Online Economic Forum: Realities of Inequities Created & Worsened by COVID

Good morning, and thank you so much for joining today's online economic forum.

My name is Aretha Basu, and I am a staffer for Councilmember Mosqueda, and I'm so happy to welcome you all this morning.

Shortly, we'll hear some opening remarks from Councilmember Mosqueda, and then we'll move on to our first panel.

which is on the economic realities where we'll hear from experts like Josh Bivens, Research Director at the Economic Policy Institute, Lenore Palladino, Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts, Shah Habibi, Research and Policy Director in the Public Interest, Misha Workshall, Executive Director of Budget and Policy Center, Derek Gruen, Co-Executive Director of Front and Center.

After we hear from our first panel, we'll take a couple of questions and move on to our second panel, and we'll focus on the community need, where we'll hear from Sean Van Eyck, Organizing Representative from ProTech 17, Michelle Thomas, Director of Policy and Advocacy with the Washington Low-Income Housing Alliance, Pauline Echo-Hawk, Executive Director of the Chief Seattle Club, and Beto Yarce, Executive Director of Ventures.

We'll take a couple of questions and then conclude our forum.

We're very thankful for all the panelists and everyone who is joining us today for this robust discussion.

And with that, I will hand it over to Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you so much, Aretha.

It's really wonderful to see all of you.

I hope you have had a chance to join us streaming live on YouTube.

This is also going to be recorded for folks who want to watch it if they are working in grocery stores, in the hospitals, or taking care of family right now.

We have recorded this economic form as well.

My name is Teresa Mosqueda.

I'm a Seattle City Council member in position eight citywide.

I'm the chair of finance and housing and the chair of the Select Budget Committee.

As we think about the opportunities that we have in front of us to respond to the COVID crisis, we know that much of the conversation in the last few days and weeks has focused on economic loss, economic pain, and how we are going to recover from this crisis.

But as we focus on not just the economic crisis, I want to center us first on the tremendous pain, grief, illness, and death that COVID has created right here in Seattle and across the globe.

We know that the pain that these families and communities are facing is tremendous.

And as of 5.30 p.m.

last night, we saw the total confirmed deaths in Washington rise above 1,000 people.

1,002 deaths were recorded in Washington State.

In King County, as of last night, there were 520. three deaths and there's around 18,611 people who've tested positive for COVID in Washington State.

I think it's important that we remember the pain and suffering that is being caused on a physical and mental level as well as an emotional level and then begin talking about the economic pain.

Much of the conversation that we've seen at the national level has been put into a political lens and I think it's critical that we have a conversation that first recognizes we must address the public health crisis, and then we can address the economic crisis.

And while we wait for appropriate testing, while we wait for there to be an appropriate vaccine, the crisis that is affecting our communities is hitting communities disproportionately.

That is both in terms of the physical trauma and the economic trauma.

We know that Latinos, for example, are four times as likely to be hospitalized due to COVID and two and a half more times likely to die because of COVID.

We also know that people of color and women are more likely to be working in the service sector industry without access to sick leave.

without access to the appropriate PPE.

And those who are deemed essential now are also the folks that have for many years been working at sub-minimum wages and poverty wages.

Before we talk about what happens in a recovery effort, I think it's also important that we center this discussion today on the economic forum through the lens of not how do we build the economy that we used to have, but how do we build a new economy?

Our previous economy that we had left far too many people out, especially women, people of color, and immigrant populations.

So as we think about who's being left behind, who's being most affected by this COVID crisis, I think it's imperative for us to think about what the new economy could look like.

We're here today to talk with workers, small business advocates, families, nonprofits, our service sector employees, to talk about what it means to respond to the crisis.

Who's being affected on the front lines?

What does this mean to have individuals who've been affected by the physical trauma of the COVID crisis and now to be hit twice as hard with the economic crisis?

We want to make sure that we are both responding to the immediate crisis and also planning for the long-term crisis.

We also have an opportunity to not just define responding to crisis in the next two months or three months, but to think about the immediate crisis in the next two to three years.

We know at best, a vaccine is probably not going to be available for 18 months or so.

So thinking about responding to the current crisis must be framed in terms of this two to three year plan.

And then longer term, what does it look like to rebuild an economy, a more equitable economy over the next five to 10 years?

As we wait for a vaccine and the appropriate amount of testing, we want to make sure that we're mitigating the impact of the economic crisis caused by COVID and recognizing that COVID has really just exposed cracks in our current social and economic system that has left far too many people out, created more vulnerable populations who are now experiencing the crisis tenfold over other populations.

We have esteemed guests with us today at this economic forum, local and national experts.

We will start with the macro perspective to help us put this economic crisis into perspective.

We have local and national leaders who will talk about the magnitude of unemployment.

What has the impact been on small business closures?

Who is profiting and who is shuttering due to this much needed stay at home and stay healthy order?

We will hear from frontline folks, folks who are working directly with the community who've been most affected by the lack of housing, the lack of food assistance, lack of healthcare services, and lack of support for small businesses from the local to the national level.

And we'll hear from them who is at risk from being further harmed by our existing cracks in the system and those that are being widened due to COVID.

Colleagues, because this is a forum and not a public hearing, we do not have all of our council colleagues on the Zoom with us today, but I know many are watching on the live stream.

I want to thank my council colleagues who are with us, Council Member Sawant who is here with us.

Thank you for being here and we'll hear from her immediately after the first panel before we go into questions.

I also believe that we are going to be joined by Council Member Morales and Council Member Strauss.

If there is another council member that joins us at a certain point, I'll let you know, but we probably will only have four members on at any time.

I also want to thank all of our IT folks and our communication folks who you've had the chance to see just as we joined the call.

They've really made it possible for us to host this nationwide economic forum today.

And for you also to be able to submit your questions in the viewing public, there was a link online and we are collecting those questions and we'll ask some questions as soon as the panelists conclude.

I'm extremely grateful for the panelists that we have.

So let's begin with our economic realities panel.

We have first with us Josh Bivens, Research Director from the Economic Policy Institute, who will speak to us about the economic importance of resisting austerity measures.

Josh, I'll turn it over to you.

And you have about 10 minutes.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm going to try quickly to share my screen and we'll see what happens.

Does that work?

Can people see it?

It's working.

Okay, excellent.

So I'll just say a couple things.

One, we are facing the largest and most sudden economic shock probably in the history of the United States.

It is decisively larger than the shock we faced during either the Great Recession of 2008 or even the Great Depression in terms of job loss.

This first figure shows average five-month job loss in the Great Recession, the Great Depression, and then what is forecast between February and July of 2020. And you can see that the job loss being forecast is greater by about two times as large as what we saw during the Great Depression.

And we're going to hit that forecasted number.

I mean, we've already seen about 35 million people file for unemployment insurance.

And so I think, if anything, this is a bit of an undershoot.

I think the unique features of this crisis are going to put uniquely large demands on state and local governments in responding to this.

Our state and local governments shouldered the disproportionate burden for lots of programs aimed at vulnerable populations, like unemployment insurance.

They do almost all education investment, and they're on the front lines of health care.

And this is a very different recession, not only in its size, but also in the fact that it's falling first in low-wage sectors.

That's rare.

Usually, recessions start in manufacturing and construction and then radiate outward.

This one has gone right at sectors that employ low-wage workers disproportionately.

Also, unusually, this recession has really been led by a drop in health care spending.

Basically, any medical procedure that is not COVID-related just has stopped over the past two or three months.

That's going to have long-term consequences on people's health, but also health care is a huge part of the economy.

It has led to a slowdown in that sector.

And finally, this crisis has shut down schools, which has led to a host of challenges for working parents as well as for education generally.

So I think one thing we want to look at, sorry, just to, there we go.

Advanced slide one, this is just showing the share of households that have experienced a layoff or furlough or reduced hours since March 1st by income level.

Basically, households with combined income of less than $40,000, almost 40% of them have seen a member lose a job, be furloughed, or had their hours reduced, compared to just 13% of households where the combined income is over $100,000.

So this really shows that the epicenter of this crisis is in the low-wage sector.

I think as well, this is a slide showing you forecast sort of changes in GDP over the next couple of quarters and through the end of 2021. There's a couple of things to note about this.

That blue line at the top is sort of the pre-crisis trend of gross domestic product, which is basically total national income.

And then there's two forecasts on here, one by Goldman Sachs, one by CBO.

They both show about the same pattern.

And there's a couple of things to note about this forecast.

you know, it's an incredibly sharp contraction, like right now in the data, the second quarter of this year.

Two, it's got a pretty robust recovery in the second half of this year.

And then three, even with that recovery, which I think is a little driven by rosy assumptions in some ways I'll talk about, we end at the end of 2021, 18 months from now, essentially, in these projections, essentially sitting at a place that is about the worst of where we were during the Great Recession.

Sort of the jargon is an output gap.

It's how much actual GDP departs from what we could be producing if we were actually at full employment and we had not had this crisis.

But essentially these projections are showing us that 18 months from now We'll you know have the great opportunity of sitting about where we were in 2009 and that should be really distressing that should make us think We need to do more on the policy front So in terms of the the rosy assumptions sort of embedded in this robust second half recovery in this graph I think there's two one I think we've all become amateur epidemiologists over the past couple of months trying to read everything we can about this crisis.

And what I have gathered from what I've read is it is not just a one and done binary, everyone's sitting in their homes for three months, and then it's all back to normal.

That's not what I'm reading from the public health experts.

I think the return to economic activity is going to be much more gradual and phased than that.

And it also is sort of assuming there's no localized rolling set of shutdowns and second waves.

And I think that could be a real threat to growth going forward.

I think what that means is a couple things for the policy choices in front of us.

One, We cannot spend enough money on public investment to get a hold of this crisis relative to the economic damage we're seeing in charts like this.

Essentially, the tool we've chosen so far to deal with the crisis is a complete shutdown of economic activity.

I think it was necessary to stop the sort of really rapid growth.

Going forward, we can choose a different path.

We can choose a more strategic one.

It is lots of testing.

tracing, isolation, mask wearing, you can do that instead of total shutdowns.

This more strategic approach is expensive, but even the most expensive sort of testing proposals and things like that out there basically say they might cost $100 billion.

Well, in the second quarter of this year, just in April, May, and June of this year, we're going to lose $2 trillion.

So even the most robust public investment response to do a strategic approach to this crisis will not even cost 5% of what a total shutdown costs in just three months of this year.

So this says we should spend everything we need to spend on the public front to get a handle on this crisis.

Two, I think the other big issue we need to think about is that the path of recovery is going to rest on the generosity of our relief and recovery measures.

