Good morning, everyone.
Thank you for being here.
After the last several days.
Over the last several days, I've heard from many community members, angry and outraged at the betrayal by the city council's democratic establishment.
to postpone the vote on our legislation to tax Amazon and big business to fund immediate COVID relief alongside a public jobs program through a major expansion of housing and Green New Deal initiatives that will be required to recover from the COVID emergency.
I'll read part of one community letter, one of many, which comes from the Puget Sound Advocates for Retirement Action, PASARA, a grassroots labor organization that has been active in fighting for older Americans, their children, and their families for the last 25 years.
They wrote, PASARA urges you to move forward with the payroll tax on the city's largest businesses proposed by council members Morales and Sawant.
PASARA believes that the governor's order does not prevent you from moving forward on this important legislation.
Even if it subsequently has to be litigated, we believe that defending the tax proposal in court would be an excellent use of the city's legal resources.
Now is the time for action, not for hand-wringing.
Pass the Morales-Sawan tax proposal and fund COVID-19 relief, affordable housing, and union jobs in the green economy.
Thank you for that letter, Pasara.
The argument that our virtual, open, filmed, broadcast, recorded council meetings are not open enough, justifying canceling those meetings in a backroom deal and claiming this is in defense of open public meetings is truly Orwellian.
This argument is being led by Council Members Herbold and Gonzalez, who were among the politicians who conspired behind closed doors to repeal our movement's hard-fought Amazon tax in 2018 in another backroom deal, in flagrant violation of the principles of open meetings, being taken to court and then having to settle the case with paying taxpayer money.
I appreciate Council Member Mosqueda who voted with me against the repeal of the 2018 Amazon tax for repeatedly reaffirming her opposition to austerity budgeting and her commitment to substantial progressive revenues.
I do think though it is extremely unfortunate she has decided to cancel the committee meetings in response to this pressure from the establishment.
I've spoken personally with her and I've urged her to immediately reschedule her committee to this week.
She has declined this request.
I sincerely hope she reconsiders.
But in the meanwhile, our movement cannot wait and cannot accept this attempt to stymie our momentum.
The City Council's Sustainability and Renters' Rights Committee, which I chair, will be meeting by Zoom and livestream next Thursday, May 21st at 6 p.m.
in a public meeting with full public oversight and involvement to continue important discussions on the tax Amazon legislation sponsored by me and Council Member Tammy Morales.
The committee will also discuss how renters are getting organized building by building and how we can fight for a full suspension without consequences of rent, mortgage and utility payments, making the big banks and billionaires pay for this crisis.
My office has just sent around the notification for the city council committee meeting, and we look forward to full participation by committee members and the public in these important proceedings.
My office and our movement totally reject the alleged legal reasons from council members Gonzalez and Herbold and others in the establishment in demanding that committee discussions on the Amazon tax legislation be shut down because it doesn't meet the criteria in the governor's proclamation of necessary legislation to respond to the COVID emergency.
First of all, the governor's order itself is illegal because the governor does not have the right to tell city councils what they can and cannot discuss and vote on.
The governor does have emergency powers to order steps for the health and safety of Washingtonians, but limiting what legislation city councils can take up is not one of them.
In a few minutes, I'll have our legal expert explain why the governor's order is fatally flawed.
Furthermore, we also don't agree with Council Member Gonzalez's claim that our tax Amazon proposal to invest $125 million a year in Green New Deal residential projects and to invest $375 million a year in new affordable social housing, which will create and support thousands of jobs, is somehow not COVID-19 related legislation.
It's a stupefying argument with joblessness being one of the key features of this major crisis, which is looking more like a depression than a recession.
It is insulting to the intelligence of working people in Seattle, more than 100,000 of whom have lost their jobs in the last eight weeks due to COVID.
What do they need to recover from COVID?
They need jobs.
What does $125 million a year in Green New Deal residential projects provide in addition to better homes and reduced pollution?
Jobs.
Let's be very clear here.
The democratic political establishment is trying to use the cover of legal arguments, and not very competent ones at that, to try and quash our growing movement and protect big business from taxation.
In a time when so many workers have lost 100% of their paychecks, our tax Amazon legislation would require Amazon and the biggest 2% of businesses to pay a tax that comes out to less than 1% of their Seattle-based budgets.
That's it, 1%.
They get to keep the other 99% of their income.
These companies are the richest in our city.
Many are the richest people in the world, and they can pay.
