a guest.

Do not put them in a situation ever again with that guest during the rest of their stay.

And I just want to bring up one more thing that we heard from ACLU, and that is if we are automatically reassigning an employee to another floor, the concern that has been raised is possibly putting that employee at a disadvantage or in a position of being retaliated against.

An example that was brought up is that the employee is working on floor 10 and in floor 11 we've got a much busier floor.

Much more action that it actually puts them in a worse position so they're just raising this issue and also whether or not taking necessary steps is too vague.

So raising that for just further review and consideration.

Yeah, so I think that would be contained within the existing retaliation provisions and protections.

Perhaps it could be considered whether or not to make it clear, reassign to employee to a different work area with equal or equivalent work assignments.

something to consider.

And that also could be handled in rules, maybe.

And I'm not, I just want to raise this.

I'm not, I don't have a solution for it, just as we're conversing today with all of these elements.

Yeah, thank you.

The employer must provide the employee with a copy of that.

Sorry, Karina, can I just underscore that?

I want to say thank you for bringing that up.

And I think you're right.

It is maybe not necessarily a legal concern, but as you were just talking, it does seem like maybe If this were to be maintained as is, we should ask for clarification and rules or from the agency for how to make sure that that kind of disparity doesn't exist.

But I do want to acknowledge I agree with Council Member Baxhaw that that should be addressed.

Yeah, absolutely.

So the employee is receiving a copy of the same notice of discontinuation of services that the guest received, just to let them know this happened, you are protected, we care, you know, we're doing what the law requires.

Next, this is- Quick one, and I'm sorry, I keep interrupting, but these all seem so important.

So the guest is checked out.

You know, it happened last night at 2 in the morning, the guest checks out at 7.30.

What is the hotel required to do?

Yeah, thank you for bringing us back to that.

I think that that's a very important question and I think it's something that could hopefully be addressed by agency rules about what it means to provide notice to a guest because I can imagine If it gets reported at 2 a.m.

and the guest is slotted to leave at 9.30 a.m., the hotel could slide it under the door if that's acceptable or make sure that someone's waiting by the guest door when they get up.

Or if they've already left, it could be mailed to them.

So I imagine in those types of situations, there could be different ways to achieve that notice.

And I think rules would be helpful to clarify.

I think I'm understanding right that the restrictions on what the hotel offers the guest is only for the guest's current stay.

Is that correct?

Correct.

So if the guest has already left by the time the hotel gets together the notice, then effectively there's no longer any purpose in giving the notice?

Well, I think it could serve a purpose of letting the guests know.

I meant that as a question rather than a statement.

Yeah, okay.

I think that it could serve a purpose of letting the guests know that there was a report of that behavior and I think that's what the notice would serve to do and otherwise the guests would have no knowledge that the hotel was on notice and that there had been a report about that situation.

All right, so they're in two different places in the ordinance.

There are new requirements for Office of Labor Standards to develop some new documents that can be handed to, that the employer can hand to the employee in these sorts of situations when there's been a report of guest misconduct.

So, one is that the Office of Labor Standards create a poster that includes the notice of all the rights that flow from this revised version.

The next document is that OLS would create a summary with notice of rights to a support advocate.

which I'll talk about in a moment, that OLS can facilitate happening.

And also the right to a crime victim advocate that already exists under state law and notice of other rights of crime victims and survivors and witnesses for sexual assault that exist under state law.

And then third, create a notice of prohibitions against retaliation that happen regardless of an employee's citizenship or immigration status.

So, OLS is tasked with creating those documents in this legislation and also translating them.

The employer is tasked with providing them to an employee in these situations in English and in their primary language.

Council Member O'Brien.

Oh, I thought you were reaching for your mic.

Okay, excellent.

I want to say thank you as well to some of the King County Crime Victims Advocates groups who have offered us some initial suggested language, and we're going to keep working with them as we work on this language.

But I think having the opportunity to access those community resources and experts is a really great asset in the legislation, and we'll keep working with them on refining the language.

Okay.

Next is the employer must permit the employee to use up to 16 hours of paid time to consult with the counselor, advisor, advocate.

That could be this newly developed support advocate, a crime victim advocate, a support person of their own choosing.

Those 16 hours need to be used within a week of the report that this misconduct happened.

The 16 hours is an increase from what was in the D1 version.

There were eight hours.

in that version now there are 16 that reflects the need to have extra time to consult with this new support advocate and the fact that depending on the level of severity of the incident an employee might need more time for those consultations.

