Seattle City Council Finance & Housing Committee 5421

Good morning, everyone.

Welcome to the Finance and Housing Committee meeting.

Today is May 4th, and the time is 9.31.

I'm Teresa Mosqueda, Chair of the Finance and Housing Committee.

The committee will now come to order.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Chair Mosqueda?

Present.

Vice Chair Herbold?

Council President Gonzalez?

Here.

Council Member Lewis?

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Madam Chair, that is 3 present.

Thank you very much.

Do we have any alternates or guests here today?

seeing none great thank you very much madam clerk i also want to note that council member lewis is excused and when council member herbold arrives we'll make sure to welcome her thanks again folks for joining today this is a committee meeting that will start with 20 minutes of public comment then we'll move into the labor standards advisory commission appointments then we'll move into the domestic worker standard board appointments We will continue the conversation and have an overview of the transparency requirements for contract workers.

This is a presentation and a body of work that Councilmember Herbold has been leading on, and so I know she'll be joining us for that as well.

And lastly, we'll have a briefing and possible vote on the sound transit property transfer ordinance.

It's a packed agenda today, but we will endeavor to make sure to get you out so you folks can have a lunch break.

Are there any questions about the agenda?

Hearing no questions or objections, the amended agenda is adopted.

As a reminder as well, at the top of the hour, I wanted to let folks know that we are going to have a public hearing today.

It's a continuation of our ongoing discussion about the ARPA funds, the American Rescue Plan Act funds.

This will be an opportunity for folks to sign up for public comment to give us their perspective on what are some of the most pressing issues that we should be funding.

with these federal dollars that are made available to respond to the COVID crisis and to make sure that there's a more equitable recovery.

The sign-up sheet can be found at seattle.gov backslash council backslash committees backslash public comment and that public comment will open at 3 30 p.m.

For our public comment this morning, I look forward to hearing from folks who have signed up to provide public comment on this morning's agenda.

Again, as a reminder, you will have two minutes to speak.

I'll call on members three at a time.

Please remember that when I call your name, it is your cue to hit star six to unmute yourself as well.

You have to hit star six, and you will also hear a prompt that says you've been unmuted.

And make sure that your own phone's not on mute on your end as well.

begin speaking by stating your name and the item that you're addressing.

And you will hear a 10-second chimer at the end of your allotted time.

That's your cue to wrap it up so that we don't have any of your sentences cut off.

And we'll move on to the next speaker.

Once you've completed your public comment, we ask that you please disconnect from the line.

and you can continue following us at Seattle Channel or the other listen in options listed on today's agenda.

The public comment period is now open and I will go to the first three speakers.

The first three are Jordan Goldberg, Andra Kranzler, and Doris Garcia.

Good morning, Jordan.

Hi, good morning.

Thank you so much for allowing public comment today.

My name is Jordan Goldwarg.

I'm a resident of District 4 and I'm also a member of the Domestic Workers Standards Board.

I occupy one of the seats for hiring entities.

And I'm here today to make comment on the transparency requirements for contract workers.

And specifically, I want to make comment about the process that has gone into this piece of legislation.

And because of the process, I actually feel like despite being a member of the Standards Board, I'm not in a position to comment on the content of the legislation.

From what I can tell, the proposed legislation seems to be good for workers, but I'm very concerned that the city has not done adequate engagement with domestic workers and, for that matter, with hiring entities to be sure that workers are actually in support of this.

and that there won't be unintended consequences.

One of the things that we've heard in particular is given the number of domestic workers who are undocumented, there is a lot of fear and uncertainty about anything that requires further documentation in their work arrangements.

And without doing that type of community engagement to work through those fears and misgivings, it's really hard for us to know if domestic workers actually support the proposal as it currently is.

I think it's particularly surprising and disappointing that workers covered under the Domestic Workers Ordinance were included in the legislation at this point, given that Council has not engaged with the full Domestic Workers Standards Board on this issue.

The little bit of engagement that we've had with council, the outcome of that really was our request that there be deeper, broader engagement with domestic workers to ensure that workers are in support of this legislation.

And even moving beyond domestic workers, we know that there may be other workers who are concerned about this legislation.

So I really am concerned about the process here, and thank you for your time.

Thank you very much for raising those concerns.

Very timely.

Appreciate the feedback.

We will move on to the next speaker, who is Andra Krantzler.

Krantzler, excuse me.

Andra, you are listed as not present.

I want to make sure that you're calling in on the right listen in line here.

It looks like you signed up pretty early, so I want to make sure that we get to you.

And the next person that we have is Doris Garcia, also listed as not present.

So I'm going to give folks just a few minutes to see if they call back in.

and are present.

So just one second.

And in the meantime, I want to welcome Council Member Herbold.

Thank you very much, Council Member Herbold, for joining.

Vice Chair, appreciate you being here.

Okay.

Andra and Doris, I'm still seeing you not as present, so if you're having any problems dialing in, please let Farideh Cuevas in my office know, and we will try to make sure to get your public comments reflected.

That's farideh.cuevas at Seattle.gov.

Okay.

With that, thanks so much, folks, for dialing in this morning.

That does conclude our public comment.

I just want to double check, Madam Clerk, that I didn't miss any of those two callers, did I?

Thank you very much for today.

Okay, let's go ahead and move on.

That concludes our public comment for this morning, and we will make sure if we do receive any written public comment that we circulate those to other council members.

At this time, let's go ahead and move into the first item on our agenda.

Let's do items one through five for our Labor Standards Advisory Committee appointments.

Madam Clerk, do you mind reading that into the record?

Agenda items one through five appointments to the Labor Standards Advisory Commission for, after working, I am so sorry for the last name, for Diana Oshua, Also known as Paola Ochoa, appointment for Alexis Lodish, and appointment for Tracy Taylor and Annie Wise for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

I want to welcome to the dais here, Karen Levitas and Liz Ford.

Good morning, folks.

Thanks for being with us from OLS and the Labor Standards Advisory Committee co-chair.

Liz, am I turning it over to you?

Karen, am I turning it over to you first?

I saw your face.

OK.

Karen, why don't you take it away and introduce yourself officially for the record too.

Yeah, Karen Levitas from the Office of Labor Standards.

Liz will be handling most of the duties, so I just wanted to introduce myself briefly, thank the committee for its time, and welcome all of the new nominees and hopefully appointees.

Very quickly, I did just want to say that one of our appointees cannot be here today, and so we'll read a statement on her behalf.

And another one is trying to get onto the Zoom.

So if Sun or any of the IT staff are available to potentially promote her to a panelist, that may be the issue.

I'm not sure.

If we cannot resolve it, we'll read a statement on her behalf, as well as Alexis wrote it.

So with that, thank you all.

And I'll turn it over to Liz.

And hopefully, we can resolve her Paola Chola's tech issue before her statement needs to be read.

Okay, thanks so much.

And speaking of tech issues, I just got a message that Andra who had signed up for public comment was there and not seeing Andra in our Zoom here.

So Andra, if you do want to dial back in before we transition to other items, I'm happy to open it back up so that you can also provide your comments.

So apologies for that, Andra.

And we will work on the technical issues to get all the folks welcomed back into the Zoom here.

Thanks so much, Liz.

I'll turn it over to you.

Great to see you again.

Thanks for being here on behalf of LSAC and for your service as a co-chair.

Yeah, thank you.

And we're just excited to have potentially a full commission.

And so we wanted to start by thanking you for taking up the confirmation of these five appointees.

And I should introduce myself.

My name is Liz Ford.

I am, along with Gay Gilmore, who is participating on the listen line.

Together, we're the co-chairs of the Labor Standards Advisory Commission, LSAC.

And just for, I know you know this, Council Member Mosqueda, but for those who may be listening or watching, the Labor Standards Advisory Commission advises the Office of Labor Standards on all issues related to minimum standards in the workplace.

And it is comprised of 15 members, seven appointed by council, seven appointed by the mayor, and one appointed by the commission.

And those members, according to ordinance, should be roughly divided between among business, worker, and community advocates.

And we are thrilled to have these last five appointees before you completing the commission.

And these appointees have a breadth of experience in each of those three areas.

My thought is to just briefly introduce them to you all together, and then to turn it over to you to do the rest.

Afwerki Gebreyesus is the first appointee.

He fled from Eritrea to escape military rule, settled in Seattle, and now at Refugee Women's Alliance coordinates an outreach and education program focused on workplace standards like pay and health and safety.

Diana Ochoa, our second nominee, emigrated from Sonora, Mexico, settling in Washington.

She is a workers' rights promoter at Casa Latina, and we are so thrilled to have Casa Latina represented on LSAC once again.

Alexis Rodich is the Director of Research and Policy for SEIU 775. She's our third nominee.

Tracy Taylor is the General Manager at Elliott Bay Books.

She's also active in the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce, GSBA, and co-chairs the Small Business Advisory Council.

Annie Weiss, our final, or I should say not our final, the mayor's final appointee, is the operations director for the Martin Luther King County Labor Council.

So we are thrilled with this group.