We're talking about not just Amazon executives and major shareholders, a company whose revenues have skyrocketed under COVID and whose owner is slated to be the world's first trillionaire in a few years, but also companies like CBRE, The largest commercial real estate and investment firm in the world with annual revenues over $20 billion.
The Seattle Mariners whose owner is worth $1.1 billion.
Big online companies who have seen their businesses skyrocket since the pandemic struck.
Big downtown law firms like the international firms Perkins Coie with nearly 300 lawyers in Seattle alone, and Nucor Steel, the largest steel manufacturing company in the United States, which has recorded billions of profits in recent years and whose CEO was paid $19 million last year.
Interestingly, about the same amount of money that the company received in federal tax breaks.
I'm naming these corporations because I think it's vitally important to recognize that we're not having some abstract legal argument here.
And we're not talking about small family run businesses.
In trying to stall our tax Amazon legislation, the democratic political establishment is protecting these companies, their profits, their power at the expense of ordinary working people who today are struggling to survive this pandemic.
They're trying to stop a small fraction of the enormous wealth of these corporations from being put toward urgent social needs.
They're saying that the profits of new core steel are more important than the needs of nursing home workers, that protecting the tax haven of billionaire baseball team owners is more important than providing diapers and food and cash assistance to mothers and children in our central district.
The question before us is not about legal interpretations, but rather who will pay for this crisis, big business and the wealthy or working people?
That's the question before our city.
And that is what we will be discussing with the community at next Thursday's committee meeting.
But on the face of it, some of the legal arguments may appear to be plausible.
So it's important we understand them.
And also to understand that when you break them down, when you properly analyze them, they fall apart.
To help us with this analysis, we reached out to some of the most experienced lawyers in our community who have examined the governor's proclamation, Council President Gonzalez's memo, the Open Public Meetings Act, and other relevant statutes.
We're really fortunate to have one of them with us today, attorney Dimitri Glitzen, who's been a longtime attorney who has done a lot of work with the labor movement and with the community.
Welcome, Dimitri.
Council Member Sawant and thank you to everyone else who is on this call for taking a few moments to listen to me talk about the sort of underlying legal problem with what has happened here.
My focus has been with great concern on the portion of the governor's proclamation that prohibits agencies from taking action, except on certain specified topics.
And what that means for our purposes and agency is includes the city council and every other city and county council in the state by action.
It means legislate.
So the governor has attempted to exercise his emergency power to prevent local governments from doing their job, which is to evaluate and enact legislation.
And it's actually a little shocking.
And it's also clearly legally unsupportable.
If you take a look at the statute that gives the governor emergency power, RCW 43.06.220, see the governor has a lot of power to prohibit things in the interest of preserving and maintaining life health property or the public peace, but telling Seattle City Council what topics it can and cannot legislate about, what kinds of topics it can and can't choose to have a public meeting about.
It's clearly not necessary to help preserve and maintain life health property or the public peace.
The governor has a lot of power and can tell people to stay inside and stay off the streets and not open their businesses.
But cities have power under Article 11, Section 11 of the state constitution.
They are created and have power limited only by the constraints of state law to what they call the police power to enact legislation.
And it's actually shocking that the governor is purporting to strip cities of that power as he has seen fit to do.
The truth is no one is going to try to defend the governor's decision to tell cities what they can and can't legislate about based on the idea that the city engaging in legislation poses a threat to life, health, property, and public peace.
And the plan to have the city do its business through virtual meetings clearly poses no such threat.
What the governor is really saying, and what the attorney general seems to be supporting the governor in saying, is that he's ordering cities not to do something that they believe might violate the Open Public Meetings Act.
The first thing to recognize is that stopping a violation of the OPMA is clearly not encompassed in the governor's emergency powers.
It's well-established that if a city council or city council people were to violate the OPMA, there are remedies for that, but it's not necessary to preserve the life, health, property, or public peace to prevent a violation of the OPMA.
And read in context, nothing in the emergency powers are contemplating giving the governor the power to tell a city what to legislate about.
So one could really stop there and say that the governor's order goes beyond his authority because he's really waiting in and saying, well, you can't do something we think would violate the OPMA, which is not his authority.
But also the argument that a virtual city council meeting violates the OPMA is simply not right.
The OPMA, the purpose of the OPMA, of course, is to make sure that the public has access to, and is able to observe agency meetings, in this case, observe meetings to the city council.
And in fact, as we all know, a meeting that is being streamed on zoom that can be watched by thousands of people provides more public access than a traditional meeting held in city hall that only those people who can get off work and get downtown and deal with parking uh, can actually attend.