You may in the first eight hours in that first day make calls around and then in that second day have those And so the two-day concept is really what we were aiming for.

I was going to ask, I think that's the question, is how did we land on that number?

I would imagine that one incident may take an hour or two to resolve and another another incident might take longer.

How did we just arrive at 16?

Was it just an arbitrary guess or it was some industry standard?

Sure.

There's no industry standard.

It was what was perceived to be reasonable in these kinds of situations, knowing that an unlimited amount of time would actually benefit from some guardrails.

If there was an unlimited amount of time, there might be a reasonable need to provide some verification.

Didn't want to impose verification requirements.

For this paid time, so some amount more than eight hours was decided to go for 16, two days.

Have we talked with employee advocates and employer advocates to see how they feel about that number?

At this juncture, we don't have feedback on responses to 16 hours versus eight.

I'd love to get some feedback on both sides.

Yeah, we have heard some concern, I think, from the industry about the expansion of it.

And I think from the worker advocate side and the survivor side, a recognition that eight hours is probably not enough.

So look forward to getting that feedback as well.

But I think 16 hours right now recognizes you might not be able to get a same day appointment if you start calling at 8 a.m.

Next, the employer is required to cooperate with any law enforcement investigation.

And then number six, Council Member Herbold, the employer is required to take reasonable precautions to protect the identity of employees who report this misconduct, employees who are the alleged victims of the misconduct, and witnesses.

And it's not very prescriptive, but it is stating a requirement to take what is a reasonable precaution.

Councilmember Herbold.

And so in developing this we had had another version that was more prescriptive, but I think I just want to highlight I'm fine with this language because I think we're gonna get more detailed in the rulemaking, but I just want to highlight publicly what the types of things we'll be looking to OLS to refine in in rulemaking and so For instance, what our expectations are around disclosure of the identity of the employee and what our expectations are about access to records.

Those are at least two of the things that I can think of that we'd want some more definition around.

while trying to protect that confidentiality.

Yeah, thank you.

And I think that this is a topic that is well suited to clarification and rules.

One of the thoughts about being too prescriptive about sharing the information is that don't want employees to feel like they themselves aren't allowed to talk about these situation with their colleagues.

Don't want to limit that.

Absolutely.

Next is a new addition, it's on the next page, page two, a support advocate.

This is a newly described, it's a newly invented service for workers and it recognizes the fact that folks right now under state law have access to a crime victim advocate which is providing a range of support services when there's been an allegation of sexual assault, and those support services are available to help people through law enforcement investigations, any sort of prosecution and legal proceedings that happen.

In some instances, what is alleged to have happened with the guests won't rise to the level of a crime.

And then employees don't have necessarily rights to these crime victim advocates under state law.

So the support advocate is filling in that gap.

And it can actually, I guess, perhaps tread in both worlds.

That can be developed by rules.

But the support advocate is designed to help employees know what their rights are under this law and to help them know their choices about reporting the conduct to management, about what management needs to do, perhaps stepping in to make sure that management is aware of what they need to do and to facilitate making that happen.

If there happens to be an OLS investigation or other court proceeding, the advocate could step in there and support the employee in those situations and certainly within the 16 hours that is proposed to follow the report.

This is something that is envisioned as OLS making happen, whether that be contracting with a qualified community organization, or contracting with another entity, or in whatever way OLS is tasked with providing access to these support advocates.

And I should say it's up to 16 hours, so it doesn't have to be the full 16. And this is also language that we have heard feedback from the crime victims or survivor advocates who said this mirrors much of what they've tried to do at the state level as well in terms of making sure there's a supportive entity, a support advocate so that people can help navigate the systems.

So are we anticipating this being available 24-7, or what are we thinking about?

And do we have any guesstimate about how many times a week this advocate would be contacted based upon what your experiences are, what we're hearing from Stefan and others?

I mean, just how many times?

And this is, I understand we don't have all the data yet, but what's our best estimate?

So as far as the availability of the support advocate, again, I think that's another excellent issue for rule development by OLS.

And I imagine that OLS and stakeholders could look at what's required for the crime victim advocates, see if that's sufficient, see if it needs to be expanded.

or modified in as far as the availability or the call for these support advocate services.

I don't know if that's known.

I believe that what this legislation is trying to do is to increase the number of reports to management of these situations when they happen.

And so, I think what we've heard from hotel workers is that there has been some reticence to report situations of guest misconduct.

And the goal of this legislation is to encourage those reports to actually be elevated to management.

So I think it's hard to know exactly the numbers right now, but that certainly is something that we could check in with.