We are excited to have a complete commission and grateful to you for considering their nominations.

Thank you very much, Liz.

And thanks in advance to these nominees for being here with us.

Let's go in the order that Liz just walked through.

We'll go with Afreworki, Paola, Alexis, and then Tracy and Annie.

And we will start with just a little introduction about who you are, what your past work has been, and why you're interested in joining the commission.

Afreworki?

And yes, you correct my pronunciation.

No, you say it correct.

Oh, good.

Good.

Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you.

Thank you.

Hello, and good morning, everyone.

First of all, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity in advance.

I'm Aforkiteswami Kyle Gabrielsus.

I go by he, him pronoun.

I was born and educated in East Africa.

And I have obtained my bachelor of science degree in chemistry.

I'm currently working as a program coordinator for non-profit organization and an employment program.

I have 10 plus years of work experience.

In the past, I have worked in oil and gas industry, biotechnology, mining, leather, education, and other industries.

Prior to my current position, I used to work as an employment specialist helping low-income families and individuals obtaining an assist in their overall effort towards self-sufficiency.

And I have seen and witnessed people losing jobs, no fault of themselves, and some kind of abuse, mistreatment in workplaces.

That's why I have started to organize training programs to empower others about their rights in their work side.

Maybe it's something to do or my motive to join the LSAC board is something to do along those lines.

I'm excited, I'm looking forward to be on the board.

So that's a brief introduction of myself.

Once again, thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you very much for being here and for your interest.

We're going to hold questions until the end and ask other folks to introduce themselves.

But thanks for getting us started here.

Paula, good morning.

Thank you very much for being here with us.

Appreciate.

Oh, Paula, go ahead.

And vamos a interpretar?

Good morning and welcome.

We're going to do interpretation, and Fede de Cuevas, thank you very much for your help this morning and stepping in in a pinch.

Paola, bienvenidos, welcome.

Y si quieres empezar, podemos interpretar.

My name is Paola Ochoa.

I work with Casa Latina, and I work with the Workers' Rights Program.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here.

It's an honor to me to be here.

We can wait a little bit for the translation.

So hello, my name is Paola Ochoa.

I have been working with the immigrant community since I came to the United States.

I had some issues with labor rights and since that motivated me to continue to work for the education, to increase the education of workers' rights.

Creo que uno de los problemas más grandes en mi comunidad es la discriminación y las represalias en contra de los latinos.

También creo que sería importante implementar sanciones a los empleadores porque creo que siempre que he estado pensando en todo esto cuando en este país que es nuevo para mí hay sanciones por todo si tú te pasas un alto hay una sanción si tú quieres la ley hay una multa pero para los empleadores creo que no hay multas no hay ninguna penalización y creo que eso es una de las Okay, so one of the biggest problems for especially for Latino workers is discrimination towards

the Latino community and especially because of the censure and also penalties, many penalties that there are for workers.

If something goes wrong, there's usually a penalty for the worker instead of the employer.

And that is one of the things that motivated me to be involved in this board and to put my little, grain of sand towards this work.

Thank you very much.

Muchas gracias por estar con nosotros.

So I thank you so much for being here with us today.

Vamos a seguir con las otras personas.

We're going to continue with the next people.

Pero vamos a regresar para unas preguntas.

But we're going to come back for some questions en unos momentos, in a few minutes.

Gracias, Paola.

Let's go next to Alexis.

Good morning, Alexis.

So Alexis, let me know this morning that she's actually feeling sick.

So I have a statement that I can read on her behalf for the committee.

Good morning, Chair Mosqueda, Vice Chair Herbold, and Council members.

Thank you for considering my nomination to the Labor Standards Advisory Commission.

My name is Alexis Rodek, and I am the Director of Research and Policy at SEIU 775, the caregivers union representing more than 45,000 workers in Washington and Montana.

In this role, I've had the opportunity to contribute to efforts aimed squarely at improving the lives and working conditions of caregivers and other low-wage workers, with a particular focus on Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and other workers of color in Seattle and across the state.

My team and I have developed bold policies to address harassment, abuse, and discrimination toward caregivers, fight discriminatory barriers to entering the home care profession, and raise standards for domestic workers and gig workers in the city of Seattle, just to name a few.

Seattle is an extraordinary environment to work in strategic partnerships with unions, community advocates, businesses, and our government for the betterment of working people.

I appreciate the opportunity to serve on the Labor Standards Advisory Commission, especially as we rebuild after COVID-19 and contribute to our shared objectives of raising standards and improve equity for workers in our city.

Thank you very much on behalf of Alexis Karam for that statement.

And Tracy, I saw you.

Hello, Tracy.

Good to see you.

Please go ahead.

Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity.

My name is Tracy Taylor.

I have been the general manager at Elliott Bay Book Company for 30 years.

That sounds daunting.

And have served as co-chair on the Small Business Advisory Council.

And I just opened my own business on Capitol Hill as well, a small newsstand and bottle shop.

And I am interested in serving on the Labor Commission.

I have had the joy of implementing some of those many, many complex ordinance mandates that have come down and trying to figure out how to make them work.

And I believe that a lot of employers in this city really want to do the right thing for their workers.

We just don't always have the means and the knowledge to do that.

And we're working within an ecosystem with micro businesses, small businesses, large businesses, gig workers, contract workers.

and working through that to find how we can help support our workers without harming the good business owners in this city is something that I'm interested in serving.

So, thank you.

Also, I may have to drop off the call, so if there are questions afterwards, I apologize if I'm not there for those.

Thank you very much, Tracy.

Appreciate you being with us.

And we can tell that you are safely parked.

That tree behind you has not moved, so I want to note that for the record.

Parked.

Yes, thank you.

And we have one more person, and if there's any questions, we'll make sure to follow up with you, Tracy.

Appreciate you being with us, though, this morning.

Good morning, Annie.

Thanks for being with us.

If you want to introduce yourself and let us know a little bit about what interests you about being on the commission.

Good morning, council members.

Thank you for your consideration in this position.

My name is Annie Wise, and I am the operations director at the Martin Luther King County Labor Council, which is an organization that's fought for the rights and livelihoods of working people for over 130 years.

I handle the day-to-day operations of the council, and I'm also part of the political and organizing work.

Before joining MLK labor, I was a hotel worker for over eight years, and my technical roles were that of front desk and sales.

However, I worked in multiple outlets, such as housekeeping, concierge, and valet as an as needed basis.

I've worked at union and non-union properties, and I also have an understanding of the differences and inequities working conditions in both.

As a former hotel worker and current unionist, I was happy to testify twice in front of City Council on behalf of I-124.

I believe I can be an asset to the commission because of my experience working as an employee and also on behalf of the employer.

I am also committed to bettering workplace standards with a special emphasis on equity for women and BIPOC workers.

Thank you again for your consideration.

Excellent.

Thank you very much, Annie, for being here with us today.

And it looks like we have all of our invited nominees here still with us on the line.

So I'm going to open it up.

Are there any questions folks would like to ask?

any additional comments.

Council Member Strauss, please go ahead.

Chair, thank you for your time.

I just wanted to thank all of these candidates for coming before us, volunteering their time and serving the city.

It takes people, subject matter experts with lived experience such as yourselves to be able to advise us in the best ways possible.

And I know that this is a volunteer role and your volunteering is helping shape our city into being a better place.

So I just wanted to take the time to thank each of you for coming before us today.

Thank you very much.

and really appreciate the emphasis that you've placed on how we are trying to rebuild our local economy and the work that you're doing really helps to make sure that that's done in a more equitable way.

So thank you very much for your interest in serving here today and for bringing these very diverse perspectives to I know that this work is probably going to be more important than ever as we think about how we not only implement the existing policies that we pass, but what new policies might be needed in the future to create a more level playing field, both for workers and for those businesses that Tracy mentioned who really want to be good high road employers and providing them with the tools that they can deploy to make sure that they're lifting up workers and successful in their own endeavors as well.

Okay, well, I am just very excited about this, and let's go ahead and move forward.

I'm not seeing any additional questions.

At this time, I move the committee recommends passage of appointments one through five as listed on today's agenda as members of the Labor Standards Advisory Commission.

Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Are there any additional comments?

Hearing none, let's go ahead and call the roll.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the passage of the appointments?

Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Vice Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Madam Chair, that is a four in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

The motion carries, and the committee recommendation that Efray Worki, Gabreysis, Paula Choa, Alexis Rodich, Tracy Taylor, and Annie Wise be recommended for appointments to the Labor Standards Advisory Commission will be sent to the May 10th Seattle City Council meeting for final vote.

As a reminder, you do not have to be present to get this final vote.

We will be happy to send you the final vote after our deliberations on May 10th.

And again, once again, I want to thank you for your interest in serving and for your time this morning.

Gracias por estar con nosotros, and thank you so much for being here with us, and gracias por su trabajo en el futuro.

Thank you for your future work as well.

Okay, with that, let's move on to item number six and seven, our Domestic Workers Standards Board.