The more generous we are with relief and recovery, the more likely it is that households will emerge from the economic shutdown able to actually unleash pent-up demand that will get businesses back up and running quickly on their feet and hiring.

And we haven't done enough relief and recovery yet, and the single biggest place we've fallen short is in failing to give substantial federal aid to state and local governments on the scale they need.

State and local revenues are extremely sensitive to business cycles.

Best estimates are for every one percentage point increase in the unemployment rate nationally.

is associated with about a $45 to $60 billion shortfall in state and local revenues.

And we're looking at unemployment that will peak at about 25% or more in the summer.

It might be still sitting above 9% at the end of 2021. This is just going to put huge downward pressure on state and local revenues.

This is just a scatterplot showing that on the horizontal access.

As unemployment rises, state and local revenues predictably fall.

This is sort of what is heading in front of us.

Given the path of unemployment forecast, there are estimates that the shortfall for state and local governments by the end of 2021 is going to be about a trillion dollars.

This is not implausible at all.

It might even be higher.

What happens if we don't do enough federal aid and just allow these revenue shortfalls to mix with balanced budget rules to put savage downward pressure on spending?

We know what's going to happen.

We kind of did this experiment during the recovery from the Great Recession.

We allowed state and local governments to just hang out in the wind with insufficient aid, and they just became relentless anti-stimulus machines during that recovery and dragged down growth.

You look, skip ahead one, this is state and local spending growth after the Great Recession compared to every other recovery since World War II.

That outline red line at the bottom is what happened after the years 2009. We had the most austere state and local spending recovery on record.

and it depressed growth enough that basically we didn't reach 2007 levels of unemployment after the Great Recession until a decade later, 2017. If we had instead allowed state and local governments to just do the normal path of recovery rather than throttling it with austerity, we would have had a return to pre-crisis unemployment by 2013. We delayed recovery for four years only through the state local spending austerity that this graph shows.

And it makes sense.

State and local governments are the single largest employer in the US economy.

They spend about $4 trillion a year.

If you throttle them, you are throttling the economy, not just in the valuable services they provide, but also just generalized economic health.

So I think going forward from here, there's a lot of things we need to do on the policy front.

One key thing is relief and recovery, whether it's aid to state and local governments or unemployment insurance or all the other things we do, it should respond to economic conditions, not arbitrary dates.

Right now, lots of the relief and recovery we've passed, it just ends at the end of July or the end of December.

I showed you that graph earlier.

The economic distress does not end at the end of July or the end of December.

We should have that relief and recovery continue based on triggers and economic conditions.

That's a key thing left to do.

But the single biggest thing left to do at the federal level is we need to help state and local governments navigate this crisis and address their shortfalls.

And finally, one last thing, and then I'll end.

Congress may well disappoint, it would not be the first time, and so they may not give state local governments, what they should be given to help navigate this crisis, you know, state and local governments are very constrained.

but they're not completely without agency.

And so if the choice becomes, do I protect the valuable public services that this spending provides and the employment it provides?

Or do I protect the low tax rates of our highest income households and corporations?

I think the choice there is obvious.

I think it's gonna drag on growth much, much less if you raise revenue, especially raise revenue in a progressive way and preserve as much spending as possible throughout this recovery.

We see this in the data.

In 2010, the states that had sort of a Republican takeover at the state and local level made very different choices than other states.

And they cut spending.

They actually cut taxes at the same time, but cut spending enough to actually balance the budget on the backs of services and public sector employment.

And their economy suffered.

Their unemployment rate took longer to recover.

Their jobs did not grow as fast.

So I think we've got obvious choices in front of us.

The first choice is at the federal level.

They need to do something to step up to help address this $1 trillion shortfall coming our way.

And then at the state and local level, if we do not get enough federal aid, they need to make tough choices in front of them.

And the choices really should be avoid the austerity on the spending side that was so damaging to growth the last time we had an economic crisis.

And from there, I'm going to wrap it up.

I'm happy to answer questions after the other panelists speak.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Josh.

Again, Josh Bivens, Research Director from the Economic Policy Institute.

Thank you for sharing your slides and the cautionary tale about the consequences of austerity.

The next person that we have is going to be Lenore Palladino.

Before we turn it over to Dr. Palladino, I want to say thank you to Councilmember Morales, who's joined us.

And I know Councilmember Herbold is watching as well.

Thank you, colleagues.

Again, we're asking folks to hold their questions until the panelists have had a chance to share their remarks, and then we'll have some Q&A.

Dr. Palladino, thank you so much for being with us, and thanks to Council Member Sawant for referring you to us.

Dr. Palladino is Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Policy at University of Massachusetts.

Thanks for being here with us to discuss what the federal economy looks like pre-COVID, what it looks like now, and what future projections are.

And again, appreciate you being here with us today.

Great, how's my sound?

Great.

All right, great.

Well, thank you so much for inviting me to participate, Council Member Mosqueda, and I'm really glad to be here.

All Americans need public investment, not austerity, in the midst of this economic emergency.

And I want to make two brief points about how we achieve economic resiliency in this moment and going forward.

The first is, again, as I think Josh just so eloquently laid out, why we need to avoid austerity in this fragile moment, why the choices we make now are so determinative for the next couple of years.

And the second point I want to make is why a corporate tax is fair and likely is a necessary part of economic resiliency going forward.

So first, just briefly, I'll really echo a lot of what Jess just said about this current moment and why it's so important to avoid austerity.

You know, families like yours in Seattle, mine in Massachusetts, all of us across America have stopped working and consuming in the effort to keep us all safe.

And for anyone who's taken an introductory macroeconomics class like mine, We know that public investment is crucial and necessary to stabilize an economy and not allow families to descend into poverty and fear.

As Josh said, the recent experience of the Great Recession shows us plainly that austerity does not work.

If states and cities slash spending, rather than finding ways to stabilize revenue, we'll see, you know, last time unemployment took a decade to recover, it could take much longer this time, and that would be devastating.

Prolonged unemployment should be our greatest economic fear.

When people aren't working, they don't buy goods and services, and the economy can get stuck in that low gear.

So the responsibility of public policymakers in this kind of moment is to look for ways to invest in the local economy in times of economic need.

So what I want to do is really talk about one way to address the shortfall and why I think that fair corporate taxation is a productive and equitable public policy approach to the current crisis.

So fair corporate taxation should be part of a strategy to ensure that states and cities have the resources they need to meet this economic moment.

We'll hear later in this panel from other distinguished panelists about the tremendous need.

So I'll defer on that for a moment.

And I'll talk about one of the best ways to raise revenue right now by raising equitably corporate taxes.

The key things economists consider when evaluating tax proposals is how the entity or person being taxed will respond to the tax.

Will they behave differently?

Will they make different economic decisions about how they produce goods and services or who they hire as a result of the tax?

So that's really the key question we need to answer when we think about how do you raise revenue in this moment?

So it's important to remember, large corporations have seen their taxes go down for years.

particularly after the 2017 federal tax reform, the very badly named Tax Cuts for Jobs Act, TCGA, that reform reduced the federal corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%.

Going into the crisis, plenty of large corporations had made record profits for years while building up large cash holdings and taking on record debt.

For example, corporations nationally earned $1.9 trillion in profits after tax in just the fourth quarter of 2019. Part of the reason why American workers were just so financially fragile going into this crisis is that corporations are spending their profits rewarding shareholders rather than investing in their workforce.

For example, American corporations spent $6.3 trillion with a T on stock buybacks in the last decade alone, propping up their own stock prices and wasting money for everyone except those who cashed out before the market fell.

A common justification for squeezing worker wages is that companies need every dollar to raise share prices.

This is part of why, again, American workers had so little cushion leading up to the moment when the pandemic hit.

So let's remember, again, that this lower corporate tax burden in the last two years has meant an estimated $750 billion in lower tax burden for corporations is projected for the next 10 years.

So that brings us to today.

What can we do?

What can public policymakers do to raise the most badly needed revenue we're going to need to avoid austerity?

The corporate tax rate currently proposed for large corporations in Seattle, a 1.3% tax, in my view is unlikely to change the behavior of these large corporations.

There's simply too much profit that can continue to be made from ongoing corporate activity.

While the data is not transparently available to determine which corporations would be subject to the tax, It's clear that Amazon would be taxed.

So let me talk for a moment about Amazon, just to again, paint this picture of how corporations are doing and why these kinds of tax rates might not change their behavior very much.

We know that Amazon is growing in this time of national crisis as millions of Americans shop more online than ever before.

News is coming out that Jeff Bezos is a soon to be trillionaire, but I think it's more important to actually look at Amazon's actual funds themselves.

According to Amazon's most recent filings, their net sales were $75 billion in the first quarter of 2020, which was up from $59 billion in the first quarter of 2019. So they've been seeing real growth in this time of crisis.

They have $221 billion in assets, and we know that their wealth is going to continue to grow as people look for ways to avoid going out to stores.

They can afford to continue the same production and profit-making activity if subject to a small municipal tax.

They're unlikely to cut back on hiring and expansion when there's strong demand for their services.

And after all, we can remember that just two and a half years ago, they were paying a much higher federal rate and they continue to expand and grow their productive capacity.

So bottom line, small corporate taxes are an equitable way to raise badly needed revenue from the entities that are least likely to change their behavior as a result of the tax.

and fair corporate taxation to support collapsing city and state budgets is a key part of the equation for surviving the pandemic.

Thanks very much for having me.

Dr. Palladino, thank you so much for joining us.

I really appreciate it.

And just want to note for folks, given that this is a public forum, we're not talking about a specific bill.

I took your example to be a great example of doing the math on a small corporate tax.

So I thank you for extrapolating that for us so that we had a real life experience to walk through on this economic forum.

Your math is very much appreciated.

And I think it also shows sort of where the wealth was prior to COVID and where it will continue to be in post-COVID world.

So I really appreciate your presentation.

The next presenter that we have is Shahr Habib, Habibi, a research and policy director for In the Public Interest, who will discuss research and show how we can center public investments that promote equity, transparency, and progressive values.

Welcome, and thank you so much for being with us.

Thank you so much for having me.

And I'm going to try to share my screen as well.

Let's see if we can make that happen.

There we go.

Does everybody see that?

OK, perfect.

OK, so centering equity and public goods in the current crisis.

I'm going to get back down to basics for a minute and talk about definitions.

So what are public goods?

We keep talking about public goods, public investments, what do we mean?

This isn't the formal economics definition, but I think it gets at the heart of what we mean when we say public good.

And the conditions that we've come up with are One, the things that we can only do if we do them together, like clean the air, ensure everybody has quality health care.

The things that we all benefit from, regardless of whether we use the specific service or asset, such as public education.