So no one can plausibly say that a virtual only meeting, it breaches the OPMA and precisely accomplishes the goals of the OPM.
And no court has ever even hinted that you can't have virtual meeting.
In fact, the attorney general admits that all kinds of public meetings take place virtually by telephone or now by zoom throughout the state.
And that is routine.
Now the governor points to his attorney general's guidance and his attorney general's guidance points to a 2017 attorney general opinion that says somewhat bizarrely that you can have a virtual meeting so long as there is a physical presence and a speakerphone is set up because somebody might want to go to that physical place and listen to a meeting by speakerphone rather than listening in by phone or internet.
So that's a completely bizarre and made-up idea, the legal analysis.
They say a meeting has to take place somewhere.
Well, yes, a virtual meeting takes place in cyberspace, and that's the presence where the public needs to have access.
The Attorney General admits that its opinions don't have the force and effect of law.
It's nothing but an opinion.
As I said, there's no court that says it.
Ironically, what the governor also says in his proclamations, he is suspending that portion of the Open Public Meetings Act as it applies to meetings that are dealing with what he thinks are appropriate to be legislated about, what he thinks are emergencies.
If the governor really thought, and the attorney general really thought, gee, the problem is that the OPMA requires a speaker phone, The governor could have used his emergency power to suspend that supposed speakerphone requirement and then allow the city council and all city councils and county councils to do their important constitutionally sanctioned business.
So what the governor has done passes neither legal muster on its face telling city and county councils what they can and cannot legislate about, nor does it pass the common sense test, because if you really believe that the problem is that the OPMA requires a speakerphone to be in some physical present place where people could go, which of course we don't want to have happen during the epidemic, the governor could have simply suspended that part of the OPMA to allow what everyone is going to have to agree on a rational basis is a completely appropriate, completely open public meeting taking place through Zoom technology, which is the legislative meeting that council member Sawant plans on having her committee take up, to take up what city council members believe is vitally important legislation.
And no one, certainly not the governor, gets to say, oh, it's not really vitally important.
That's basically my analysis of why what the governor has done here exceeds his authority under his power to issue emergency proclamations.
I'm happy to answer questions about that legal analysis if anyone has any.
Sorry.
Thank you so much, Dimitri, for providing that analysis.
And if members of the media have questions, please raise your hand and one of my staff members will call on you.
So I think we have a question from Charlie Harger.
Please go ahead.
Council member, what kind of feedback are you getting from your fellow council?
Sorry, feedback about what exactly?
About wanting to press forward and to challenge the legal
issue from the governor?
The city council is made up primarily of the Democratic Party establishment, and you know what the establishment has done.
It has attempted to stymie the momentum of our tax Amazon movement by making this decision to cancel the committee meetings.
So it's very clear that I completely disagree with the cancellation of the committee, but that's a decision they have made.
and they are responsible for, but Council Member Morales has disagreed with that decision and I have disagreed in very clear terms.
And that's why I'm gonna be meeting in because of Council Member Mosqueda's unfortunate decision to cancel the committee meeting.
So I hope that they will reconsider, but we're not just going to lie still in the meanwhile.
And members of media can also feel free to write their questions in the chat forum.
We have a question from Hannah Scott, who says, is there any action Council President Gonzalez can take against you for holding this meeting despite her decision?
Well, you know, she herself has made it very clear clear in her own words, you know, paraphrasing her, that that was a recommendation she made and it was the decision of the budget chair to cancel the meeting.
So no, I don't believe that she has any authority to say that I cannot discuss any legislation in my committee.
And I hope that council members who are members of the committee will attend along with me and listen to the community as to why this legislation is urgently needed to address the triple crisis of public health, housing affordability and jobs.
We have another question from Hannah who says, critics of this proposal have said that this is not the right time to enact any new tax as the state faces historic economic downturn.
Why do you believe it's the right time?
Well, I think if we look at the track record of big business and spokespeople for the wealthy, it's never a right time to tax them, which is why in the absence of a fighting movement, we've had Seattle be the most favorable corporate tax haven in the nation with the nation's most regressive tax system.
So when we were fighting for the Amazon tax in 2017 and 2018, when we did win before the repeal, It was not the right time.
It's never a right time to do the right thing for working people as far as big business is concerned.
And I would say that the case for taxing big business to make public revenues available has increased by orders of magnitude in the middle of this pandemic.
But we're not just in a pandemic, we are in a major recession, which economists are predicting is going to look like a depression.