And I understand that we have actually one of the Domestic Workers Standards Board members with us who wanted to provide public comment.

This is a little irregular, but because it ties into domestic workers, I am going to ask if Andra Kressner is still available with us, and we will go ahead and offer the opportunity for Andra to provide public comment again this morning.

So as our team tees that up from the IT side, Madam Clerk, could you please read into the record item number six and seven?

Agenda item number six and seven, a reappointment of Emily Dills as member of the Domestic Workers Standards Board and the appointment of Edelka Dominguez as a member of the Domestic Workers Standards Board for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Okay, wonderful.

And I know we have Jasmine Maroja with us from Office of Labor Standards, who also serves as the liaison to the Domestic Worker Standards Board, I think is the appropriate title.

And Jasmine, if you don't mind just holding for one second, I know that Andra was on the line earlier and wanted to get back to her.

Andra, good morning.

Thank you very much for waiting.

If you'd like to have two minutes to provide additional comments, you're welcome to at this time.

Good morning Council Member Muscata and Council Members Council Member Herbold and I want to say thank you so much and for your grace as I was dealing with unable to unmute.

We as a member of the Domestic Standards Board I am really honored and excited about the recommendations that are going to come before you today.

I have shared all of my resource and all of my energy to try to ensure that the domestic workers felt fully supported in terms of the legal assistance that I think I can I've been able to provide community-based organizations.

And I will say that this board has been extremely diligent.

They have taken your mandate to heart and they have worked extremely hard to make sure that the recommendations will create a safety net for domestic workers that will actually allow them to be treated like the rest like all workers with rights an opportunity to enforce those rights.

I also want to thank the council for making sure that the legislation that's being brought forth today with the independent contractors is not including the domestic workers that there will be some meaningful engagement around the domestic workers to make sure that they are fully covered and that that legislation adopted actually meets their needs.

So I just want to say thank you again for the opportunity to serve on this board and for all of the learning things all of the opportunities that I got to learn from the board members and all of the opportunities I was able to share my knowledge.

It was an incredible opportunity to watch this city put together rights and responsibilities for hiring entities and domestic workers that I think is part of the future in terms of what we mean when we do what we mean when we say we protect workers, it's all workers.

And so it's just been an honor.

Thank you so much.

Andrew, thank you very much for coming back to provide that public testimony and your flexibility as well.

It was great timing, actually, because we're considering the Domestic Workers Standards Board's appointment right now.

So it fits in nicely and also a good preview for what I should have said at the very beginning as well.

Really appreciate the preview that you outlined for the upcoming Domestic Workers Standards Board recommendations.

I want to note for our colleagues as well, there was a strong interest in making sure that there was simultaneous interpretation instead of consecutive interpretation, and we wanted to honor that request.

So we are putting together the technical systems needed to make sure that the simultaneous translation can happen per the request of the Domestic Workers Standards Board, and that will be on our agenda at the next meeting, but it's a really helpful tee-up to know that those recommendations, we do have the report, the recommendations are available, folks should be reading through those now, and you will then have a presentation coming at the next meeting that will include simultaneous interpretation, and I want to thank for her work with that IT team to help make sure that that's possible.

So great TF, Andra, and I will, at this point, turn it over to Jasmine Roja, who will provide us with a little bit of an overview on the two appointments in front of us today for the Domestic Workers Standards Board.

And Jasmine, for context, if there's anything else that you'd like to add on the recommendations and the forthcoming discussion and timeline on that, that's welcome as well.

Sure.

Thank you.

Thank you, everyone.

My name is Jasmine Marwaha.

I'm a policy analyst, as Chair Mosqueda said, with the Office of Labor Standards, and I'm the staff liaison to the Domestic Workers Standards Board.

I'm here to present one new council appointment to the board, Adilca Dominguez, who will actually be replacing Ander Kranzer, who you just heard from, and one council reappointment, Emily Dills.

I'll just give a little bit of background on the DWSP.

As you may recall, the Domestic Workers Standards Board is committed to improving the working conditions of domestic workers by providing a place for workers, employers, organizations, and the public to make suggestions to enforce and implement and expand on the Domestic Workers Ordinance that was passed a couple of years ago.

Now, the board typically consists of about half workers or their representatives and half hiring entities or their representatives.

and six of the appointment terms are ending this year.

Plus, we've had a couple of vacancies.

So basically, Council Member Mosqueda's office and the Mayor's office are working to reappoint or fill vacancies in the next few weeks.

So you may see some more appointments coming up in the next meeting or two.

And as was also mentioned, for the last several months, the board has been working on its initial recommendations, which is anticipated to be presented to you on May 18th, assuming the language access needs are taken care of.

These recommendations are extensively informed by worker voices and center the direct experiences of workers as much as possible.

And so the board is really excited to welcome Adilca Dominguez, or Eddie as she's known, as a nominee.

Eddie has been an active stakeholder in the DWSB and brings extensive worker experience as a nanny to the board.

Unfortunately, she could not be here due to work obligations, so I'll go ahead and read a prepared statement from her.

Here we go.

I am a nanny, an immigrant domestic worker that has been an active volunteer on the Nanny Collective from Working Washington and Fair Work Center since three years ago.

I have been working as a nanny for over eight years, different families with different backgrounds.

As a domestic worker, I experienced challenges in my work that nobody likes to talk about in this industry.

abuse, bullying, harassment, robbing of salary and time, among others.

This industry is extremely unbalanced.

There is little to no common ground, no rules for the employer to know if they need to pay fair, treat their employee with respect, or even talk about Social Security.

I enjoyed the movement because the more people I met, the more I realized that there are a lot of workers that are abused by the system.

And for their fear of losing their job, they remain silent.

Seattle is one of the first states that stands up with innovation to lead and guide us together to make our jobs valuable and honorable like every other job.

I am proud of living here.

Right now my volunteer work in this industry has been outreaching for workers to benefit from the movement.

Sharing my testimony in classes.

Helping this community to empower and thrive together.

Supporting hearings at the Capitol.

Involvement in workshops including the biggest one in Vegas in 2020. and now actively helping members on meetings online.

We are a struggling industry, but with your help, we will rise together.

I will love to get more involved with the board because what we are doing is important and will impact my people that work in the same field as me.

I would like to learn from you all to keep reaching out and growing our community, changing their lives, giving them more knowledge about their rights, and letting them know that we are here for them, and together we will change the system.

That's a statement from Eddie.

Thank you so much for sharing that.

Yeah, I can talk a little bit about Emily Dills as well, really briefly.

That'd be great.

And as folks know, per our tradition, if there is a reappointment, they do not need to come into present with us because we've already had the chance to meet them.

And folks will really remember Emily from all of the work that she did with us as we were crafting the Domestic Workers Standards Board.

And I'll let you talk a little bit about her as well, Jasmine, and then I'll maybe fill in some additional information since I know hers too.

Yeah, great.

I was just going to say a couple sentences.

You know, Emily has extensive experience as a nanny employer, runs a nanny agency, has worked for care.com in the past, and so has a lot of different layers of experience as a hiring entity, and has been a really valuable asset to the board, is currently chair of the outreach subcommittee, and always is there for offering her wisdom and her experience.

I agree that she is always present and always willing to offer her experience.

I will also note for the committee's recollection, Emily works with Seattle NAMI network and the organization was incredibly We were able to get a lot of information out there.

We were able to get a lot of information out there.

to want to be, who wanted to be those high road employers, how they could make sure that they were respecting workers' rights and having tools in their hand too is really important because you know, a lot of folks who hire a nanny, a caregiver, a house cleaner, a gardener, et cetera, are not used to being in the employer position and wanting to have access to example contracts and to make sure that they were paying the right amount is something that she really lifted up.

So it was really great to work with her.

And she founded the company in 1997, has been a strong advocate here locally and nationally.

And she continues to advocate for worker fair wages, benefits, and healthy working conditions.

And really, really proud of the work that she did with us to craft the ordinance originally.

And I know that she continues to work at the Washington State Collaborative Task Force and continue to speak up about the rights of workers as speaking on behalf of as well hiring entities when we look at private homes and local family homes as their workplaces.

It's a great partnership that we've been able to have with Emily over the years.

So thank you very much for being here with us, Jasmine, today to present on these two appointments.

Again, the appointment of Edica and the reappointment of Emily.

Are there any questions for Jasmine?

I'm not seeing any questions.

Okay, wonderful.

Well, thank you very much, Jasmine, for your presentation.

And at this point, I'll move the committee recommend passage of the appointments of Elvika Dominguez and the reappointment of Emily Adilis as members of the Domestic Worker Standards Board.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Vice Chair Herbold.

Are there any additional comments or questions?

Hearing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the passage of the appointments?

Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Vice Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Madam Chair, that is four in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation will be sent to the May 10th Seattle City Council meeting for final vote.

Jasmine, if you could pass on our appreciation to the two individuals and look forward to having their recommendations continue to be discussed at our next meeting as well, and we'll continue to work on that.

we are going to do everything we can to make it possible and we will follow up with you and the team to see what is possible in the next few weeks.

