A challenge for the House business chair
Plus bills signing/veto season begins in earnest, and some recommended reading
Life as an elected official can come with multiple hats, which the Legislature subjects to strict rules on which hat you can wear when. Once in a while, your day job raises eyebrows in Olympia if a bill that might upend it comes across your desk.
Case in point, a complaint filed in March against House Consumer Protection & Business Committee Chair Amy Walen posed a serious question on the matter to the Legislative Ethics Board. It accused the Kirkland Democrat of using her seat to knife a bill allowing electric vehicle makers to run their own dealerships in-state, a privilege only Tesla enjoys right now. Walen co-owns a Kirkland auto dealership with her husband, something the unnamed accuser(s) called a grade-A conflict of interest and quasi-conspiracy to kill House Bill 1721.
The board cleared Walen of any wrongdoing, noting that she moved a similar bill right on through while chairing the same committee in 2024. HB 1721 also had a companion bill in the Senate sponsored by Senate Labor & Commerce Chair Rebecca Saldaña, D-Seattle, that died in her committee this session. Giving EV companies like Rivian and Scout leeway to sell their rides sans the dealer markups was a top-tier item on Democrats’ agenda this session.
As Walen told the ethics board, the caucus didn’t have the votes to make it out of committee this time around. That the Washington Auto Dealers Association came swinging for it with a dead-blow sledgehammer didn’t help. As she told us, auto dealers are a time-tested way to sell cars and more than earned their foothold in the industry.
Walen’s also gearing up for a race this fall against Sen. Vandana Slatter, D-Bellevue, who the King County Council appointed to Insurance Commissioner Patty Kuderer’s former Senate seat. Walen was the council’s number two pick and has since left her job at the family dealership to devote more daylight to legislating.
Lawmaking is a part-time job that requires lawmakers to juggle a variety of gigs in between sessions to pay the bills, which have landed some people in hot water. A small circle of lawmakers have long floated the idea of a full-time Legislature on the basis it would give them more time to tackle high-level problems, with the added bonus of better avoiding said conflicts. Naturally, lots of voters are a bit frosty about the idea of giving their electeds a raise.
TG
Bill-signing season gets under way in earnest
As the spring days grow longer, Gov. Bob Ferguson is approaching the 20-day deadline for inking – or vetoing – the bills lawmakers dropped on his desk.
Today, Ferguson will act on a host of housing bills, including the rent cap and condo reforms. Wednesday’s bill action is due to kick off at Blake House, a nonprofit affordable housing high-rise in Seattle.
More tax breaks for more ADUs
Among those aforementioned bills of note is a tax break for accessory dwelling units or the backyard cottages lawmakers have legalized in more and more places. Such breaks have been limited to King County since the Year of Housing kicked off, but Senate Bill 5529 from Sen. Chris Gildon would expand those breaks to the Puyallup Republican’s stomping grounds in Pierce County and elsewhere. The new law runs through 2034 and applies only to ADUs built on the same property as the main house and subject to any necessary fees imposed by the county assessor.
ADUs are a hot-button item in Olympia as a solution for housing your in-laws and because of their popularity in the short-term rental market. A tax hike on such short-term rentals was bulldozed by AirBnb and company this past session.
Rewriting the commercial building rulebook
For people putting together commercial projects, a new law from Sen. Jesse Salomon, D-Shoreline, will streamline the irksome process by which builders get such construction green lit.
Senate Bill 5611 will allow more such ventures—namely shopping malls and industrial parks—to be done via binding site plans, agreements that essentially approve a project in full. Such plans allow builders to go into a project full-steam ahead and skirt the piecemeal process many chafe under now. This bill also bans city planners from waiving permit timelines, all but forcing them to give a thumbs up or thumbs down to applicants.
TG
Less fine print for leases
Tenants itching to sue their landlord will be freer to do just that per Senate Bill 5313 from Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle.