The things that protect and support us all, like safe food, Social Security, Medicare.

And then lastly, the things that make us a better, fairer, more compassionate and more democratic nation.

And so what are some examples of public goods?

Public education, public transit, healthcare, clean water, public infrastructure like roads and water treatment plants.

Also things like green space and parks and clean community via things like regular trash pickup.

and larger things like economic security, which programs like social security would fall under.

So I think one of the major issues that has come to the forefront of many people's minds during the current crisis that we're all living through is the long-term disinvestment and inequitable provision of public goods.

So for example, it's become glaringly obvious that there are public goods such as healthcare or social safety net, emergency planning, internet access that the US doesn't have or not everybody has access to.

And we're seeing very up close the consequences on so many people's lives due to the lack of these public goods.

I think public goods are a direct reflection of our country's values.

And we can see during this pandemic that public goods like public health and economic security are incredibly important to everyone's lives, but they're lacking.

And so we've seen the impacts of these types of policy decisions in the current COVID crisis with health agencies and unemployment, the unemployment insurance systems, both of which have been severely hobbled due to austerity budget cuts during the Great Recession and continued funding cuts since then.

I mean, these are public goods that are vital in stemming the health and economic consequences of the pandemic, but they've been gutted to the point where in many places they're unable to adequately fulfill their mission.

So you'll see two very recent headlines that I cropped into this slide.

One is from the LA Times, you know, how budget cuts and restrictive policies hobbled the unemployment insurance system.

The other one's from the Washington Post.

health agencies funding cuts, challenge coronavirus response.

So I think these cuts have had really real impacts on our collective ability to weather this crisis.

But I think that the health crisis has also created an opportunity to push back against messages of austerity during a crisis.

and instead push forward with a new vision of government that provides robust public goods to everyone.

What's interesting is, you know, you saw the headlines on the previous slide.

On this slide, these are some other recent headlines that show, you know, some journalists and some other writers introducing some new ideas around public goods and services into American minds.

The era of small government is over.

How the pandemic could change how Americans view government.

I think one of my favorites is from Nicole Hannah-Jones, and she says, I never want to hear that government should be run like a business.

This crisis has laid bare the dangers of gutting our public institutions and services of depending on companies dedicated to profit rather than government mandated to work for the common good.

Death is the result.

I mean, I think that's very eloquently stated.

And I think the quote encapsulates some of the changing attitudes that this crisis has brought about.

Sorry, let me just adjust my screen here.

So let's take a look at austerity.

I think I'm not saying anything new that our other panelists haven't said, but I think that this, you know, when we talk about austerity, the idea that the government should severely cut spending as a primary way of dealing with an economic downturn.

And this is a starve the beast approach.

It doesn't lead to improved economic conditions, but instead leads to inadequate resources to meet public needs, which then kind of reinforces anti-government sentiment by presenting government as the problem.

And an austerity approach uses budget deficits as justification for launching an assault on vital public programs.

And it can threaten to create a fiscal austerity cycle where growth declines, thereby lowering tax revenues, and then necessitating more austerity.

I pulled this chart from some 2012 research that the Center for American Progress did.

And it was right at the time, in 2012, states were in the midst of recovery from the Great Recession.

And they examined how state spending affects economic outcomes.

And they divided states into two groups based on whether they expanded or cut public spending at the start of the Great Recession.

So in that first chart, you see that blue line represents states that expanded spending, and the red line is states that cut spending.

And you can see in that first chart how the spending decisions greatly diverged over time.

And in all of the other charts, you'll see that states that expanded spending did substantially better on indicators of economic health.

Both the expenditure cutting and expenditure expanding states saw big rises in unemployment rates, as you can see in that second chart, but it shows that on average, states that cut spending fared substantially worse, with unemployment rates rising faster and higher than in states that expanded spending.

That third chart on the bottom left examines private sector employment, and it shows that increased spending on public services and investments delivered a boost to the private sector that helped private employment also better weather the economic downturn.

And then that last chart that examines economic growth shows that states that expanded spending progressed well ahead of their pre-recession growth rates, while states that cut spending had much slower growth than before the recession.

So I think the larger point that other panelists have made as well is that public spending on public goods can make a big difference in contributing to a robust recovery.

And a fragile economy like we're experiencing now can be boosted by increased public spending on public goods.

And then lastly, I want to conclude by discussing a few ideas about rebuilding a strong economy.

So we know that austerity isn't the answer.

And so what is?

And I think a few thoughts come to mind.

First is that public intervention is the only way to solve this crisis.

You know, the market won't solve it on its own.

Corporations won't solve it on its own.

Normal individuals.

Second, we must reject trickle down, you're on your own economic theory.

I think the crisis has shown that we're all in this together.

And that must be reflected in how we make our way out of the crisis on both the health and the economic fronts.

Third, we, the people in the community, we are the economy.

So there must be large investments in public goods to meet people's health and economic stability goals.

And I'm gonna add, I'll take a moment just to add real quick that we're already seeing that corporations are using this moment of crisis to expand their bottom lines.

My organization does a lot of monitoring of privatization.

And we've seen that many cities and states are facing privatization threats.

And so increasing corporate power will not help us get out of this crisis that has largely been fueled by inequality.

And then lastly, public goods must promote shared prosperity equality, centering the needs of people, especially those who were already vulnerable or on the margins.

So I will stop at that and pass it on to the next panelist.

Thank you so much.

We really appreciate the presentation and the great examples of where people didn't do the type of austerity cuts and how that benefited the private sector as well.

That's a great takeaway.

Thank you.

Our next presenter is Misha Werschfel, Executive Director for Budget and Policy Center.

Before we turn it over to Misha, I just want to say thanks to Council Member Strauss, who is also watching on YouTube.

Appreciate you being there and weighing in as well when you can.

We have Misha Werschfel, who's the Executive Director of Budget Policy Center.

As our state and local economy thinks about recovering from this recession, what lessons learned do you see from the past looking at local efforts and state efforts that you've been involved in.

When we know just this last legislative session, some of our legislative champions said that they only began to fill the holes that were created 10 years ago.

Thank you for providing any thoughts about how we can learn those lessons and apply them now before it becomes too late.

Thank you so much, Council Member Mosqueda and to folks listening in and participating in this conversation.

My name is Misha Werschel.

I'm the Executive Director of the Washington State Budget and Policy Center.

We're a nonpartisan research and policy organization focused on building a stronger and more equitable Washington State.

As I talk today, I think I'll be able to hopefully take some of the national picture and the lessons from the three speakers who preceded me and try to bring that to what that means for Washington State.

And just want to focus really on three kind of key takeaways.

First is that the period of economic growth in our state that preceded the COVID-19 crisis really masked key structural issues.

Those include extreme economic inequality, inadequate public investment, and a regressive state and local tax code.

The second point is that the last recession and the recovery period had devastating impacts on the long-term economic security of Washingtonians.

And this recession is likely going to be significantly worse unless policymakers act quickly.

And the third is that there is a path forward that prioritizes public health, puts the needs of low and moderate income Washingtonians first, and sets us on a path to an equitable recovery.

So first, just focusing on the period before the COVID-19 recession and the economic and public health crisis that we're facing.

Actually, I forgot.

I was going to share my screen.

Sorry about that.

Let me do that really quickly.

No problem.

Thank you so much for getting some slides for us.

And they are popping up.

Thank you so much, Misha.

So the period before the COVID-19 crisis was one really marked by a significant number of individuals and households in Washington State experiencing extreme economic uncertainty.

And just remember, and looking historically, during the Great Recession, there was a significant loss of wealth for many households, particularly households of color.

And the economic recovery that came after that recession was one that really wasn't experienced as an economic recovery for many Washingtonians.

In fact, during that recovery, poverty rates rose sharply, and particularly the number of families in deep poverty increased in our state, actually 15,000 additional families were moved into deep poverty during the time period of the supposed economic recovery.

Those hardships were particularly felt by families of color, including Black Washingtonians and Hispanic and Latino Washingtonians.

And since that period, we know that the gains in income growth really have gone and been concentrated among the very wealthiest.

There's a lot of different statistics on this, but we know that a significant portion of Washingtonians actually have said that they would not have been able to afford covering a $400 emergency using cash or savings, even in the time period of economic growth and expansion leading into this crisis.

During that time period, public investment really did not keep pace with our economy.

So you see in the chart that I'm showing, kind of tracking our state tax revenue as a share of personal income.

Since the Great Recession, the tax revenue as a share of personal income has not actually recovered back to the levels of the pre-recession.

And this is really important because what it means is that we entered this crisis in a place where our investments in public schools, health care, public health, and other public services that others have talked about really were not meeting the needs of Washingtonians and actually weren't back at the levels of the pre-recession.

And one really significant reason for this is that Washington state has the most regressive tax code in the country.

where low income Washingtonians pay around seven times more a share of their income in state and local taxes than the wealthiest.

And you can see that these two things are related as we have an economic recovery where income gains are going to the wealthiest in our state and low income people are falling further and further behind.

and a state tax code that really is built on paying for public investments through the lowest income Washingtonians, it becomes clear why the state investments have not been able to keep pace with the needs of our communities.

I'll also just note when we look at our tax code, I think it's really important to know we usually look at this by income level and that's really important, but it's also true that communities of color are concentrated among the lower income brackets.

And so we know that our tax code is disproportionately impacting communities of color.

We have the distinction of Washington State, in fact, of having the highest effective tax rate for undocumented immigrants in the country.

And so we know that we have public systems and public investments that are really important, but are built really and funded by the lowest income people in our communities.

So the second kind of overall point I want to make really dovetails to the speakers before, which is really comparing kind of what the situation was in the Great Recession to the current recession that we're experiencing.

And as Josh Bevins talked about at the beginning, you know, it's very tempting to compare these two things because up until a few months ago, the Great Recession was considered the greatest economic crisis that we've had since the Great But once you look at the numbers, you can see that there are some similarities and there are also some key differences.

So I'll just kind of illustrate some of those for Washington State.

So when we talk about just the overall economic contraction, you can see, you know, a 4% decline during the Great Recession, a much more significant decline expected in this recession.

Jobs lost in Washington State during the Great Recession, our unemployment rate peaked at a high number of 10.4%.

But now estimates, actually, this is an estimate from Economic Policy Institute that I think has now been updated and is much higher, but is estimated to reach 15, potentially up to 20, 25% unemployment.

Demand for public service, it makes sense as other folks have spoken to this as well, that as, you know, incomes are falling, as people are losing their jobs, they turn to public systems to provide support.

And in the Great Recession, programs like food assistance, the SNAP program was a really critical lifeline.

And at the peak of the economic crisis, one in seven Americans were actually enrolled in food assistance.