I want to make sure the presentation happens this month.

Thank you very much.

Let's move on to item number eight.

Wonderful, and with us today we have Karina Bull from Central Staff.

Thank you, Karina, as always.

It's fun to have the Domestic Workers Standards Board and LSAC nominees in front of us today because all of the work has your fingerprints on it, whether it's here at Central Staff or previously at OLS.

So great to see you.

Thanks for being with us again.

Vice Chair Hurble, thanks to you as well and to your team, Alex Clardy, and the folks at OLS who have been working on providing us information on this topic over the last two meetings, I believe.

And we did have to have a slight delay in the presentation of the last committee, so we're offering a little bit of extra time today.

I'll turn it over to Council Member Herbold, would you like to say a few words at the top of the hour here, top of the item here?

Sure, happy to do so.

Thank you so much, and thank you, Chair Mosqueda, for making time in your committee for this important discussion.

Just as a little bit of background, back on April 6th, in this committee, we heard directly from the Labor Standards Advisory Commission.

I want to specifically thank Liz Ford and Gay Gilmore for taking the time to come and present their recommendations to the Council.

These recommendations stem from the passage of Resolution 31863, which called on LSAC to develop recommendations to address the misclassification of employees as independent contractors, rather than focusing on whether or not the city should reclassify people who we felt were being misclassified.

We instead decided that the recommendations or LSAC decided that the recommendation should instead focus on ensuring that people who are classified as contractors, whether or not they are being misclassed or not, get some basic information around the terms of their employment.

And so that's why their recommendations are really focused on transparency and access to information among those currently classified as independent contractors.

The recommendation is a policy regarding hiring entities to provide greater independent contractor, contract workers pre-contract and post-contract information so they can understand the terms of their engagement and determine whether or not those terms have been satisfied.

Even though we were not able to hear this draft legislation last committee, again, this draft legislation has not yet been introduced.

and appreciate the opportunity to work through some of the issues in committee before we introduce the legislation.

We have been continuing to have meetings with stakeholders, and Karina has been fantastic to include the input of those stakeholders so that she can provide today's draft legislation and presentation.

We have received feedback on the draft from Office of Labor Standards.

And we've heard from community, as we heard this morning, that gig workers want additional protections beyond those recommended in the LSAC report.

And I really appreciate the efforts of the pay-up campaign.

to introduce compensation issues which are not dealt with in this bill, but we have, and we'll hear more about this, a non-codified section in the bill that outlines a timeline to address those concerns and hold us accountable to addressing those concerns.

My conversations with the platforms as well is that they too are committed to engaging in conversations around compensation and our efforts to address that in the subsequent bill.

That's all I have for now.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

And Karina, good morning and welcome.

Hi there.

Thank you.

I am Karina Bull with council central staff and I prepared a presentation this morning for the draft legislation for the independent contractor protections.

And so I will seek to share my screen to upload that presentation.

Oops.

And it's a little bit advanced.

Here we go.

Okay.

So this legislation, as Councilmember Herbold has already teed up, will require protections for All contractors working in Seattle that are working for covered hired entities and the key components of the legislation do stem from those recommendations by the Labor Standards Advisory Board.

Those key recommendations are for pre-contract disclosures and payment disclosures.

This draft also reflects a new requirement for timely payments and I'll be going into the details of that.

later on in this presentation.

The legislation would become effective on March 1st of next year for those labor standards protections and it would be enforced by the Office of Labor Standards.

Hiring entity coverage as drafted in the current legislation would include commercial hiring entities, that's basically another name for business, hiring an independent contractor to support their business services.

So if it's a small business owner that perhaps has not incorporated their business.

And if that business owner hired a contractor in their personal life to do something for them, that contractor would not be covered.

But if they hired a contractor for the business, whether it be a bookkeeper or a carpenter, et cetera, then that contractor would be covered.

Also covered are any hiring entity that hires an independent contractor for domestic worker services as well.

That would be both a business and a private party.

And then as far as independent contractor coverage, it's folks who are working in whole or part in Seattle.

As long as any part of the independent contractor's work takes place in Seattle, they would be covered.

There are exclusions.

in the legislation explicitly for attorneys and licensed medical professionals working within the scope of their professions given that they already work under a comparative under a code of ethics that govern their billing practices and they also have.

significant bargaining power that might not be available to other independent contractors.

Also in the legislation is the opportunity for Office of Labor Standards to issue rules that would also exempt other independent contractors working in professions governed by a similar code of ethics.

The pre-contract disclosure, as we've already heard, would provide basic information about the proposed terms and conditions of work.

So this could take place in the form of a piece of paper that says pre-contract disclosure.

It could be in an email.

It could be actually in a job offer.

It could be in a contract that both parties have already agreed to.

But the premise is that before an independent contractor begins work, that person is informed of the terms and conditions and the payment schedule and other vital information.

And that might lead to the independent contractor not beginning work if those terms aren't favorable.

But if they do, then they will have a written document that reflects the terms of their work.

And it would be provided in English and in the independent contractor's primary language.

I forgot to say earlier that the three components of this legislation near the three components of the wage theft ordinance for employees.

So essentially, this ordinance would be the wage theft ordinance for independent contractors, a parallel to the wage theft ordinance for employees.

And one of the reasons that I mentioned that is because in the wage theft ordinance for employees, there is a requirement for a notice of employment information that is very similar to this pre-contract disclosure.

And it is also required for employers to provide that information in English and in the employee's primary language.

So that is where this requirement comes from for the translation.

Here, I won't go through all of these pieces of information, but this gives you a flavor of the different kinds of required items in the pre-contract disclosure to make sure that workers know the basics of the proposed work.

Next is a requirement for timely payment.

So this is simply if a contractor begins working for a hiring entity and then they are owed the money that is reflected in their pre-contract disclosure.

So it's payment of the amount due in the pre-contract disclosure or related contract, if that is something that the parties have entered into.

The payment would be due on a specified date.

If there is no specified date, then payment is due no later than 30 days after the completion of the independent contractor's services.

Notably, there are two other places right now, two other jurisdictions that have laws for freelancers, New York City and Minneapolis.

Both of those laws do require timely payment.

Their laws are requiring a written contract and a timely payment.

So this is not unprecedented territory for a jurisdiction to require this kind of legal obligation for independent contractors.

And then last, the third main component of this legislation is a payment disclosure, which is another word for an itemized pay receipt.

And it would be something that a hiring entity would need to provide in a written format each time that the wages or payment is paid to independent contractor.

There is not a requirement to provide this information in the independent contractor's primary language, similar to the wage theft ordinances There's an itemized pay statement in that ordinance as well, also not required to be in the independent contractor's primary language.

Here again is an overview of the information that is required by the payment disclosure.

It is closely modeled after the itemized pay statements that are required for employees.

And this also reflects the recommendation of the Labor Standards Advisory Board, as do the components of the pre-contract disclosure.

Other requirements in the legislation are familiar to folks who already know about our labor standards.

There is a notice of rights requirement required to be provided in English and in the independent contractor's primary language.

OLS would be creating model notices for this notice of rights as well as model notices in English and other languages of the pre-contract disclosure and payment disclosure.

There would be record keeping requirements for three years and prohibited retaliation so that if a worker asked for a pre-contract disclosure after not getting one, the hiring entity would be prevented from retaliating against that worker.

Enforcement would be by the Office of Labor Standards.

They would be able to enforce violations, whether through a complaint or through a directed investigation, by an investigation.

And there also is something new in this legislation called a complaint procedure.

and the steps of that are outlined in the legislation.

The idea behind the complaint procedure is that it is a way for Office of Labor Standards to address complaints of violation in a way that is fast, efficient, and hopefully not controversial.

And it basically has OLS being the conduit of information to both parties.

So a complainant would contact OLS saying, I believe my rights have been violated, OLS would send a notice to the hiring entity, and then the hiring entity would provide information back to OLS, which then would be sent back to the hiring entity.

So it's an exchange of information.

It's not a situation where OLS would be making a determination of whether a violation had occurred, but it is a way for a contractor who might not feel comfortable directly connecting with the hiring entity to try to get this information or try to get payment.

And afterwards, the contractor If necessary, could go to court to enforce the legislation or perhaps a hiring entity would comply as a result of this process going forward.

There also would be a private right of action, which means that contractors would have the ability to file a lawsuit in order to get these disclosure notices or to get their payment.

And then the court could award attorney fees.

and plus cost, which is really important for contractors who are trying to seek payment.

There's a wealth of studies that I think about a 70% of contractors get late payment at some point in time during their work or no payment at all.

Very small percentage of folks actually pursue those claims.

I think it's as little as 5% in some areas of the country.

So the Ability to receive attorney fees upon prevailing for a claim to get payment is really significant and can provide that support and the boost for contractors to make sure that they get paid to go to court for that.

Remedies would be getting the disclosures, getting the unpaid compensation, similar to, I believe, all of the labor standards.

And certainly for the wage theft ordinance for employees, there could be the ability to get up to three times the amount owed timely payment is not provided.