The new law allows tenants of all stripes to hop aboard class action lawsuits and bans landlords from signing away their right to do within their lease. Landlords won’t have the option to veil lease terms, security deposits, or move-in fees behind non-disclosure agreements written to shut up their tenants. The original bill was also aimed at restricting landlords from enrolling tenants in valet garbage pickup and other not necessarily wanted services.
TG
Ferguson’s veto power: Will he or won’t he?
Thus far, we haven’t seen the governor flex his veto muscles significantly. He has signed dozens of bills and as of Wednesday, partially vetoed just one. Last month, he snipped the emergency clause out of Senate Bill 5577, which requires Medicaid coverage for HIV antiviral drugs. His veto message argued that the emergency clause was unnecessary.
That said, most of the controversial stuff is still sitting on his desk. As we noted last week in our losers roundup, the garbage haulers are urging him to ax the big recycling revamp. And then there’s the Big Kahuna of vetoing opportunities—the budget and the steep tax increases necessary to pay for it.
As Jerry Cornfield notes over at the Washington State Standard, the Washington Hospitality Association1(hotels and restaurants) and the Washington Food Industry Association (small grocery stores) are urging Ferguson to veto the business & occupation tax surcharge on very large businesses, which will hit the massive food supply companies they rely on and drive up costs.
If Ferguson were to do that, it would throw the budget out of balance and almost certainly require a contentious special session of the Legislature.
PQ
Recommended Reading:
Digging into Sara Nelson’s money in Seattle City Council race
Hannah Krieg breaks down Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson’s campaign cash over at The Burner, the new thing she put together after leaving The Stranger earlier this year under somewhat scandalous circumstances.
Nelson’s opponent, Dionne Foster, is going the democracy-voucher route, which allows her to campaign on the taxpayers’ dime, ostensibly in return for agreeing to campaign contribution and spending limits. Nelson’s eschewing the democracy vouchers in favor of the freedom to raise more cash from affluent donors. The incumbent has raised about $277,000, compared to about $135K in cash and vouchers for the the challenger. If Foster’s challenge shows legs, Seattle Ethics & Elections will likely waive the spending limits when big independent money shows up in the race, as it did for Nelson the last time around.
We’re very interested to see how The Burner does. Its hard-left politics and mean-girl tone will appeal to some readers/listeners while repelling others, but the voicey, fiery writing could make her the Brandi Kruse of the left.
PQ
Basketball schadenfreude
We’re out of our political wheelhouse again, but we couldn’t resist the latest headline from The Dang Apostrophe, Danny O’Neill’s excellent Seattle sports newsletter: The Deliciousness of Their Tears, in which he revels in the sorrow of the fans of the Oklahoma City Thunder, formerly the Seattle SuperSonics.2
“In fact, cheering against the Thunder has been the single most consistently enjoyable thing that I’ve ever done as a sports fan, and over the past 14 years I’ve assembled what can only be described as a Hater’s Anthology. There was the initial discovery of my resentment in 2011, the decision to root for Lebron James and his Super Friends in 2012 and then the sheer delight of watching the Thunder choke away a 3-1 lead over Golden State in 2016. … Does this reflect well on me? Probably not.”
PQ
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Another one for the cat people
Subscriber Pete Hanning imagines that Ron and Harry are reminiscing about bygone days of bipartisan compromise, but let’s face it: They’re cats; they’re plotting Pete’s death.3 Want to see your pet in this space? Drop us a photo and some caption material.
The Hospitality Association sponsors the bar at our annual Re-Wire Policy Conference, which is one of the ways we pay the bills around here. As with all our sponsors, we welcome their support and the occasional awkward footnote it requires.
Paul was running The Associated Press newsgathering operation in Seattle when the dastardly deal to move the Supes went down. He was somewhat torn because it took more than 40 home games and associated beat reporting off his team’s plate, which made covering the rest of the news easier. Also, he’s from Oregon and his NBA allegiances, such as they are, lie elsewhere.
We’re both Team Dog and Team Cat here at Observer World Headquarters, but one of Paul’s former editors was not wrong when he offered this: “Pally, if your dog weighed 300 pounds, it would still love you. If your cat weighed 300 pounds, it would eat you in a heartbeat.”