And so it would be grossly irresponsible and an abdication of public duty to not address this major crisis.
And so it really shows that there is no neutral ground that political officials can occupy in this context.
You are either going to help working people or you're going to further the representation of big business greed and the wealth of very rich people.
Because even if it wasn't about the creation of jobs and housing and Green New Deal programs, which we absolutely are talking about with the Amazon tax, even to ensure just a basic requirement that we don't have major plummeting of the budget and have austerity budgeting, we will need public revenues to be shored up.
And the only way that that can be done is by taxing big business, because in the context of the most regressive tax system, where working people pay the bulk of the tax revenues, And when major job losses are happening, there is no question.
Working people are not going to be paying those taxes because they don't have jobs.
And so they're not going to be paying those taxes.
So the automatic consequence is a plummeting of the budget.
So the only way to address those budget shortfalls is through taxing big business and the wealthy.
And so when politicians are refusing to do that, what they're indicating, what they're signaling to us is austerity budgets.
And we've seen this happen.
time and time again, when there are recessions, the price is extracted from squeezing working people.
So we better watch out and we better fight back.
And if Dimitri wanted to address any legal aspects of the questions about whether this can be done during the pandemic, I would really welcome him.
I'm not sure that there was a legal question.
Obviously, the proper steps for the city to take in dealing with the pandemic, both the short term and long term consequences of the pandemic is purely a legislative issue.
I don't have a legal opinion, except obviously it's within the power of the City Council to pass whatever legislation it chooses.
through its normal processes to deal with the crisis that the city council is entrusted with trying to resolve.
And if the city council thinks that we need more revenue so that we can ameliorate the impacts on working people and everyone else in the city and that the source of that revenue has to be those that have a lot of income and a lot of wealth, there's no legal implications of that.
Thank you for clarifying that, Dimitri.
I really appreciate that.
And we have one more question from Hannah, who says, where does the grassroots effort to get this to the ballot stand?
Appreciate you asking that question, Hannah.
As you know, first of all, just to clarify, since this attack on the democratic establishment, what I have observed and what many of us have observed is overwhelmingly people are angry and outraged and not demoralized.
And so they really want to fight back.
And so We have, uh, you know, more and more people energized about this.
So we are going to be having the tax Amazon ballot initiative campaign is going to be having an action conference on Saturday.
And, uh, you know, the members of the media are please feel free to reach out to the organizers of that event and or and and, uh, activists who are campaigning for the ballot initiative to get more details about that.
But definitely there will be momentum around that.
I just wanted to share one thing with the media while we wait for any more questions is as far as this legal interpretation that somehow it's not within the legal purview of the city council to discuss and vote on the tax Amazon legislation.
The city Council has already done many things that one could argue very easily that are far less quote-unquote necessary than taxing big business to provide COVID relief and create jobs and housing.
One example is a resolution number 31941 that was passed by the council on April 6th, which established a committee to develop recommendations to enhance the capacity of the office of city auditor to conduct performance audits.
And I defy anybody to tell me why this is necessary and urgent and routine and so on.
And another legislation that was passed by the council on April 27, which is Council Bill 119769, which is an ordinance relating to land use review decision and meeting procedures.
This legislation streamlines the design review for developers during the emergency.
And what's interesting about this is that the legislation has been justified by findings.
The text that is written in the legislation that are suspiciously similar to our movement's rationale for why the Amazon tax is needed to address a triple emergency.
So for example, in part of the text of the legislation, it says, in addition to the paramount public health concerns, the spread of COVID-19 and the necessary measures taken to reduce that spread, and so on.
And then it talks about how over 133,000 Washington residents filed for jobless benefits the previous week.
And indeed, the velocity of jobless claims is greater since 1930s.
And we will face major reductions in tax revenues, even as the city faces major new emergency expenditures.
That's exactly what I just said, which is we are going to face a public revenue crunch in the face of major joblessness.
In another part of the text of the legislation, it says we need commercial and residential construction for accommodating businesses and providing much-needed housing, including affordable housing for city residents.
And then it goes on to say that construction also employs a large number of workers and is a driver of economic activity in its own right.
That is basically the exact same thing that we're saying, which is that in the face of a recession that is, you know, really inducing joblessness, we will need public works programs like the construction of social housing and Green New Deal programs to drive economic activity and create jobs.
This is exactly what we're saying.
So this legislation has already been passed by the city council.
So this further reveals that what is deemed necessary is not a legal question, even though they are saying it's a legal question, that's all smoke and mirrors.