But we've seen even an unprecedented demand for public services in this moment.

Over a million Washingtonians filing for unemployment, doubling of demand for state cash and food assistance.

When you think about the unemployment numbers for Washington State, I think it's important the numbers are big.

And just to put them in context, it's as if Century Field has been filled 15 times over the past two months with people who have lost their job.

So very significant, more than one in five Washingtonians filing for unemployment.

And we know that the true unemployment numbers are higher than this because of people who are excluded from the unemployment insurance system, like undocumented immigrants who pay into unemployment insurance, but aren't able currently to see the benefits.

And then you talk about the state and local budget impacts.

During the Great Recession, there was more than $10 billion in state budget cuts.

Every area of state and local government cut during that recession.

Some of the pain that sticks in my mind is 70,000 low-income adults being cut off of healthcare during an economic crisis, tuition at four-year colleges doubling, 20,000 families losing cash assistance provided through the temporary assistance for needy families.

and 18,000 state and local government jobs lost.

And I think the other presenters have made it clear why these type of cuts have really led to the type of uneven and slow economic recovery that we experienced in Washington state and really prolonged the harm for Washingtonians.

We know catastrophic shortfalls are on the horizon.

This crisis is still developing, but you can see some of the estimates that we expect for Washington state.

So I'll close with just sharing my third point, which is that there is a path forward that would be really center the public health of Washingtonians and get our economy on a path to recovery.

We developed at the Budget and Policy Center a set of five principles that was informed by conversations with many partners.

that we're using to guide our work in this moment and hope will provide a guide to policymakers.

Really just drawing your attention, they're on the screen, but to two, one is the need to provide, or the second principle is to provide immediate, impactful, and sustained relief.

This crisis hit folks very quickly, hit our state very quickly, and policymakers need to act equally quickly to really provide the relief that Washingtonians need.

And it's really all levels of state government.

It's tempting to wait for the federal government to try to respond to this crisis and certainly we need to work on that.

But it's our state and local governments too that need to keep money moving in our economy and really get our economy back moving as folks are back out in the economy again.

And then I'll just highlight the fifth principle, which for us is rejecting a scarcity mindset.

This has been touched on by other speakers as well.

But just recognizing that, you know, this economic crisis isn't impacting all Washingtonians equally.

And we are blessed in this state to have significant wealth and a significant ability to invest back in the people and in our economy.

And so the mechanics of how to do that and what that looks like is a topic for many, many conversations, but we'll just acknowledge that this is something that in our state, we really can't afford.

Actually, I think in every state we can't afford to meet the needs of people in this moment.

So I'll stop there.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to share.

Thank you, Misha Wershful, again, Executive Director from the Budget and Policy Center here in Washington State.

Thank you for the reminder and the contrast between the Great Recession and what we can expect with this COVID crisis just beginning to emerge.

We have one more speaker.

And I know, Misha, you may have to run due to another meeting scheduled at noon.

We really appreciate you being here just in case you drop off.

Our next speaker and last speaker for this panel will be Derek Gruen, co-executive director for Front and Center, who will discuss strategies to create equitable economies building a democratic economy as part of our goal as we think about what recovery could look like.

Thank you so much for being with us, Derek.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

I'm going to share some slides here.

So as you mentioned, I'm the co-executive director of Front and Centered, which is a coalition of more than 60 groups statewide that are rooted in communities of color and work together to equitably transition our state towards our vision of climate justice.

I also helped steward a project called the People's Economy Lab, which is a group of Seattle community leaders building more democratic, resilient, and equitable models for community business, for generating and allocating capital, and for land and commercial space ownership.

And I mention that all because I'm going to be bringing forward ideas from these communities that may see and experience the economy a little bit different from a traditional economist's perspective.

I want to start with a very high-level conversation about what do we mean by our economy.

Often we can jump right into the data without actually considering what are the key pillars of what we consider an economy.

And this is a framework from a group called Movement Generation.

It's a simple way to explain that at a broad level, what we are doing in an economy is taking resources, applying work towards some purpose.

What we talk about less often is this is guided by an underlying worldview and a system of governance that really helps shape and determine these outcomes.

And often we let these things proceed kind of in the same way they did yesterday without questioning that these are actually decision points.

And I want to in particular take up the council member's challenge about how we think about building a new economy from this moment.

building on kind of all the data, what are the things that we can do and what are the choices we can make in each of these basic pillars of an economy?

In many ways, our economy is no different than it was four months ago.

We're stuck in this precarious economic model that depends on the generation of income and wealth from a few large businesses and individuals that trickles down to the rest of us.

It's a model that has caused displacement and homelessness.

increasing wealth disparities and has fueled the climate crisis.

It's an economy in which stocks have been climbing while jobs are being lost and that has failed to kind of ensure the basic safety of our residents in Washington and across the state and the world.

But of course, what has radically changed is the conditions we live in within this economic system.

We face a triple threat from COVID-19, To our environmental health, because we can't operate in physical space, the same way to our democracy with growing misinformation and exploitation of divisions within society and obviously an economic threat in a massive reorganization of the way we've been able to consume and to make a living.

So within those threats, it's clear that everyone is at risk, but because of historic and persistent injust policies and institutions, some communities, particularly often communities of color, those without documentation or different abilities or lack of historic family wealth, are more vulnerable and more exposed.

Poor air quality, voter suppression, lack of access to affordable capital are all pre-existing wounds that COVID is now festering in and exposing.

So going back to our kind of basic model of the economy, I think there are two stories we're being told.

One is the story is about scarcity that is really rooted in fear.

This is the story that's brought us xenophobia and redlining.

It has told us that there's not enough.

It's held us back time and time again, telling us what we cannot do.

And the other story is one of abundance and opportunity that acknowledges there is a surplus, as Misha just mentioned, in our state, and there is enough to go around.

It's just about how we choose to allocate that surplus.

That's confident that we can prosper because of our strengths, that we succeed when we're together, and that when we prioritize equity in collective action, everyone can prosper.

And I want to keep those stories in mind, because the worldview often dictates our decisions in a way that's not always apparent.

We hear a lot of talk about recession as an economic threat, but recession is really just a measure of aggregate production and consumption.

In all the community conversations I've been a part of, I've never had anyone tell me that what they need is higher aggregate consumption and production.

What I do hear about is closing the racial wealth gap.

I've been hearing about healthcare and environmental health, how we value our community businesses and want to be able to stay and thrive in our neighborhoods.

And now more than ever, we need an economy of purpose that's targeted towards these shared values by design, not as an afterthought.

And we must aim for a recovery that builds the well-being of people in place, but with a specific focus on the communities most impacted that face the greatest historic and current barriers to meet their fundamental needs.

Another core element of actually succeeding in building this new economy is the system of governance that we operate under.

We need to ensure that the people most impacted are at the center of decision-making.

Many of our public processes are set up for equal opportunity to participate.

But in this time, in this crisis, we know that the impacts are not equal.

And how do we provide proportionate access to influencing these decisions that are coming to policymaking in response to COVID to the impacts.

Those closest to the problem are often in the best position to really identify proper solutions.

At the heart of our economy is our work, not just the work we do as individuals, but really our ability to make collective action and how we apply resources and allocate them.

Other speakers have already called on the need for of increased focus on public goods, on collective provision of basic needs.

It's been 75 years since President Franklin Roosevelt introduced the idea of a second Bill of Rights, of an economic Bill of Rights, the right to work and sufficient income, to housing and to healthcare, among other things we've come to expect like education and social security.

Right now, I think that call is more relevant than ever.

But to do this, we actually need to move money.

We need to make public investments because we know that disproportionately low-wage workers have lost their jobs and disproportionately high-wage or high-income workers have been able to keep them and for some even grow their earnings.

And this is an extremely dangerous and unstable situation that we rely on government to address.

but it's not just about public investments.

Public defense funds are the anchor, but it's also about moving the existing wealth within our communities.

How do we localize money that has been going to Wall Street right now in our government and our tax revenues and private wealth to bring it back home to invest in our communities?

Now might be the time, for example, for a city or state bank that can help do that.

At the same time, we need to take a larger look at the work we're doing as individual business to build more democratic and equitable models of making a living.

As a baseline starting point, we need to ensure that all workers have COVID health services and workplace safety.

But we also need to really emphasize and see the importance of care work right now.

It's taking the brunt of the impacts from the COVID economic crisis as well as the health crisis.

The need for care workers is exploding.

We need to put an emphasis on care work at the heart of our recovery.

And we need to think about how we better distribute the work that exists.

There's plenty of work to go around, but how do we match the work that needs to be done with the workers who need work?

We also need to think about and invest in our community businesses that have for too long been out on their own as individual entrepreneurs, often entrepreneurs of color with less access to capital and technical assistance that are really anchors in our community.

And how do we share the risk with those anchors that are key to communities?

How do we redirect the procurement of major institutions as we've seen some evidence of localizing supply chains, larger institutions supporting our smaller community businesses as a way to keep our economy going.

And the last piece is an emphasis on resources and what resources we apply in our community.

In our city, we have some powerful controls like the ability to regulate land use.

How do we use all of our tools to avoid a speculative land rush that capitalizes on foreclosures or inability to make rent payments, and instead to move to more housing and commercial space out of the speculative market into trust or public and community control.

We need to be watching this sector as well.

And how do we use our community-based organizations that are connected to place, that are connected to community, and are filling gaps in traditional systems like unemployment to make sure that nobody is left out?

We need to invest in those community-based organizations.

And we need to ensure, as another speaker mentioned, those public goods include things like clean water, sufficient energy, healthy food, clean air as part of that transition to a new economy.

Critically, I think what we can do right now is actually set up some measures of success for our economy that may look a little different than traditional economic measures.

How do we ensure that there are universal fundamental needs being met within the constraints of a healthy environment and also the global economic forces we have to live within?

And even within those universal metrics, how do we always asking for whom?

And make sure the people most impacted are prioritized.

When we really focus on folks that are most impacted by the crisis, we can be sure that everyone is going to participate and have an opportunity in a new economy.

So thank you.

That's my presentation.

Thank you so much, Derek.

I really appreciate that, especially that pinwheel that really calls attention to how we create equitable economies and building a democratic economy as we get out of this recession or what it will take to get out of this recession.

Thank you for the presentation.

Colleagues, we are right on time.

We have about 20, 25 minutes for questions.

And I know Council Member Sawant has some comments and questions that she'd like to make.

I do have a quick question for Misha Werschel.

Before you log off, I see you're still on, before I turn it over to Council Member Sawant.

There is a question also from Dan Strauss, who is Council Member Strauss on the line.

And I just want to throw it in before you have to jump off.