And taking one more step back, and I really appreciate it, is that part of the objective here is to identify and stop this boorish and harassing behavior that many of the employees have spoken to.

So it's, I mean, I see this as two ways, that if people know we're serious about it, maybe things improve.

Absolutely.

So it could be encouraging folks to report these incidents and making, and guests now are on notice to not do this.

should be obvious, but.

Council Member Herbold.

Just curious about the budget impact of this advocate position.

Yes, so if OOLS determines that these additional tasks will incur a cost and that could be something that is proposed in the mayor's budget or it could be something that council considers during the budget process.

But we don't have an estimate on, we do not.

Assuming it's one, one person?

Well, I think that's something to be explored.

It could be, there could be a community organization that has a number of staff members that could fulfill this function, and they could be contracted with to add this to their plate of responsibilities.

So it might not be one person, but it might be five people that are always providing these services that now can expand them to encompass this legislation as well.

I just want to be clear because I think the way that I read this and the intent that was embedded, at least in my head, is that this would be a potential referral out to organizations that are already expert.

Crisis connections.

Crisis connections.

The support advocate could be somebody who works within the King County Coalition for Domestic, I'm forgetting the name of it, KCR.

KCR.

KCR.

KCR.

Yeah, so I think that there's entities that we could look at and doesn't necessarily need to be in-house nor would somebody have to be trained up on those skills.

I appreciate that.

We have a backlog of budget needs and I chair a department that is very understaffed for the laws that we've passed and so if we're Office of Civil Rights, And so if we were talking about a new position for OLS, I really would be much more comfortable waiting to have that discussion during the budget process.

But if what you're saying is that this, that is not this intent.

That is not the intent.

And if we should clarify that, happy to do so.

But I think that was the way I read it and didn't even actually think about it being internal.

So thank you both for flagging that and want to be explicit that this would be contract with a support advocate external.

We initially had language saying that OLS would contract with a qualified community organization or other entity, and there was some confusion in folks reading that, thinking that it was suddenly requiring an employer to contract.

We chose very broad language, shall provide access, that on the back end would be understood to mean that OLS would contract or maybe even, you know, figure out other ways to provide the service, but not intended for OLS to have an additional staff person for this.

Colleagues, it's been already a long morning, but I'm going to ask if you guys have 15 minutes.

Maybe we can keep walking through this chart.

Yeah.

Thank you.

There are two main sections left, recordkeeping and enforcement.

In recordkeeping, there was language added to make it clear that nothing requires an employer to retain records with the identifying information that the guest alleged to have engaged in the misconduct.

And also, with all labor standards ordinances currently on the books, there is a rebuttable presumption that the employer violated the law if they failed to maintain records.

That exists in this legislation as well, with additional language that that presumption that a violation happened only applies for established allegations or incidents of guest misconduct.

So this addresses situations where the employer says, we don't have records of this situation because no one ever complained.

And so I think this again, well suited for rules to describe what it means to have an established allegation.

Does that mean OLS is found by a preponderance of evidence that there's a, that the situation happened or something else?

And I really want to acknowledge the feedback that we've received not just from ACLU but others and folks in the legislative branch here who wanted to make sure that we weren't unduly keeping an ongoing quote list for five years.

As you see in the amended language that Karina just walked us through, we wanted to be explicit that nothing requires the employer to retain records of identifying information.

We obviously want there to be follow-through in the moment, especially for that stay, so that no worker is put in harm's way and nobody's asked to go back to the room where they experienced the alleged harassment or intimidation or violence.

But this is really critical so that we've clarified.

No ban, no list.

Thank you.

Exactly.

Last is the enforcement section.

First, all of the penalties and fines in the enforcement section have been doubled from the amounts that are regularly in labor standards ordinances for a couple of reasons.

One is to further incentivize compliance with the ordinance.

And next is to recognize that there is very limited financial recovery for employees when an employer doesn't comply.

with the provisions of this law.

And there is a provision in the enforcement section that allows the Director of Office of Labor Standards to determine whether any sort of penalties, civil penalties, that would be paid to the city can actually be paid to the worker.

Here, we don't have situations where workers aren't getting premium pay or aren't getting wages.

It's just a matter of, did the employer follow the requirements of this law?

give the guest the notice.

Did they separate the worker from that situation of misconduct?

So in this situation, if the director decides that penalties are in order, those can be directed to the worker.

It also can be split penalties to the city and penalties to the worker.

Some fines were added to reflect some of the new requirements in this version.

And last, there is an account established that would use penalties and fines payable to the city to defray any agency costs for providing a support advocate.