What is actually going on is what is deemed necessary is determined by where a politician's loyalties lie, corporate interests or ordinary people.
So when corporate interests want something to be passed, immediately there's a full-fledged justification and justification that sounds suspiciously like what working people say in order to get that done.
But when working people need immediate assistance and jobs, then we are told, oh, well, I'm sorry, we are breaking the law if we do it.
So there's ample evidence that this is not really within the realms of legality for the city council to cancel these committee meetings.
I see that Jonathan Rosenblum from my office wants to ask a question.
And also there's a question from Matt Markovich that says, I'm trying to understand what action you can take by bringing this up in your committee.
Can you explain, do you want the city attorney to challenge the governor's ruling?
Dimitri, would you, did you want to answer that?
Yes, I wanted to answer the, The second half, I think, the Council member could explain what she hopes by bringing up in her committee to be able to move forward with this vitally important legislation, I imagine is the answer.
What should really happen with the governor's ruling is that an organization like the Association of Washington Cities, that represents cities throughout the state, should go to court to get a declaratory ruling that this part of the governor's emergency proclamation is an abusive authority, failing that the Seattle City Attorney should, at the behest of the City Council, go to court to get that same ruling.
The problem in a political world is that people get intimidated So what has literally happened here is that upon receipt of the governor's proclamation, the city council has allowed itself to be buffaloed by the threat that by going ahead with a city council meeting on topics of its own choosing, it will somehow be deemed to violate his governor's emergency proclamation.
And as we often see when people are intimidated, instead of fighting, they just cave.
So they have literally, you know, pulled their heads into their shells and said, well, if the governor says we can't do it, we won't do it.
So I would say, yes, the proper legal response from the city council when the governor says you exist constitutionally to legislate and have hearings on matters you think are important, and I, the governor, are telling you you can't, the proper response for the city council would be to go to court.
Failing that, the proper response is for the city council to say, well, we're going to go ahead and do what we think we are constitutionally entitled and compelled to do.
We'll see if the governor and or the attorney general decides that it's prudent to try to enforce their executive order, which they won't because they will clearly not succeed in court.
So a lot of times in the legal system, it's a question of who's going to blink first.
And in this case, it seems right now that some members of city council and the Seattle city attorney's office are blinking and are just afraid to contest the governor's illegal order.
And obviously Council Member Sawant and perhaps others are saying, well, Since they don't have the power as individual council members to go to court to challenge this order All they can do is go ahead with the people's business in this case in council members who wants committee and then if the governor wants to make this a legal battle and Learn from the Superior Court that his executive order was not lawful in this regard.
Then that's the governor's move.
That's my steps here and possible actions that could be taken but are not apparently going to be taken by the Seattle City Attorney's Office.
Thank you, Dimitri, and I would just follow up on that by saying that exactly as Dimitri outlined, the City Council is completely, it's within the City Council's complete authority, what we are constitutionally entitled to do, which is go ahead with the people's business and I would say as far as this supposed fear that the council members from the political establishment expressed that, oh my God, we will be taken to court.
I can't remember a single progressive ruling that we have, I mean, progressive law ordinance that we have won that is of any consequence, of any significance, some real material benefits for working people, whether it's the move-in fee, law for renters or the $15 minimum wage.
I mean, countless victories that we have won through our movement, building momentum.
Most of them, if not all of them, have been taken to court and most of them have survived legal challenges.
So I don't, and as Dimitri said, you know, this is ultimately, this is also a political decision.
And so the political decision of the democratic establishment is At this local level and at state level, they're circling the wagons around each other and saying, well, the governor has indicated this, the governor and attorney general say, well, we've just given our legal guidance and it's up to the municipal government to decide what they want to do.
And so basically, they're engaging in this political collusion of attempting to stymie the movement.
And that's why it's important that we are doing this committee meeting on Thursday.
May 21st at 6pm so I would really urge members of the media to join us and members of the public absolutely and we will have many advocates, including economists at the table, who will be explaining why such a legislation, especially taxing big business to provide revenues to build social programs that create jobs, why this is specifically something that caters to the requirements that are born out of this jobless recession.
I appreciate everybody coming today.
I really appreciate Dimitri's legal expertise here.
And I welcome media to continue asking questions to us offline that come up.
Please feel free to reach out to Jonathan Rosenblum from my office.
We're continuing to answer questions.
And we look forward to seeing everybody at the Action Conference on Saturday and at the committee meeting on the 21st at 6 p.m.
Thank you.