You mentioned this crisis will be worse unless we act fast.

What methods of stimulus will be most equitable.

And he also asked for Josh, you mentioned the recession usually begins with manufacturing and then goes to low wage jobs.

We are seeing this recession hitting low wage jobs first.

Understanding our previous stimulus plans were directed into a different type of recession.

What specific stimulus programs should we invest in today?

Similar questions.

Just want to throw that out before turning it over to Council Member Sawant for her questions.

Since you have to go, Misha, do you want to start real quick?

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you so much.

It's a great question.

You know, I think I would say it's not just one thing that is needed.

The first kind of bare minimum is to keep the money flowing of public investments.

So state and local governments have to continue to spend money on their employees on the services that they're purchasing on, you know, homelessness crisis response contracted services, the things that state and local governments are buying, we have to continue to spend that money and keep that money circulating in the economy.

The other element that I think is really important is, well, actually two other elements briefly.

One is from an equity perspective, filling the gaps from the federal government.

So we know that the federal response so far has left out populations in some cases who are already excluded from our state and local systems, particularly undocumented immigrants.

And so an equitable response has to prioritize filling those gaps so that the federal and the local works hand in hand to bring everybody forward.

And then finally, I think that from kind of a thinking big perspective in terms of responding to the magnitude of this crisis, I would urge local and elected officials and others to think about broad-based cash assistance strategies.

So the cash assistance is something that can meet people's need in the immediate moment.

It meets the different needs that different households have.

And if targeted towards people based on income, means that as we start to reopen our economy, folks will be able to shop at the small businesses and go to the restaurants and continue to buy groceries and all of the things that help get our economy moving.

And so really thinking big, broad-based cash assistance to reach, you know, a significant portion of households in Seattle or across Washington State with ideally monthly cash payments until our economy is back on track.

Great.

Thanks, Josh.

Yeah, just quickly on the point that, you know, do the unique features of this recession sort of merit a different response than most other anti-recessionary responses?

Sort of.

I mean, I would say one thing that really stands out is that our existing unemployment insurance system actually works okay for laid-off manufacturing workers.

because they tend to be workers who have a lot of hours and have a pretty rich employment history and so tend to qualify for unemployment insurance.

One of the very good things that the CARES Act did was try to expand our unemployment insurance system to capture workers like gig workers, those who have more irregular hours so they could actually be protected by a UI system that didn't normally protect workers like that.

So that was one thing we had to do differently.

And I think it recognized the fact that this was really starting with low wage sort of irregular workers in a way that the previous recessions hadn't.

We should make those permanent.

We should have a UI system that always is much more protective than what we already have is.

But I think it's those changes were uniquely suited for what we have now.

And then the other thing, I mentioned it a little bit in my remarks, this is just a recession that is putting enormous demands on one narrow sector of the health care sector, but then is just causing a huge drop in spending.

We've even seen layoffs of hospitals and doctor's offices, because if it's not COVID, it is not being taken care of right now.

It's being deferred.

And so I think what that means is public investments in health, not just for the obvious reason it fights the epidemic, but it also takes this incredibly talented group of workers who currently right now are not being used enough if they're in the healthcare sector and not doing COVID direct stuff and putting them to use.

And so all of the money we can spend on public health interventions over the next year will be worth doing.

And I think that's something that would be a uniquely useful response to the recession we're in.

I love both those answers.

Thank you so much.

Investments in health and investments in direct cash for assistance for individuals in our community.

I am going to turn it over to Council Member Sawant, and I thank Council Member Strauss for sending in those messages.

I know he's on YouTube.

Thank you for watching from afar.

Council Member Sawant, an economist in her own right, has some comments and I believe a question as well.

Thank you so much, Council Member Mosqueda, and I really appreciate all the speakers and their thoughtful presentations.

First, I just wanted to highlight and sort of echo a crucial point that was made by Sheriza when she talked about how recessions are used by corporations.

not only our existing budget start, but I think a very important point that was made by Sherzad was that corporations actually go far further in their offensive during recessions through waves of privatization, and I think that was mentioned, but the other two examples I'll mention also are The nearly 8 million foreclosures of working and middle class homeowners in the decade that's happened in the decade since the Great Recession and the savage attacks on public schools and the massive wave of privatization and education that happened in Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina.

In each of these cases, the The worst impact, as we know, was on the most vulnerable, the working class and poor communities of color.

Black and Latino working and poor families being targeted for foreclosures and stealing their home ownership equity.

which there's no prospect of that coming back.

So I just wanted to note that that's a very important component of our consideration as the city council thinks about policymaking in this context.

My question is related to recessions versus job creation.

We know corporations that would be taxed by progressive taxes always claim, no matter whether we're in recession or not, that any corporate taxes would be a job killer.

I think Lenore provided good argumentation from an economic standpoint for why that's not a reasonable position to have.

But I also think that the graph from Josh Bivens told a powerful truth about how actually the recessionary periods are the big culprits for job killing.

And it links to, I think, what we need to address one of the key features of this recession.

Obviously, the plummeting of local public budgets is one of the key features.

And that has been addressed.

Lenore and Josh both explained how the creation of new progressive revenues through corporate taxes would provide an alternative to austerity and the cuts to public programs.

But I wonder if you could also talk, Lenore and Josh, if you could also talk about how corporate taxes as a way, talk about corporate taxes as a way to fund a counter to the other key feature of this recession, which is the joblessness.

So using progressive revenues through corporate taxes to actually create jobs through public works programs, and in the way that the New Deal was created, and how really that was the backbone of helping working families come out of the Great Depression.

Sure, I can take- And also if other speakers want to add to that.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

That's a great point.

I can take a quick, make one quick point about that.

I'm doing some research right now on public investment in home health care.

So I'll just give you a couple of examples.

If we had adequate investment in home health care right now, we could actually support, depending on the scale of investment, tens of thousands, if not millions of jobs.

In the next couple months and years of this crisis, home health care is going to be more important than ever as people stay in their home, look to stay in their homes to avoid residential care facilities that have been fortunately been hotspots of COVID.

We also know that home healthcare workers are some of the most, it's one of the jobs that was actually projected to grow most quickly over the coming decade, even before COVID.

But because of our system, families themselves are often left trying to figure out, you know, put together the patchwork of ways to bring workers into the home through some public support, paying out of pocket, etc.

So if we had robust public investment in home health care and really care work more broadly, we would be able to do two things at once.

One, we would meet a public health need of supporting people who are most vulnerable health-wise to COVID of staying in their homes.

But two, we would be able to really create jobs robustly for a workforce that, as many have already said, low-income women, disproportionately people of color, disproportionately immigrant women who are home health care workers who have been most affected by the current shutdown.

And then, you know, we know that it's the case that when people have employment or when their employment is stable, they then go out and spend money in the economy.

They go, when we are able to, to restaurants, they purchase critical health needs for themselves, they purchase goods and services for their children.

So I've been doing some calculations to look at the impacts and the effects of spending money on home health care would really have very positive effects of then supporting more employment created throughout the rest of the economy.

So I think that's just one example is top of mind for me right now.

But I think more broadly, We know that that kind of public investment in care work and other sectors of the economy are really what we're going to need to stabilize things over the medium term.

Yeah, if I could jump in just really quickly.

I think it's a really good observation that claims, whether it's like regulations or high taxes, that they will be job killers, are pretty much always and everywhere bogus.

The things that kill jobs are recessions and failure to get growth up again quickly.

Even in sort of a narrow economic textbook term, that's right.

I think that there is some, you know, if you read the economic textbook, what is supposed to be the downside of higher corporate taxes is it's supposed to depress investment and lead to lower productivity.

But even that, if you look in the years before the big corporate tax cut of 2017 was passed, and you compare what corporations were doing before and after that tax cut, they didn't all of a sudden start investing.

They all of a sudden didn't make everything more productive after they got their corporate tax cut.

They pocketed the money.

All that happened when corporations' taxes were cut in 2017 was their shareholders got richer.

Jobs didn't jump.

Investment didn't jump.

Productivity didn't jump.

It was a zero-sum transfer to shareholders.

And that money can be better spent to support jobs and a more equitable outcome if you use it to finance things like public investment.

So I totally agree with that, and I totally agree with the things that kill jobs are recessions.

And anything that helps them then, if that includes getting revenue from corporations to support state and local spending, You should do it.

Excellent question.

Thank you so much Council Member Sawant and thank you Dr. Palladino and Josh Bivens for your responses.

Any other panelists have a comment before we take another question?

Okay, great.

Council Member Morales, is there a question from you at this time?

Well, I want to thank everybody for joining us this morning and for sharing your insight into this.

As the chair of the Community Economic Development Committee for our city council, one of the things that we've been really focused on is how we build community wealth.

And even before COVID, we were having a conversation about how we stop the displacement that's happening in our city, particularly in our communities of color, How we, you know, adjust our land use code or financing mechanisms so that we can ensure that there's more community ownership of land, that our small businesses get access to capital so that they can buy their properties rather than risk them getting pushed out.

particularly now, that conversation is even more important.

And so I guess I would just ask if there's any guidance you can provide about as a municipality, excuse me, you know, how we think about rebuilding our communities with resilience, how we increase the opportunity for folks to really have have access to land, to capital, to the kinds of tools that allow them to really remain in the city and not worry about how they get pushed out.

Well, I'll just say and I think we have a community needs panel coming up but the situation for yeah for communities for community businesses for residents is just one of increasing uncertainty right now and you know trickle of support that comes in you know $10,000 increments or whatnot is helpful to kind of stay off the immediate but the future is tough.

And so I think thinking about what a city can do and its powers, I think thinking about those kind of, you know, a centralized authority to maybe acquire things that are coming online to prevent them from going to kind of speculative real estate and move things into trusts, providing uncertainty or certainty to community businesses around space and maybe taking on some, you know, master leasing role.

I think we're going to have to think differently about how individuals' businesses operate and how they might work a little bit more in a collective state because, you know, we talk about restaurants losing, you know, a quarter of the restaurants in this nationally for data like that.

We have to think about how we can preserve those institutions that are both, you know, businesses but also cultural institutions that are anchoring neighborhoods.

So looking at the full toolbox, land use of public development authorities to acquire space, I think is a great opportunity right now as things progress.

That's a great answer.

I think it also touches on one of the questions we received.

We did have the opportunity for the public to send in questions ahead of time.

One of the questions that we received, I think, speaks exactly to what Derek just asked.

And it says, In an uncompetitive housing market, lack of public transit and rent seeking by essential services due to constrained budgets has exacerbated our historic imbalance of power where labor is under the thumb of property owners.