Recognizing that may not be sufficient to wholly pay for a support advocate, but could defray the cost.

Councilmember Herbold, any other comments from you, given the oversight for civil rights, anything that's brought to light for you?

Thank you, but no, I'm good, thanks.

Councilmembers, any additional questions on these pieces?

So the enforcement is around the enforcement of actions to protect the workers, as contrasted, I would just like a little further fleshing out about what we think we are enforcing here.

Yeah, so if a worker comes to the Office of Labor Standards with a complaint of violation of this law, it would be along the lines of, I reported to management that this terrible thing happened in a guest room, and they didn't do what they were supposed to do.

They didn't give the guests the notice of discontinuation of service.

They failed to discontinue the services.

They didn't take me out of that work environment.

They didn't give me my notice of rights.

they didn't give me paid time to consult with law enforcement or my advocate.

That's what the employee could say to Office of Labor Standards and Office of Labor Standards would determine if there actually was evidence to support those allegations.

So Council Colleagues, I want to again thank you for your ongoing work to work this draft at the table and your thoughtful analysis of the legislation over the last three months really.

The base legislation that Karina just walked through has been amended to reflect many of the concerns, ideas, and suggestions that many of you had.

At this point, are there amendments to this amended version, Karina?

Or I should ask our colleagues are there amendments to the amended version that Karina just walked through that anybody wants to potentially highlight?

Okay, I think I've brought up most of my concerns.

I had prepared some language, but I think we just leave that because we're going to continue working on this and I can bring it up later.

I would just request that we do like we did with the previous bill that we only vote on the substitute vote to substitute with the substitute and not vote on moving it out.

I think that that is absolutely well taken and in line with our goal to bring all of these items back on September 5th.

I really like the approach that central staff has put together to incorporate many of your ideas into one draft.

easy for us, and I'm sure difficult for you all, to pull these ideas all together, but it helps us to really see how these elements go together with the various suggestions in one amended draft that I'm just referring to as a striker.

But I agree with you, Council Member Herbold, and I want to acknowledge as well, we'll continue to do the conversations with the King County Coalition for Victims Advocates.

I'm not sure that I have the acronym right.

Sexual Assault Resources Coalition.

Sexual Assault Resources Coalition.

And there's the KC.

KSARC.

KSARC as well.

So we will work with those folks to see if there's any additional edits.

We already have acknowledged and thanked ACLU for their initial feedback this morning.

That is just the preliminary conversation that we will begin incorporating additional ideas from them as well prior to the September 5th date.

I'm sure that there's other feedback from our folks from the hotel industry and folks from the hotel worker advocate side that will want to give us feedback as well.

But in light of that, in order to recognize that this is a a work in progress, and we have included many of those suggestions to date.

I would like to go ahead and substitute Council Bill 119557 with amendment, what are we calling this, Karina?

D2, with amendment D2 as described by central staff.

I would move to do that.

Is there a second to move?

to amend.

Any additional conversation?

I'm going to abstain for the same reasons that I mentioned earlier.

I really want to continue to investigate some of these things, but I appreciate how much further we are at the end of these three hours than we were at nine o'clock.

Excellent, thank you.

All of those in favor of substituting Council Bill 119557 with Amendment D2, please vote aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

None.

Abstentions?

One.

The vote is three in favor, one abstention to substitute Council Bill 119557 with amended version D2.

We will keep that bill in committee here and we will bring all four parts back to committee on September 5th.

And with that, I know we have a lot of work to still do, and want to thank our central staff for your intense work on this.

Sejal Parikh is right behind me.

I want to thank you and Council Member Gonzalez in her office as well for their co-sponsorship of this and their work with us, and all of you for identifying various issues and amendments for us to consider.

We will keep this, these items in committee for future discussion on September 5th.

Council colleagues you are free to go if you'd like I did offer if there was one or two more people who came late that did want to testify I'd keep it open till 1215 if there is anybody here who would like to testify you're welcome to line up But just for the viewing public's awareness our next meeting will be September 5th at 9 a.m.

And we will really focus on Hotel worker legislation.

We have one report from Seattle City Light in the morning that we have to do from the Baker Tilly report.

Folks are coming up from San Francisco, which is great.

And then we'll get right into the heart of this.

Is there anybody else who did want to testify?

seeing no hands and no one running up.

Thank you all for staying with us today and for your work over the last few months on this legislation.

Central staff, thank you once again for your work.

And council colleagues, our meeting is adjourned.

Thank you for clerking for us today.

Thank you.