Penalties and fines up to a little over $500 per violation, and Office of Labor Standards could lower those fines depending on the circumstances of each situation.

Let's see, moving close to the end, something notable about this legislation is that there is a unique enforcement model that was recommended by the Labor Standards Advisory Commission.

It is a rebuttable presumption for payment.

This is a legal term for what happens if a hiring entity doesn't provide a pre-contract disclosure.

What are the terms and conditions in that situation?

Or what if the hiring entity provides a pre-contract disclosure but then does not honor it when it comes time to pay the contractor?

So in those situations, if there is no disclosure or if it's not honored, then there would be a legal presumption that is rebuttable by clear and convincing evidence, like a written contract, that the contractor's claims for payment are true.

So that means that the court or OLS would believe the contractor unless the hiring entity provided evidence that supported their version of the situation.

No, we didn't actually promise to pay $100 for this.

We actually promised to pay $50 and here's our written contract to show that.

Also, there is a non-codified section in the legislation that would reference the council's intent to pass legislation for platform gig workers.

And that legislation would consist of minimum compensation, flexibility protections, and transparency information.

Right now, the legislation announces council's intent to consider such legislation for a full council vote before the beginning of the fall budget deliberations.

So that is all for my presentation of the basics of the legislation.

I have identified some issues that the council may want to consider, but certainly would like to open it up for comments and questions.

Great.

Let's hold there for a second.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

Yes.

If we could go back to slide two, I just want to a minute to clarify some things around the hiring entity coverage.

You know, this, we all received recommendations from the Domestic Workers Standards Board back on April, what was it, April 8th, and the recommendations are covered on page 6 and 10 and I'll read the excerpt from page 10, where they're recommending that hiring entities provide domestic workers with information about their rights and conditions of their work, and that this should be considered in conjunction with the council's consideration of pay transparency for independent contractors if that moves forward.

And so the inclusion, the When we had planned to discuss this in the last committee meeting, there was a memo that Karina produced that had some options that we could pursue, including in sort of picking and choosing across a bunch of different issues that Karina had identified at that stage, and this was one of those issues.

And I move forward asking Karina that in this version of the bill, again, it's not been introduced yet, that this of the bill include coverage for the hiring entities, hiring domestic workers based on these April 6th recommendations.

I understand from conversations that we've had recently that there is I'm happy to pull this part of the language out of the bill.

I just wanted to make sure that was really clear because of

Are there any questions about the information that's been provided thus far before going into issue IDs?

Karina, I'm not seeing any additional questions.

I want to give folks a quick second here.

So just want to make sure I understand, Council Member Hurdle, thank you for that clarification.

When we look at that second bullet then, Can I also just double check here?

In the memo, Karina, it said that the legislation would not cover non-commercial entities.

Does that mean that the domestic workers hired under the second bullet point would have to be hired by a commercial entity, or is that whole issue taken care of, given what Council Member Herbold just noted?

Yes, so if they're, I'm gonna make up a situation here, but if there's, like Microsoft is hiring a domestic worker for an employee that lives in Seattle and Microsoft is paying that domestic worker and hiring them, then in that situation, the domestic worker would be covered because it is a domestic worker hired by a commercial hiring entity.

Okay, so this is going to then be scoped to just commercial hiring entities?

Correct.

And then go ahead, please.

Well, so any independent contractor hired by a private party would not be covered.

Just a simple way of commercial hiring entity is a mouthful for the legislation, but it's any any contractor hired by a business.

by a business.

Okay, so I have not sort of done a side-by-side comparison with Domestic Workers Bill of Rights that we passed, and we'll admit, you know, we are also doing this in addition to the ARPA, so I haven't had the chance to really do a side-by-side with the Domestic Worker recommendations as well.

I'm trying to remember, though, you know, part of what the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights asked for was a model contract, and so If this is just specific to commercial hiring entities, can you tell me how they either overlap or if there is harmony there with the request for the Domestic Workers Standards Board to come up with a model contract for us?

Is that an area?

I think that's out of the scope of this particular bill, although I think that we should definitely work on those recommendations.

This bill is not.

as we've scoped it, not intended to define what a model contract is, but just require that there be advance notice before contracting of what the expectations are, as well as transparency at time of payment on how those expectations were fulfilled.

So actually creating what the expectations are itself in a model contract, it goes sort of beyond that whole transparency piece.

Karina, anything to add to that?

I don't think so.

I mean, it's a pre-contract situation.

So as drafted, this legislation is not requiring a contract.

However, in the context of the rebuttable presumption, which is used for enforcement, when a contractor begins working for a business, then if there's a pre-contract disclosure provided, it turns into a contract.

So there's different ways of thinking about it.

This legislation doesn't require a contract, but in the context of enforcement, this pre-contract disclosure can become a contract, so to speak.

And then in thinking about how common law of contracts work and In other situations separate from enforcing this law, a court might decide that a pre-contract disclosure, when a worker begins performing work, that that pre-contract disclosure might become part of a contract.

But in the context of this law, it's not requiring contract at the outset.

Okay.

Thank you for that.

I am not seeing any additional questions at the onset here.

Let's go ahead and move on to issue identification.

Okay.

I will move forward.

It's a nice segue because I just said that this law does not require a written contract.

So one issue to consider is, should this law include a requirement for a written contract instead of a pre-contract disclosure?

There are pros and cons to both types of requirements.

I thought it might be helpful to think about the benefits of a written contract and also the downsides of a written contract It is something that is required, as I previously mentioned, by New York City and Minneapolis and their laws that protect freelancers.

And the benefits of a written contract are that it can represent more of a participatory meeting of the minds between parties because it's requiring participation by both the business and the contractor rather than one party presenting an offer that then by default might become part of a contract.

It is a written contract is already a legally enforceable document, so there wouldn't need to be this rebuttable presumption in the context of enforcement.

It would be a legally binding document that a court of law.

would honor.

Of course, there might be disagreements about did the work conform to the contract and those sorts of things, but on its own, a written contract is a legally binding agreement.

The downside is that requiring a written contract would limit the flexibility of entering into verbal contracts.

I want to hire you to do X in my business and then it's just done and that can be enough.

However, even within the context of this legislation as it's currently drafted, the ability to engage in oral contracts is already slightly diminished because there needs to be a written pre-contract disclosure.

So that's something to consider.

It can be modified by an oral agreement afterwards, so that does give some more flexibility, but this legislation requires something written at the beginning of any agreement to work between a business and a contractor.

We also heard, yeah,

I'm confused a little bit, Karina.

I thought that the way we had structured it with the pre-contract disclosure, that that, in essence, becomes the contract.

Well, there's different ways of structuring it.

The way it's written right now is that the rebuttable presumption goes into effect in the context of enforcement.

It could be written differently.

is to have a pre-contract disclosure become a contract when the contractor begins work.

That would be a different drafting decision that would have a different outcome, and that is something that can be considered as well.

I just I'm just thinking sort of the rebuttable presumption aside, I was just under the impression that by merit of there being a pre contract disclosure and then work.

done under that pre-contract disclosure that functionally makes the pre-contract disclosure a contract.

That's, like, high level, that's what I thought the purpose of the pre-contract disclosure was, is that that in itself becomes the expectations for what the benefits are associated with the work.

I wanna speak carefully since this isn't my, contract law is not my area of expertise, but my sense is that if there were a dispute about a pre-contract disclosure absent this rebuttable presumption, that a court would take the pre-contract disclosure under consideration for deciding on what those terms were.

Perhaps there could be other considerations also written contract.

I don't know to what extent an oral agreement would factor into that.

situation, but if the law says definitively that a pre-contract disclosure becomes the contract, that will have a greater legal authority than not saying that.

Thank you.

a concern about a written contract, and I think this is something that we heard earlier in the presentation today, is that some contractors might not feel comfortable entering into a written contract where they would need to sign their name, fear of retaliation, fear of just creating a paper trail for the work arrangement.

So that is certainly something to consider as well.

Thank you very much, Karina.

I just want to have a better sense of sort of what the process is here.

So this is draft legislation, right?

And I believe the prime sponsor, you know, is asking some questions as well.

And the questions that we're discussing today, these are all intended to daylight some potential items for us to flag for possible inclusion into a bill before official introduction.

Is that correct?

I appreciate the additional work that may go into this item.

I want to flag for folks who might be watching this for the first time who maybe weren't part of the wage theft ordinance discussion in the past.

I wasn't here either when that ordinance passed, but having worked on the outside at the Washington state labor council at the time, we know that many of the barriers to workers being told that they weren't going to get paid and not paid the amount that they were originally told.

And when it came time for enforcement, which was, by the way, you know, done through SPD and that has its own challenges, SPD would say, well, where's your written paper trail?

where does it say that this is being documented?

So there was a lot of work on the advocacy side to try to get kind of a form, a mock form developed when I worked on staffing the wage theft coalition for Washington State, that we created a mock form that people could have on hand so that they could really document what they were supposed to be paid.