How can Seattle prevent from descending into a company town where essential workers are forced to accept corporate conditions on their own?

employment and lifestyles despite our $15 an hour minimum wage.

And I think part of what you're saying, Derek, from front and center is really investing in allowing individuals, especially people of color, women, folks who've been historically left out to have access to the capital and to the property so that they can initiate their own self-sustainability and self-direction.

Anything else to add to that before we move on to one more question?

Seeing none, I will ask another question that came from our community.

And it is a question about the future crisis.

So the COVID crisis, which has devastated our most vulnerable while leaving our large corporations and riches unscathed, in some instances, better off, gives us a taste of the climate crisis to come.

How can we not only fix these structural problems, but in the words of the People's Bailout, Also, make a down payment on a regenerative economy while preventing future crisis.

So a lot of you spoke to this in your presentations.

I'm just wondering if you have anything to add.

It dovetails to one of the other questions.

If not now, when?

Can we finally get guaranteed rights to dwelling, universal basic income, or single-payer medical care?

Any comments on those large structural policies in addition to the comments you made earlier?

Yeah, I'll just say absolutely.

I think that we are in a moment, obviously you in Seattle can't do this on your own.

It's going to take a national, you know, movement building effort.

And especially as we wait, you know, as things are so stuck at the federal level, we really need cities and states to lead the way.

I think that we can't think in sort of lanes anymore about we're going to deal with housing over here, corporate power over here, workers' rights over here.

We need comprehensive strategies.

And I think that the more that in the midst of a short-term crisis, we can really channel public investments towards the types of job creation and production strategies that are really going to allow us to have a resilient and renewable economy in the future, the better.

But that's going to take, I think, a real sustained front and center focus from all of us.

Excellent answer.

I see nods on the Zoom.

Anybody else have any closing comments on that before we turn it over to our expert panel from the community needs perspective?

Last closing comment.

Yes, really quickly.

I agree totally with Lenore and I and I would just say, you know, this crisis came from out of the blue.

And it was, it's horrible.

The climate crisis is not coming from out of the blue.

If we decide to be wise about this, we actually have time ticking for sure, but we have time.

And I think a little bit like we can't spend enough on public health interventions in the current moment, same thing with climate.

We have all the money in the world to fight this.

We can do it.

We should do it even if we have to take on debt to do it.

That should not be something that makes people nervous.

That is what debt is for.

It's an incredibly long run investment and so it'll pay off.

And so I think all the excuses should have hopefully by now faded away and it's time and there's just no reason not to do it.

Thank you for those words of encouragement and motivation and for all of the research that you've shared with us today, folks.

We do hope you're able to stay with us on the line if you have to drop off.

We completely understand.

I think part of the context that you helped us shape is the result of the economic crisis has put into sharp focus the inequities that our system already had.

at the local level in our city and across the state and country as we saw from the data that you all shared.

Many of us are searching for solutions.

And as we search for those solutions that you have just articulated, we know we must put those who are directly impacted at the heart, at the center of any policy solutions.

As we transition to the next panel, I want to read a New York Times opinion piece that was just published this week.

It starts with, lately, some commentators have suggested that the coronavirus lockdown hits an affluent professional class comfortable staying home indefinitely against a working class more willing to take the risk for doing their job.

This assumption underlying this generalization, however, are not based on even a cursory look at actual data.

In a recent Washington Post survey, 74% of respondents agreed that the US should keep trying to slow the spread of the coronavirus, even if that means keeping many businesses closed.

And agreement was slightly higher, 79%, among respondents who had been laid off or furloughed.

So I want to put that into context to make sure that we're dismantling any false narratives that have been put out that somehow keeping the economy closed is bad for workers or somehow is a schism between elites and the working class.

I think what that survey shows is that the very folks who are at most risk right now are the people who are going to work and the folks who are calling for, in many cases, a reopening of the economy from President Trump on down are the folks who aren't going to be put in harm's way.

I wanted to center our conversation on the folks who've been the essential workers who put their lives on the on the line every day to drive the buses, or as Sean's members do every day, go out and care for folks in the community at our libraries.

And as Beto will talk about, you know, his members who are small businesses really trying to stay afloat when their brick and mortar shops or their food trucks, for example, are closed down.

Colleen Echo Hawk, who has on a daily basis seen the consequences of people not having access to the housing that they need.

And Michelle Thomas, who for a long time has been talking about the depletion of housing, affordable housing across the city and the region, and the consequences that afford that are being exposed now with COVID showing how critical it is that people get economic support so they can stay in housing and get into housing because you can't stay healthy if you can't stay home.

and you can't stay home if you have no home.

So I want to thank all of the panelists who have joined us here today to talk about what this really looks like from your perspective on the ground level.

Nothing about us without us is a common saying in the labor movement, and we need to make sure that any reform efforts, revenue efforts, attempts to address the crisis that is COVID in the near term, again, near term being defined within the next two to three years, and the long term, after that really do center our response on what you've experienced.

So thank you for being here with us to help make these policy decisions, to help inform future conversations.

and to be really our experts at the ground level.

So we'll start with Beto Yarce.

He's executive director from Ventures Nonprofit, who will walk through what the impacts of COVID has been on the small businesses he's working with, especially small business owners who are women and people of color, and how that has affected, how COVID has affected your members and what you're experiencing at the ground level.

Beto, thanks for being here with us today.

Thank you very much for the invitation, which has asked us, so I will be very short about this presentation as I already presented before to you guys, but I will just say that what we have been working in the 25 years as an organization that is a community development financial institution ventures offer support to low income entrepreneurs to help them to move out of poverty.

And over all these years, we've been providing a lot of technical assistance, training, coaching, incubation, and what I call the cherry on the top is access to capital.

So constantly we hear access to capital is a solution for micro small business, but not only that, they need to access to the whole ecosystem.

So we've been doing this work for many, many years so in response of Kobe 19 so we actually have to do it more now because they were that we've been doing for all these years might be just be erased.

work that we have in progress supporting these communities of color, immigrants, refugees, Latinx community, women, are the most vulnerable.

I'm talking about the micro small businesses, the one to five employees, the mom and pops, your favorite bakery, your favorite micro space at the bike race market, where places that you go and say, okay, I'm going to grab a coffee every morning.

Those are the places who are in really, really danger right now.

And most of those clients are or most of those businesses are our clients.

So what I really think that the resources or community need the most right now is really investing in what I call creative capital.

Creative capital is not just access to loans.

Ventures already provide those, but we need to be more creative as a community of like, what did that looks like?

If this business who were already low income, and then you just providing a loan, putting on debt is not going to help them.

So we need to make sure that we invest on them.

And then when I say I've been hearing a lot of the stabilization fund from the city of Seattle, Ventures have their own micro grant program that we distributed more than 120 micro grants to 60 businesses.

So those are grants.

Those are money that it will help businesses to continue operating and thriving.

But what is the missing piece in this creative capital is like how do we're helping these businesses with coaching, training?

How do you pivoting when these processes you are investing $10,000 or $500 or $2,500, whatever is the creative capital.

but how you are helping this business to manage that money in the best way, in that way they're prepared for the new normal, for the new future of doing business, especially in micro small businesses.

So that's one of the pieces of what I hearing or what is needed.

So also another question that I see out there is like, what did that looks like to recover?

What is really what we need to kind of review or recover?

And so when are we going to be reopened?

And what is exactly what I need?

So community development, financial institution ventures is a community development, financial institution.

We are already doing a lot of these trainings and programs on how to businesses are preparing for reopening.

What do they need?

What is this needs work?

What is all these things that they are requiring?

And when you are overwhelmed trying to survive, but you don't have time to read all these articles.

So we are trying to put together All this information in a very basic workshop.

We're offering Tuesdays and Fridays workshops about specific things to our members and our clients to get ready and prepared to reopen.

Even for people who have access to the resources, like I consider myself that I have access to a lot of resources.

And then I get all this information.

I get overwhelmed how we're going to reopen our store.

We have a store at Pike Place Market.

They incubate 80 businesses.

And when I read all the new regulations and know what we need to do, I feel like, oh my God, how are we going to do that?

So that's one of the pieces that I really kind of trying to be very strategic on how we are going to rebuild and making sure that all these businesses.

And early on, we talk a little bit about like, this is also an opportunity to invest in how these businesses, they are already being displaced, or they were going to be displaced because the gentrification and then all the things that were happening in our city, in our state.

So how do we use this as an opportunity to really invest in spaces for this business to thrive and and making sure that they stay and they offer the best things that we love.

So one thing that I've been really thinking is also we are going to have to be very mindful about what is the campaign that we want to use kind of being intentional with our money when we are going to be out there and spending.

So I've been hearing a lot of like this is an opportunity to spend small business.

We have a couple campaigns a year like you know the after Black Friday is a small business Saturday in November and in May we have a small business week.

But that's it where we have been doing supporting a small business.

So from now on, I think it's going to be very important for us to be very intentional about how we spend our money and how to every penny that we spend because our businesses are really pivoting.

I have multiple clients that they're pivoting.

Like I was receiving my mask today.

Actually, I just want to share it.

Like one of our clients is pivoting her business, her name is other people's polyester, and she made beautiful gowns, and she now is making fashionable mask.

And then she was able to change that because we were able to help her with the technical assistance, the training, and pivoting her business.

So we're going to need more of that in order for us to rebuild these micro small businesses.

And I'm talking about the one to five solopreneurs.

And then from the 28 million businesses who are in our nation, 22 are solopreneurs, 22 million.

So we always think about small businesses are like this is the micro small businesses which we need to support.

I will just continue thinking about like other businesses who are pivoting Los Agaves at the Piper's Market.

They are pivoting on using their commercial kitchen and making meals for the health workers, time well spent, which I'll tell Jackson, she's also providing meals.

They are trying to survive this and the way they are pivoting their business is because they have coaches and mentors like ventures to support them.

Not everybody have that and especially when you come from an underserved group.

And the last one that I'm just going to advocate is those who have been left out for many years on the immigrants undocumented families.

I always been an advocate for that because I was undocumented myself, and I was able to start my own business with $250 and I was able to provide for like a small or large business with any documents.

But I didn't get any support from the federal or the state because I didn't qualify for any of the programs.

So we need to make sure that we advocate for those immigrants who are under committed with IT number.

And ventures offer loans and credit capital and other programs are available for those undocumented.

So I will just make a pause there and because I know I just have only five minutes and I don't want to take more time.

I could continue talking about our businesses, but I will just make a pause for now.

Thank you so much, Beto.

And I know that there will probably be some questions for you.

I really appreciate your time and all that you're doing on behalf of your members.

The next presenter is going to be Sean Van Eyck.

He's an organizing representative with Protech 17, who represents workers and members within the city of Seattle.

I know, Sean, as we talk about austerity, many of your members have survived and been sort of the consequences of past austerity efforts.

And I think that the conversation that's gearing up again around austerity is really troubling and hitting people hard.

Can you talk a little bit from your perspective about what you'd like to see in terms of investments in the public sector based on sort of the presentation that we heard?

And what do you think are some consequences to us not doing investments in public programs like we've seen in the past?

Sure, and thank you so much for the invitation to this.

It's been a very insightful and enlightening forum, so thank you for that.

As you mentioned, I am a union representative with Protect 17. We are the largest union of city employees in the city of Seattle, but we have a footprint all over the state and in the city of Portland as well.

And so we've been, during the crisis, interacting with our internal staff on a daily basis, talking about what our respective municipalities have been doing, And it's been actually quite enlightening.

Leading up to the crisis, we were, you know, just come off of a contract cycle where we negotiated a fantastic new contract with the city.

And we're really focusing our efforts on internal equity and on expanding some benefits, particularly around leave for city employees.

And in the near term and during the crisis, right at the very beginning, we started negotiating and just negotiated that we should be legislating soon a MOU that's a COVID MOU that's short term.

that addresses the primary concerns our members have in the near term, which is making sure that the highest risk employees have access to not only the continued health care benefits, but also continued wages during the crisis so that they're not facing a lot of the same crises that other folks in the private sector right now.

Also trying to make sure that we're touching on and using this as an opportunity to expand existing benefits.

So one of the things that we were anticipating bargaining later this year in the new contract was a re-opener on the expanded state sick leave benefits and integrating that into the city benefits.

And we were looking specifically around top-off, being able to utilize leave benefits that they had already accrued to top off the state benefits so they'd have a full wage replacement.

And I'm happy to report that the MOU that we just negotiated actually fast-tracked that for purposes of the new federal leaves that were enacted under the CARES Act.

That's been the near-term solution.

We have yet to have any conversations with the city around any near-term furloughs or layoffs, although we have suggested and did suggest very early on that now was the time to start looking at near-term furloughs with the expanded unemployment benefits and particularly around looking at how we could equitably do maybe not full-on furloughs of weeks at a time, but hours reductions that would allow people to apply for unemployment and thereby not only getting full wage replacement at certain wage rates, but also being able to get access to that additional $600 a week between now and the end of July, with the goal of not only doing it equitably, but putting more money in people's pockets.

Because as many of the speakers presented here today pointed out, rightfully so, the way you keep the economy going is not by throwing money at large corporations that are just shuttering their doors anyway.

It's by putting money in people's pockets so they can stimulate the economy.

And so we are absolutely on the same side in terms of resistance to austerity.

We know it doesn't work.

The data shows it doesn't work.

And the concern is that we're not just talking about reducing public works and it's two sides of the same coin.

It's one, we want to keep our public employees employed so that they are participating in that economy and functioning and helping prop it up.

But they're also delivering essential services and a vast majority of city employees have been deemed essential workers.

under the directives.

And we want to see an expansion of that.

Now is the time to explore how we integrate a Green New Deal and expand public works and create new jobs.

And so that's the direction our organization has been taking.

I know we've had internal conversations around leveraging this crisis at the state level and trying to push the legislature to really overhaul our exceptionally regressive tax system and put more money into public works.

And so we are very much anticipating a conversation with the city around furloughs and layoffs in the near term.

But we are also at the same time, strongly, strongly pushing for filling the revenue holes and actually expanding revenue for the city and other municipalities where we have the footprint.

Sean, thank you so much.

I know we'll have more conversations to come about potential furloughs and cuts, but I appreciate you underscoring support for a progressive revenue package so that we really can avoid the austerity that we've seen in the past.

Thank you for sharing your perspective and for all that your members are doing right now to care for our city and our residents.

The next presenter is Michelle Thomas, Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Washington Low-Income Housing Alliance.

who will discuss the most important strategies to responding to COVID in light of the ongoing affordable housing crisis that existed prior to the pandemic and how the COVID's response should look given those housing concerns.

Thanks, Michelle, for being with us today and for all the work you do in Olympia and locally.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me.

So first, I'll just highlight some pre-COVID facts.

I think we all know that Washington state had before COVID hit a really significant homelessness crisis with unsheltered homelessness at its most acute in King County and Seattle.

This is directly related to three pre-COVID problems that remain and that we anticipate will remain throughout the recovery.

Rents are far out of reach of low-income renter households.

Our state and our region in particular in King County has severe income inequality with rents pegged at the highest incomes, again, far out of reach of lower income renter households.

And we have a massive shortage of the affordable homes that we need, especially of permanent supportive housing, which is the solution to unsheltered long-term homelessness.

The region lacks 6,500 permanent supportive housing units that we need to solve long-term unsheltered homelessness.

Pre-COVID, our state and region also had a significant shortage of shelter beds, which is the shelter system largely relies on a congregate care setting in which people all sleep next to many other individuals.

Meanwhile, sweeps of homeless encampments are routine across the state and are continuing during this pandemic, including in Seattle.

Pre-COVID, the homeless prevention resources that we had, both at the state, county, and local level, city level, the demand for those were far outpacing We didn't have enough resources, sorry.

They were overwhelmed.

The need for rental assistance and homelessness assistance far exceeded the resources available.

And that has been made worse during this pandemic.

And of course, pre-COVID, people of color disproportionately experienced homelessness and housing instability.

People of color are more likely to be renters in Washington State and therefore are vulnerable to rent increases and the weaknesses in our state's landlord-tenant laws that allow landlords to arbitrarily evict tenants.

69% of Black households rent in Washington State compared to only 33% of White households, 57% of Hispanic or Latino households are renters in Washington, and 66% of Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander households are renters.

The disproportionate experience of homelessness in Washington state is illustrated in our state's count of students in the public school system who are experiencing homelessness.

62% of the students in our public school system experiencing homelessness are students of color.

And one in every 10 African American or black students experienced homelessness in Washington state compared to only one in every 38 white students.

So during COVID, we know that all of these issues are likely to be exasperated.

Unless, of course, we have the federal, state, and local response that is swift and lasts throughout the duration of the crisis.

The moratorium and evictions that the city and state has enacted are absolutely essential.

Many tenants are struggling to make ends meet, and 250,000 people in our state have applied for unemployment insurance and have yet to see a dime.

And that's really critical because there's a growing discourse out in the public that, why are people unable to pay their rent?

We have a robust unemployment system.

We had federal dollars come in from the CARES Act to individuals.

And so there's this assumption that people are just choosing not to pay their rent, and that's absolutely not true.

It's really great and appreciated that the city has extended the moratorium on evictions.

Thank you.

But the state's moratorium expires on June 4th and without a renewal or without a significant rental assistance program to meet the extraordinary need throughout our region, we expect to see significant increase in homelessness throughout the region.

And the need for rental assistance is really great.

King County 211, which is the clearinghouse most people are referred to if they're in need of resources, has experienced a 231% increase in requests compared to February.

At the same time, the United Way home-based program that rolled out in April for King County received 6,841 direct applications for rental assistance, and the funds dried up in two days.

Thank you to the city for appropriating some of your CARES Act dollars that the city has received from the federal government for rental assistance.

But it's clear that the need is far exceeding the demand and that the city will need assistance from the state and federal government as well.

The HEROES Act that was passed by Congress last Friday includes significant funding that could equate to about $2 billion in Washington state if the Senate agrees to pass it without amendments.

And this is on par with about what we think we in the national experts think is needed for Washington state.

Also, I just want to point out that the state is actually currently deciding on how to appropriate $1.6 billion from the CARES Act federal appropriation to the state.

And we are asking that the state use a significant portion of that for rental assistance needs throughout the state.

It would be really helpful if local governments made similar requests to the governor.

So on homelessness, we know that homelessness is deadly.

But COVID dramatically increases the risk.

Recent reports indicate that homeless individuals infected by COVID-19 are roughly twice as likely to be hospitalized, two to four times as likely to require critical care, and two to three times as likely to die as the general population.

But in Washington State currently, we have significantly reduced our shelter capacity.

It is estimated that shelter capacity in Washington State, and this does include King County, is reduced by an estimated 30%.

It may be higher.

And as I mentioned earlier, we've learned that the congregate care setting that most shelters rely on is unsafe, and it will remain unsafe until COVID no longer exists or until there is a working vaccine that people experiencing homelessness have access to.

Also, homelessness resources in our state are at risk.

Pre-COVID, like I said, the need far exceeded the available resources.

But if demand increases for those resources, as we predict, and if investments in those resources decrease, the need and the gap is going to be severely exasperated.

It's also really important to know that the state's primary source for funding homelessness resources is a document recording fee on real estate transactions.

And the state is currently predicting a very steep decline in that resource.

We don't have numbers on that yet.

We expect to see more data in the coming month.

But right now, the terms that the state is using is a catastrophic loss of resources for homelessness.

We also know that because renter households are disproportionately lower income, that they will be slower to experience any benefits from an economic recovery.

Therefore, as things begin to look like they're recovering for the public at large, we need to understand that low-income renter households will lag behind and will need continued support in order to experience any recovery that others begin to experience.

I just want to close with saying that we don't want to return to our pre-COVID housing crisis.

That's not what we should be aiming for.

We need a different way forward that centers equity and rebuilds a housing system and an economic system that meets the needs of all households.

As many of the speakers today have already said, the economy was already failing people far before COVID hit.

We need a fully funded homelessness response system that can quickly step in to prevent households from falling into homelessness when they experience an economic emergency.

And we need to continue to move forward to deeply invest in the affordable housing needs of our region and our state.

We have a significant gap in affordable housing and we cannot allow the COVID economic downturn to set us further behind.

We need this all funded with progressive and sustainable revenue at the state and regional level.

And of course, we need to improve renter protections so that people can stay in their homes.

So thank you for what the city has done.

Thank you so much, Council Member Mosqueda, for putting together this panel today.

It's been really informative.

Thank you so much, Michelle.

Really appreciate it.

And I think you've framed the conversation extremely well for our presenter.

from Chief Seattle Club, Colleen Echo-Hawk, Executive Director for Chief Seattle Club.

You see this every day as you're out in the community caring for folks who are unsheltered.

How has COVID worsened the experience of being unsheltered and what remediation strategies would you like to see?

Yeah, well, thank you so much.

It's an honor to be here and to be with such a wonderful group of presenters.

The Chief Seattle Club has been open every single day.

We have not had a stop of our services.

We've had to change things tremendously.

And I think that has been incredible.

We see that all over the region where people are pivoting, changing, being flexible and ensuring that we serve some of our most incredible community members.