All of that is in lieu of not having sort of stronger guidance on what should be provided before work begins so that if there is any wage theft, then people understand I think it's important to understand how to use that paper trail to get the wages that are owed.

Just from a basic understanding, I wanted to emphasize why I think this point is important to get right and the value of having a contract of some form.

Councilmember Herbold, I don't know if there's anything else you want to flag on this that you will be looking at for Okay, great.

Let's let's move on.

Okay.

The next issue is enforcement.

It's really about the impact of this type of legislation on a small hiring entity.

And so now we know that the small hiring entity is limited to a small business, which could be a business with no employees, it could be a business with one or two employees.

I think there are about 90,000 businesses registered in City of Seattle for a business license.

I think about 40,000 of those do not have employees and so that's a lot of small businesses in Seattle and there would certainly need to be significant outreach to make sure that they are aware of their obligations.

All of these obligations are required for any business that has an employee, and the remedies are all the same, regardless of the size of business for businesses that do have employees.

If there is a small business without employees, they might not be prepped to provide something like a written contract or a payment receipt every time payment is made.

One could argue they should always be prepped to honor the payment that they've promised.

issue to think about is if there is concern, and this is way too much text now that we only have one type of hiring entity covered, so I apologize for that.

If there is concern about the impact of, I'm gonna go back, that's just too much to look at.

If there is concern about the impact of enforcement on small hiring entities, perhaps the legislation can address that in a more definitive way than it already does.

The legislation already gives the OLS director the ability to consider the whole range of circumstances when deciding whether or not to make a business pay up to three times the amount owed, whether or not to make the business pay penalties or fines.

So the director already has that discretion and can consider a range of things, the size of the business, the extent of human resources, was it just a mistake, et cetera.

There could be an interest in requiring OLS to maybe not impose fines or liquidated damages for a first violation by a small business.

That could be part of the legislation.

And small business would need to be defined in some way or relegated to rulemaking.

Or it could just, the legislation could just be left as is and the director has the discretion to make those determinations in the context of an investigation.

I'm going to, oops, I was going to try to take out some of that text in there so you could read it easier, but it looks like I'm not able to do that while screen sharing.

So.

But Karina, would effectively the language that you would want to take out, would that be B and D?

Correct.

Because that issue has already been addressed with Council Member Herbold's commitment to remove.

individuals who hire domestic workers.

Correct.

And this is just an idea.

It really might not be necessary because the director already has the discretion to do all of this.

And maybe it's more of a highlight for the fact that outreach is really important for small businesses who may not be accustomed to entering into or to drafting a pre-contract disclosure.

So I appreciate your desire to limit text on a slide, but I think that if folks can focus the options on looking at just A and C.

Correct.

Okay.

A and C.

So two options with a few sub bullets.

I will note, council members, that there is a concern that I'm having about the size of the employer, right?

And if it's one individual, you even mentioned an individual who might not have any employees.

if they're the ones who are doing the hiring, that makes me a little concerned about the administrative burden that may be imposed.

So I would be interested in looking at a different threshold for maybe what defines a small employer, and just want to flag that.

The other thing I wanted to flag, and we didn't spend a ton of time talking about this, but maybe either the Prime Sponsor or Karina, if you have any additional definitional information that you can share with us.

I'm concerned a little bit about the the scope of work, right?

If an individual is hiring a computer technician who is an independent contractor to do some work for an hour or two, does that one individual then have to have a contract for an hour's worth of work, right?

So I'm looking at both the size of the employer and the scope or the magnitude of the work that's done and wanted to flag those two issues as something I'd be interested in having a little bit more discussion about.

Yes, so as contemplated, this law would require a pre contract disclosure for the situation of a small business hiring a computer technician for one hour.

If there were to be an ongoing relationship between that business and the computer technician, there wouldn't need to be a new.

pre-contract disclosure issued each time.

There could be a piecemeal approach of sort of think of it as like a master pre-contract disclosure provided for the first time that they worked together.

And then if they continued to work together, like, okay, can you do another two hours here?

Can you do another three hours there?

It could be as simple as the small business writing, okay, three hours of additional work at $50 an hour payment will be at the first of the month.

And so there wouldn't need to be a full sale reissue of the pre-contract disclosure.

It could just be for those components that changed.

Can you remind me what the LSAC recommendations were on this topic?

The LSAC recommendations were for two types of hiring entities.

One of them was for employees.

I'm sorry you cut out for a second.

One of the there were two types of hiring entities.

One of them was for a business that had one or more employees and then the other one was for a business that had five or more independent contractors that they hired on a consistent basis.

Something to think about those kinds of recommendations is that it might not be immediately apparent to the contractor or even to the hiring entity for the second definition on whether or not they're covered, whether or not that hiring entity has an employee.

They might not know, especially since they're not working at the place of business.

They certainly wouldn't know how many contractors they hire in a consistent basis, unless it's a very large contractor, like a large, like a food delivery business, an app-based food delivery business.

At that situation, contractors will know, yes, this business is covered.

So something to think about if there were to be a different threshold for coverage of hiring entities is how would a contractor know that that business is covered?

So that's why, again, we had for the previous meeting, we had prepared like a decision agenda to walk through the different options for all of these.

Since we did not have the opportunity to do that the last meeting, we've tried to answer some of these questions.

And because the rights contained in this bill in order for them to be exercised, the contract workers have to know whether or not they're eligible.

We felt that, or I felt, and I gave Karina some direction, but I'm open to talk about different contours that we might put on this eligibility.

But we felt that it was just simply unworkable to have a standard that might be unknowable by the contract worker be the standard for which the applicability of the rights be based on.

I think that potentially is a separate issue than the issue that you are raising, Chair Mosqueda, that I'm happy to work with you on as it relates to sort of more of the one-off engagements that might occur and how we want to address that through these options or other options that we might consider.

I appreciate that.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold, and thank you, Karina, for that.

So, yeah, let's do that.

Let's have another conversation.

An idea that was mentioned in the previous memo was a value of services.

I don't know if this would address all the situations that you're mentioning, Councilmember Mosqueda, but if there was a threshold value, say $600, whether per instance or over the course of a year, that could be one way to limit the one-offs, but if it's a an expensive situation, it might not address that particular agreement, but that is one idea.

Okay, so we'll do some follow-up conversations then about employee threshold, perhaps the scope or duration of the work, or and the value of that work, if there are certain levels.

Okay, okay, sounds good.

Thank you and I will be very interested as well in, you know, running some scenarios by National Employment Law Project and Columbia Legal Services, who are sort of my go-tos on independent contractor issues that we've worked on in the past at the state level.

And they had some huge wins this year, triple damages, yay.

So it's great to have these early conversations, appreciate that.

But I did want to flag those two concerns, and thank you for adding in the value of services as another option to look at.

Please go ahead.

Yeah, the third issue is effective dates.

The current effective date is March 1st of next year, which would give Office of Labor Standards about nine months to prepare for implementation.

They have, they meaning Office of Labor Standards has indicated that a full year would be helpful to them since the legislation requires OLS to prepare a number of model and template documents, including translations.

And of course, outreach is so important for this kind of legislation as well.

So something to consider is that the effective date could be changed to one year to allow more time for implementation.

That could be June 1, July 1. It could also not identify a date, but just say one year from passage.

or the date could remain the same, because it does provide nine months, and that would be March 1st.

Any comments on that?

All right, so as far as next steps, my understanding, the introduction and referral is May 10th.

Is that right, Council Member Herbold, or is it May 17th?

I think we should continue to aim for May 10th with the understanding that we might need to make adjustments.

Understood.

And then the next discussion of the legislation would be May 18th, which is the next Finance and Housing Committee.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Councilmember Herbold, thank you again for your flexibility in the last meeting.

I do hope that that allowed for some extra time to come up with some of these alternative solutions that you have been proposing today.

Probably not the ideal, but thank you for your flexibility.

I can't remember what slide it was, Karina.

You don't have to go back.

There was a, you don't have to go back, it's okay.

There was a commitment to continuing to do work before the budget.

Can you comment about that a little bit?

Yeah, there we go.

So it's just an intent to develop legislation regarding minimum compensation, flexibility, protections, transparency for gig workers.

And to consider this before the budget deliberations, we know that this has been an ongoing desire that we continue to hear public comment about and appreciate this being flagged.

Council Member Herbold, did you have anything else that you want to say about this before RIS?

Yeah, I just wanted to mention that the language that's in the bill is language that we've developed with folks associated with the pay up campaign.

And it expresses the council's intent rather than trying to address minimum compensation in this bill because again, It was determined that not only is it out of scope with this bill, but the universes of people covered under this bill versus the minimum compensation campaign requirements or requests.

would be different universes of contract workers and they couldn't both be covered under this bill.

So yeah, we work with them on the language that you see included in the bill itself and hope that with passage, we can use this language to hold ourselves accountable.

As the vice chair and I have talked about and folks know well, our committee for finance and housing that usually deals with labor issues is pretty packed this summer with all of the ARPA discussions.

We also have the domestic worker standard board recommendations that you all heard about that are coming up.