I am at our day center once a week in solidarity with my staff who are out there.

And I just want to make a quick note that some of our homeless services provide and our providers are frontline workers.

They are frontline workers.

They need PPE.

I'm grateful that in partnership with the Seattle Health Board that we have PPE for our staff, but that is a big concern.

We have a tremendous amount of folks who have been suffering prior to COVID-19 and their suffering now is greater.

I want to just give you a picture of what it's like in Pioneer Square right now.

So I worked last Wednesday morning.

and we fed about 200 people.

We generally do all of our food inside, but now we're doing it outside to keep people safe as much as we can.

And what I saw is that we are seeing the symptoms and the terrible aftermath of not having an adequate mental health care system in our region.

I saw folks who were hallucinating, who were experiencing incredible mental health distress.

And my continued just feeling in my heart and my spirit is that they are experiencing so much suffering.

And the suffering is exasperated by COVID-19.

They are hearing about this virus.

They're afraid of the virus.

It is contributing to anxiety, PTSD.

And I want to focus the rest of my time on What should we do?

What is an equitable response to what is going on now?

We've heard a lot of data.

We've heard a lot of information.

But I think that what I want to invite us to think about is that in order to have an equitable response to COVID-19, we need to have solutions that are led by the community.

And we've heard that POC folks, the working class community, are those folks who are going to have, who are suffering at greater rates because of COVID-19.

That means that we have to listen to them.

That means we have to ensure that they are at the table.

One thing that I think about all the time is, and this does not come from me, but it was a meme on the internet.

And this meme said, you know, in order to have equitable responses, we have to think about that table.

In the Native community, what we'd like to do with that table is break it down and create a sweat lodge and invite all of us to come into that sweat lodge and learn from each other.

And I want to invite us to be thinking about that story.

We know that these tables were mostly not made for people of color.

We're mostly not made for a community that is really struggling right now.

And so if we want to think about equity during this COVID response, we have to take extraordinary measures to hear from the community.

We have to do things we've never done before.

We have to fund the Native communities, Black communities, our Latinx communities, and ensure that we are enabling them to find the solutions that will work for their community because culturally appropriate services are part of the answer that we're looking for as we think about COVID response.

And as you can tell, I'm excited about this because it is essential and it will be, it's life-saving measures is what we're talking about now.

One thing that when Beto was sharing, my dear friend Beto, good to see you Beto, One thing that I heard in your comments was that we have to be trauma aware in our response.

I know of a certain, I know of some people in our native community that applying for unemployment benefits is scary.

It triggers all kinds of PTSD.

It triggers all kinds of generational historical trauma.

So if we know that that is the case and we know that there are people who are not accessing some of these services, then we have to figure out ways to make sure that those services and those applications become anti-racist and become trauma aware and ensure that folks are getting equal access.

I also want to say that I'm on two different COVID-19 responses, coalitions.

One of them, probably 80% of the folks participating are white men.

The other is almost 95% POC folks.

And I appreciate both of those coalitions.

They both want to do good things.

But if we cannot find ways to come together and talk about how we see this COVID-19 response being equitable, then I think we're going to really miss out on an amazing opportunity.

I'll say too that the other concern I have is that the coalition that is 80% white men, they are incredibly powerful people.

They know the right people.

They have access to power.

They can call the governor anytime they want to.

And I think that is of concern.

I'm glad I can be there, glad that I can represent, but I think that we need to find tables where all voices can be heard and that we are incredibly active in finding ways to break down these policies that were not set up for POC communities to succeed.

And so I think this is an incredible opportunity for the city of Seattle.

I think that we have a city council that I could not have imagined of 20 years ago, and I look forward to seeing what what that means for our community.

I think that Seattle has been at the front of this crisis, and the way we respond now is incredibly important.

And we have an opportunity to lead the country on what it means to have an equitable response to this crisis.

So thank you, Council Member Esqueda.

I could go on for a long time about this, but I appreciate the opportunity to share a little bit about what I'm learning.

Thank you so much, Colleen Echohawk, again, Executive Director of Chief Seattle Club.

Thank you to this panel, esteemed experts from the community who've given us perspectives from small business, housing advocates, folks who are working in the public sector, and folks who are working with those who are unsheltered.

This has been an incredible presentation.

I got a note from our communications team that we had over 200 people of viewing this presentation throughout the time and wanted to say thank you for all of your time.

We have a few opportunities for follow-up questions.

And I know that you all have been pulled in various directions and asked to provide feedback repeatedly.

I think the biggest concern that we've heard is maybe ties into all of these issues.

I'm going to ask a question about child care and Beto feel free to chime in because I'm going to be specific to small businesses, but also I think it affects all of your members.

You know we have people who've been asked to be part of the essential workforce and even at the city level we provided zero assistance for infants and toddlers.

The Children's Alliance gave me a call and said While it's great that there was this renewed effort to try to make sure that essential workers had childcare, they were very concerned about no childcare for infants and toddlers.

And I'm wondering if you all could comment about sort of the childcare infrastructure, if there's been a conversation among your members about the need to make sure as we think about reinvesting in the economy, direct cash assistance as folks have called for.

trust in communities, especially low wage workers or folks who are unsheltered and the organizations they work with, just trusting people with those cash assistance dollars is the first thing that we've heard.

And then have you heard conversations from community members about the need for childcare at all?

Can you comment on that?

Definitely.

Some of the things that I see, even in the nonprofit sector, like many of our workers are being facing those challenges on how the child care system is not really working for people of color, minorities, like people who are low income.

And Teresa, you and I, we have a conversation I think a year ago Oh, what would it look like when we build infrastructure for childcare, where a small business, like really small business, will be leading the service?

And then it would be a very more equitable, like people who are looking for a job and looking, and we already have multiple businesses that we have helped, ventures with childcare providers who are offering culturally appropriate services.

They are starting their own business.

It's like a, helping two sectors, like people who need affordable child care, but also people who are opening their own businesses.

So, and I feel that that's a great opportunity for us to see if we are going to reveal the new services for child care, how can we serve two groups, people who want to start a business, but also like affordable child care.

We also, I will put the cherry on the top of like what it will look like if you go and bring your kid to a place that is like a multicultural, multilingual, that it's like we do have a lot of great communities, immigrant communities, Latinx, East Africans, Vietnamese, that they can provide some of that.

And I already see that with some of our clients who are being very successful in like a Spanish immersion.

What does that look like?

It's not, it's just like afterschool program, but it's a childcare and it's affordable.

but not everybody can afford to have an after school Spanish immersion.

So those are just one thoughts about child care, what I hear.

Yeah, especially as we ask folks to come back to work, but there is no school or summer programs for people to put their kiddos into.

I think that puts people in impossible positions.

Any other comments on that?

Council Member Swann was, oh yes, go ahead, Sean.

Sorry, I saw your hand go up.

Yeah, no, I would just say, echoing that, it's certainly been a plea from our membership around being creative and flexible about the implementation of various leaves, particularly the new emergency leaves, since some of them are the one, the emergency family leave actually specifically available for that.

And, you know, with schools being out, we have had lots of members come forward and say, I really want to have access to that so that I can take a couple hours a day and follow Seattle Public Schools guidance on homeschooling.

And unfortunately, right now the city's systems don't allow for folks to take that leave in anything less than one day chunks.

But I have had assurances from the systems folks, and we've actually got to demand the bargain in this week, to put pressure on the city to implement the ability to access those leaves in one hour chunks, which would, leading into the fall and uncertainty around school, would be a huge, huge improvement for members.

So that's another thing that is absolutely top of mind for our members and we're pushing for.

Excellent.

Any other thoughts or closing comments or questions?

Yes, Beto.

People are being texting me about the name of the business that I share about the mask.

It's Other People's Polyester.

And they, I don't know, just like it's beautiful.

So their website, it's oppclothing.com.

so you will supporting someone and it's locally and then she does everything recycle and then she sends you the samples.

So I'm just taking advantage to promote one of our ventures clients as always.

So thank you and thank you for the invitation Teresa and putting all this and it was a pleasure to share all with all of you.

Absolutely.

I want to be respectful of your time.

I want to thank Council Member Sawant for hanging out with us.

I know Council Member Morales had to log off.

We had Council Member Strauss and Herbold viewing on YouTube at various points.

So thank you to our colleagues for joining with us.

I want to thank the IT team that made this all possible, the communication team, and my team from my office, Aretha, Fadi Bey, Aaron, and Sejal Parikh.

We have a number of people who had sent us questions.

We're happy to send around follow-up questions.

If you email us at Teresa.Mosqueda at Seattle.gov, we will follow up with you.

All the folks who presented today, we will have their PowerPoint presentation shared and a link to this recorded video.

A special thanks to the experts from the community panel who just concluded here today.

For all of the time, I know you were very busy responding to the immediacy of the COVID crisis.

Thank you for sharing your feedback, lessons learned, the analysis on how we act locally.

And to our previous panel, national experts and local experts on the economy, We know that from your presentation, we need to ensure that any recovery policies are inclusive of everyday workers, small and medium sized businesses, so that we can participate in the local economy.

We need to reignite our economic growth by investing in dollars into the local economy to spur activity, to get dollars in hand, especially for our lowest wage folks.

And as Colleen has said, folks have been left out of not just the policymaking table, but making sure that we get folks into the sweat lodge as we think about recreating economic growth in a new way so that we're not just reinvesting in failed economies of the past.

We heard from the first panelists as well that this crisis cannot be met with austerity budgeting.

any effort to respond to the crisis with deep cuts at the very time when people need services the most from the public sector will only compound the pain and make it last longer.

We've heard today that history tells us that austerity is the wrong approach and will only perpetuate this crisis and that the goal of local government should not be just survival.

The objective for local government should be to put us in a stronger position to respond to this crisis, to help the most vulnerable, to reinvest in a more equitable economy and to help our residents recover and thrive.

We know that this pandemic has inevitably made an inequitable economy worse, but working with you as we craft a recovery effort, as we renew our commitment to progressive revenue, and as we invest in policies and the strategies to respond to the crisis, we need to think that the short term is a two to three year plan and that the longer term must be five, ten years out.

As we do that, we will make sure that we have re-engaged with all of you on an ongoing basis.

Thanks again for all of your time.

Colleagues, we will post this link on our social media platforms and just once again, Thank you from the bottom of our hearts as you care for your communities and your families during this time of COVID.

Our heart goes out to those who've lost loved ones to the COVID crisis and who are still suffering with the consequences of the illness as we try to take on the illness that has been imposed and made worsened in our local economy by COVID.

Appreciate all of your time.

And with that, we will let you go.

Stay home, stay healthy, and take care.