I know we had some labor standards legislation that was teed up for discussion for this summer as well that I think we've put on hold for right now.

So I'm always excited about new labor standards discussions, but would love to know a little bit more or work with you.

we have a full plate here.

If there are other discussions you are having about the timeline or

Just that originally, as proposed by Working Washington, they had included in their recommended language an assumption that legislation would come to your committee.

We've stripped that language out based on my conversations with you, Chair Mosqueda, that we would need to find another home, potentially my committee, for those discussions.

I appreciate that recognition.

Are there any additional comments on this or questions?

The question that I would have, since there are a number of changes, especially related to the domestic workers component, is there a draft deadline that you're hoping to meet, Karina?

I know that we said the goal of introduction by May 10th, but I would love to try to share some additional information with, for example, the two organizations I mentioned, and I'm sure that folks may want to weigh in as well.

Is there a deadline that we're hoping to have a revised draft available for other stakeholders to take a look at?

Okay, well, I'm hearing two things.

So one is a deadline to let me know about proposed changes that I would hear about from Council Member Herbold.

I would need, for a May 10th introduction, I would need to learn about that by end of day today in order for the draft, in order for those changes to be made and then sent to law.

If you were seeking a draft that removes domestic workers, I can provide that within an hour or so, or less, after this meeting, because that's just a matter of removing language, and I can give you a track changes version, or I can give you a clean version, both.

But as far as revisions, I would need it by the end of the day.

There, of course, would still be opportunity to move to amend the legislation on May 18th, and depending on how many things might happen between now and May 18th, maybe a substitute bill.

I'm going to turn it over to councilmember Herbold to let me know.

Yeah, absolutely.

I actually, through Alex, requested that, yeah, last night.

So that's in the works.

And I just want to just be really clear, we're working, we're driving towards the next committee meeting, your next committee meeting based on my understanding of your demands on the agenda.

If you're not planning, if May 18th does not is not the only other committee meeting that you have available, but you have available a subsequent committee meeting in June, which I did not think was the case, that would all affect the timeline in a way that would allow for more time.

But I was under the impression that May 18th was our last shot.

We do have a time crunch in those June meetings, but appreciate that.

I just want to double check since we got the benefit of our council president here with us as well as central staff.

If there was introduction and referral instead of the 10th, if it was on the 17th, we could still hear that in our meeting on the 18th and be in line with the appropriate protocols.

Is that correct?

That is correct.

Yeah, there'd be less time to look at it before the meeting, but that is absolutely an option.

Okay, great.

Well, I definitely don't want to slow down the discussions.

I think that getting that stakeholder feedback is important.

I think that having a little bit more time, especially for the review of the initial draft before introduction, if that's your desire to try to get as much feedback as possible, that could give us another week, Council Member Herbold.

And then we could keep having conversations about those June dates as well, because I think it's really important that the language, you know, gets appropriately amended prior to introduction.

And then if there's any feedback that you will want to incorporate during deliberations, that we make time for that as well.

Okay, so I'm hearing possible introduction then on the 17th instead of the 10th.

And thank you, Karina, for all of the work that you've done, but also for stripping out the language on domestic worker standards board so that we can to share around the more recent draft.

The things that I will flag that I don't think I'll have the ability to provide feedback on today, which is why I'm hoping that with an extra week at least, we'll have a better chance to have discussion with the Prime Sponsor and others would be around the size of the employer or hiring entity, the size of the scope of the work that's being done by the independent contractor, and potentially the value of the services.

Those three things are of interest to me.

I am a little concerned about that September date, but since it might not be coming to my committee, that's good for me to shell.

I just want to flag that.

I know there's a lot of work going on right now.

So thank you for putting the slide up.

I'm not sure that this is the proper venue to have this discussion about, you know, sort of the finer details of process and introduction and parliamentary procedure, but I would ask, and I know that Council Member Herbold's staff is already communicating with my office as it relates to those issues, but I'd like to, I'd like to, make sure that we're balancing several important interests as we are talking about these deadlines for introduction and whatnot.

You know, there's obviously the need to make sure that committee members have enough time with whatever draft bill is introduced, but also I really value the importance of making sure that legislation is published and viewable by the public with enough time for them to also be engaged, particularly through public comment and the ongoing legislative process.

So I don't want folks who are interested in the subject in terms of stakeholders to feel like they're jammed.

And I also don't want committee members and other council members to feel like they are getting jammed as a result of a timeline or a deadline that we're discussing here.

So I like to just sort of have the benefit of a little bit more time before we commit on the record here to specific deadlines on what an appropriate sequence of introduction and deliberation and consideration could be.

I will flag that I think that the September I think the intent language here is rather ambitious and overly optimistic and I am, I understand why it's there.

I appreciate the energy and the intent as to why it is there, but I also want to be really transparent that I am concerned that it will, it could sort of result in undue pressure on the system in terms of trying to get this legislation heard in a committee that is otherwise very crowded.

I'm a little worried that we're being overly ambitious and as a result, inadvertently communicating to stakeholders that we are capable of actually getting this across the finish line in the summer and don't want to create any So, I think we have to be very cautious about undue expectations amongst our partners in community and our stakeholders.

So, I just want us to be very cautious about those kinds of commitments now.

My understanding is there's a lot of stakeholdering that still needs to happen, and we have a very full agenda.

So, I just want to be sort of realistic with our capacity

Thank you very much.

Those those points underscore the concerns that I have as well.

And so I think it's very points well taken.

I'm speaking of undue pressure, I want to make sure that we're not providing undue pressure for this legislation, especially the scoped nature of it, removing domestic workers, having the stakeholder conversations that are necessary, the ones that I want to have in addition to the ones that I know folks want to have on their own and then amongst council members in our deliberations.

So right now, I will say we do have I think a lot of interest in making sure that this gets right, and we'll be working with other council members to offer time in our June meetings if necessary, so folks don't feel that there's that pressure to move this on May 18th, as noted in the slide.

I know that that was our initial timeline, but given that, we also didn't have the chance to walk through this.

meeting.

I think that makes some sense and we will keep the conversations going to make sure we get this right and there's not undue pressure due to the existing committee dates.

Okay.

Thank you very much, councilmembers and council president.

Thanks again for your comments just now.

Appreciate you lifting those up.

I'm not seeing any additional council colleagues.

I do want to thank you, Karina, for your work on this.

I know that you have been spending a lot of time going through these details and will continue to do that with us.

Thank you for your research and the deliberative process that you have gone through to provide this draft for us.

to be continued.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

Okay.

To be continued and no undue pressure for timeline.

More to come on this.

Thank you, Karina.

Let's move on to our last item of business and that is the sound transit property transfer item number nine.

Madam Clerk, will you please read item number nine into the record?

An ordinance relating to the Office of Housing authorizing the acceptance of a transfer of real property in Southeast Seattle for the purpose of development of affordable housing and other related issues.

For briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you very much.

Madam Clerk, it was a little hard to hear you, but I know that folks have the agenda in front of them.

This is the Sound Transit Property Transfer Council Bill 120058 for the record.

Wonderful.

Thank you very much for being here with us.

We see Director Alvarado from the Office of Housing.

I'm going to call the meeting to order.

Erica Malone also from the office of housing.

Tracy Ratcliffe from council central staff.

Thank you all for being with us here today.

Councilmembers, this item is for consideration of the property transfer from sound transit to the office of housing.

If you haven't had a chance yet to hear about this, this is a really exciting opportunity.

This is truly about following through on our city's effort to not let go of public land that can be used for public good.

So the city is accepting this land at no cost.

The land is located in the south end and is in response to community's demand for more affordable housing in the south end.

And this housing will be built for purchase, meaning that we are providing accessible home ownership opportunities for Seattle residents.

three really important points to lift up.

And part of our long-standing commitments to not only address the issues that are leading to displacement, but creating more home ownership opportunities, gets at generational poverty issues, and also helps to reduce long commutes that are bad for our health and the planet's health by pushing more people out of the city.

So this is really exciting.

and at no cost.

So I'm going to turn it over to Tracy Ratzliff to walk us through initial comments, and then to Emily Alvarado.

Well, Council Member Ryu, I'm Tracy Ratzliff, Council Central staff.

You've done a good job of laying the foundation for OH's presentation.

I think I'm just going to let them go ahead with that presentation to talk about what is, in fact, a very historic and very exciting proposition here.

So very excited to have Emily and her crew go through the legislation for you.

Thank you chair Muscata members of the committee.

I am really excited to present today.

This is legislation that will formally accept surplus property from sound transit put it in the office of housing jurisdiction so that we can turn it into permanently affordable homeownership in the rain your Valley.

The vote will mark really the end of a several year process.

And this process included significant coordination between the Office of Housing and Sound Transit.

Thanks very much to the Sound Transit TOD staff.

It included an entire community engagement process to get to this point.

It included a formal petition to the FTA to use a little known federal regulation that allows us to accept these properties at no cost for public use.

It included identification by the city of significant resources to use to invest in the development of these permanently affordable homes.

And it included a formal vote by the Sound Transit Board to send these properties to us.

But I also think that it marks the beginning of something really big.

And that is that we're going to convert vacant, fenced up land in the Rainier Valley into community use.

We're going to do so in a neighborhood that's experiencing displacement.

And to Councilmember Mosqueda's point, we are going to bring the benefits of homeownership to around 100 families, equity and stability for those families.

And I hope that in doing so, we can help to prove that displacement is not inevitable, so long as we make intentional, proactive investments in equitable, permanent solutions.

And so I'm going to turn it over to Erica Malone, who is our homeownership specialist at the office of housing and who we're really lucky to have because she's an expert in permanently affordable homeownership to walk us through this presentation.

Thank you, Emily.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Thank you, council members and Tracy.

Let's see if my, oh, if I can advance the slides.

You know, it worked before when we tried this.

One moment, please.

Apologies.

No apology necessary.

We're all used to this now.

And there we go.

Can you all see that?

Yes, your entire screen is showing.

So you might want to hit that green button to just make it a maximum.

Thank you.

Great tip.

All right, we good?

My goodness.

That was okay.

So thanks again.

Emily really set it up well in calls from community for not only activating surplus sites and for more affordable housing, Permanently affordable home ownership is what we're proposing on these sites.

Building on a really successful partnership with Sound Transit, several large-scale multifamily developments, as you all know about on Capitol Hill at Roosevelt, building on that relationship, we collaboratively brought forth this other path that will utilize some of the smaller sites for affordable homeownership opportunities.

This is in line with Sound Transit's transit-oriented goals, obviously RCW 81.112.350, the 80-80-80 rule, and of course advances the city's goals of providing more affordable homeownership, and as Emily mentioned, specifically in a neighborhood that's under really significant gentrification pressure and for community residents who are under threat of displacement.

Erica, do you want to, for the benefit of the viewing public, just remind us the 80-80-80 rule, which we modeled our policy after as well.

Yes.

So 80% of the surplus property that is identified by Sound Transit must go to tenants or homeowners with incomes of 80% or below of area median income.

That's 280s.

The third always stumps me.

So the general concept is that Sound Transit needs to offer properties, at least 80% of their properties, to eligible entities to create affordable housing.

And we have really established, as Erica mentioned, a good partnership with them to make sure that where they are able to surplus property and avail it, we have the resources and the ability to take advantage of that.

Thank you.

Yeah, so as Emily mentioned earlier too, the property being transferred at no cost really is an exciting piece of this.

There's really two levels of discount.

Sound Transit agreeing to forego the million dollar, or excuse me, the roughly $12 million property value as well as the Federal Transit Administration that is willing to forego their interest.

Of roughly $4 million before we get too far into the weeds.

Where are these properties that there's a property list in the legislation, but sort of bird's eye view Mount Baker station in the upper left there and just outside of the slide there is on the right side is the Rainier Beach Station, so clustered around Columbia City Station, near Othello, and near Rainier Beach Station.

The sites range from 2,500 square feet to 10,000 square feet.

They are all flat.

They are fenced.

They are graveled.

You have seen them.

They will be activated soon and be fulfilling community's vision for homeownership and other community needs.

So a quick recap as to where we've come to date.

Identification of the properties, as Emily mentioned, to a fairly robust, equitable community engagement process took place the summer of 2019. FTA approval to allow the transfer at no cost happened in September.

some transit approved board approval which we're really grateful for both for the board as well as for the TOD staff.

Their partnership has been incredible.

Transfer agreement was executed in April and now is time to accept the properties.

Primary terms of the transfer agreement We will be doing additional due diligence.

And there's certain timelines and milestones in terms of when requests for proposals need to be published.

There will be no fewer than 100 homes developed.

There's likely the potential for more.

We're very hopeful that there could be upwards of 150 or more.

But we wanted to give space for community to be engaged in terms of Are they bigger units, which would result potentially in fewer units?

And that it's not just maybe a unit count, but a number of people served count that is more appropriate measure.

So just a quick reminder, and I know you all know this, what we mean by permanently affordable home ownership is that homes are affordable not just to the first home buyer, although they are affordable to the first home buyer, and then when or if that home buyer, home owner at that point chooses to sell, they do so at a price that's affordable to the next home buyer, taking with them a reasonable rate of return.

There is the opportunity for wealth creation and equity growth.

not only for that first home buyer, but for generations to come.

So we think this is a supermodel generally, and particularly in a place where displacement is happening so quickly, this will allow for homes to always be affordable for residents of the Rainier Valley.

A note then in regard to past community engagement as well as our future engagement going forward.

As we move forward, as you noticed on the, and I forgot to mention, sorry, within three months of the transfer being made, we will need to release an RFP.

That RFP process will be, to essentially enact the vision of community as engaged with Grounded Solutions Network, which is a national consultant expert in community ownership, as well as permanently affordable home ownership, and Puget Sound SAGE, as you know, a local organization that has deep roots and great trust in community.

And we're really looking forward to this process, which will determine not only what gets built, but by whom and for whom.

So broadly, the overall initiative vision is both very specific in terms of production and really quite broad in terms of impact.

There is, of course, a significant impact of this work in terms of the number of homes that will be created for homebuyers within the Rainier Valley.

But we also see this as sort of the foundation for organizational capacity building to be able to launch even bigger and better initiatives going forward within the realm of community land ownership and affordable home ownership.

So today, This is what we're asking of you to go ahead and take the legislative action that will accept the property at no cost.

This would then satisfy the city charter requirements.

And we look forward to partnering with you, working with you to go forward and enacting the community vision through this initiative.

And if I might a few pieces of clarification just about this legislative action you've seen us before as we have turned public sites into.

rental housing and ownership.

In all of those cases, before we do the actual disposition of the property, we come to you with far more detail about how we proceeded with the RFP, how we selected the developer, and ensuring the actual outline and requirements of that disposition.

This is not allowing us to go as far as a disposition.

It is merely doing the acceptance upon which we will launch the community engagement process and then be back to council before any disposition is made.

So this is really doing the other side of the coin of what Sound Transit's board already voted to do, which is send the property to us.

We're going to have it land with us, launch community engagement, and then keep you posted as we move towards an RFP based on what we hear from community.

Emily's correct, and then they will be back once the RFP is held and they select developers for the properties.

They will be back to get authorization to actually transfer those properties to those successful developers.

So we will see these properties back again once those RFP processes are completed and developers have been successfully selected for property development.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Very exciting opportunity here.

Any questions?

Okay, we are always looking for ways to expedite the process and to make this easier.

I guess the other flip side of what you just said, Emily, is what two or three years ago we passed legislation to make it so that if you saw a piece of property that was on the private market and you needed to act quickly, you didn't have to get delayed by going through our city's process for approval that you had pre-authorization to go forth and purchase given the We want to do everything we can to make sure that properties like these that, as you heard, are gravel and level and ready to build, that we build that housing ASAP.

Not seeing any additional comments or questions.

Everyone's really excited about this opportunity.

So let's do everything we can to get this moved as fast as possible.

I've moved the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 120058. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded.

Are there any additional comments?

hearing no comments, congratulations to all at OH and also future tenants in this location.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of Council Bill 12058. Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Vice Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

And Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

I would like to ask for a motion and a second.

Madam chair, that is the floor in favor.

None opposed.

The motion carries.

The committee recommendation will be sent to the May 10th Seattle City Council meeting for a final vote.

Thank you very much again to our team at the office of housing, Erica for the presentation and Emily Alvarado for your leadership at OH.

Okay, wonderful.

We are at the end of our agenda for today and it is not even 1130. Imagine that.

So we'll have plenty of time for folks to take a break and get some lunch and hopefully get well rested because we do have a public hearing this evening.

This evening it will start at 530. As a reminder to the viewing public, you can sign up for public testimony.

We're going to be interested in any of your feedback, ideas, priorities for the federal COVID relief dollars.

These are the American Rescue Plan Act dollars that are made available.

about 239 million over the course of two years here.

The first tranche of funding is 119 million.

So we've already had three public hearings about this, excuse me, three public committee meetings about this discussion.

We're going to have a public hearing tonight just focused on your public comments.

So please do sign up for public testimony.

We'll be interested in knowledge, your feedback, and we'll be compiling that feedback along with the information we've received from the last three meetings and look forward to I'm excited to continue to learn from other cities that are going through the city of Denver and city of Austin and Minneapolis as they are looking at similar strategies to deploy their ARPA dollars.

So today will be an opportunity for us to combine what public hearing testimony is providing in terms of additional priorities that we will put in context of what we're hearing from other cities and strategies as well.

Public testimony, sign up can be found at Seattle.gov backslash council backslash committees backslash public hyphen comment and it will open again at 3 30. Look forward to hearing from you then and colleagues.

I do hope you can join us for the public hearing tonight.

Look forward to seeing you again very soon.

With that, I'm seeing nothing else for the good of the order.

Have a great afternoon.

Today's meeting is adjourned.

See you later tonight.