Week in Review: September 13, 2024 - with Josh Cohen

“Recap: 5 top takeaways from Washington’s governor debate” by Shauna Sowersby from Cascade PBS

“Ferguson, Reichert clash on crime, abortion and Trump in first debate” by Jerry Cornfield from Washington State Standard

2024 Election: 2 months out | Cascade PBS-Elway Poll

“Washington voters are leaning toward Bob Ferguson in governor race” by Mai Hoang from Cascade PBS

“Washington ballot initiatives lose ground with voters in new poll” by Shauna Sowersby from Cascade PBS

Defend Washington

“Which Seattle schools could close? District unveils two proposals” by Denisa R. Superville from The Seattle Times

“Seattle school closures: Plan won’t fix budget; board should reject it” by Ben Gitenstein for The Seattle Times

“Closing schools, Seattle? Don’t forget what happened last time” by Danny Westneat from The Seattle Times

“These school resources mean the most to Seattle families” by Monica Velez from The Seattle Times

“New progressive PAC backs Alexis Rinck’s Seattle council campaign” by Josh Cohen from Cascade PBS

Progressive People Power PAC (P3 PAC)

“Councilmember Zahilay proposes $1B for middle-income public housing” by Josh Cohen from Cascade PBS

Find stories that Crystal is reading here

Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here

[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.

Today we are continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome to the program for the first time, today's co-host: Cascade PBS city reporter covering Seattle government, politics, and the issues that shape life in the city, Josh Cohen! Welcome.

[00:01:11] Josh Cohen: Hey, thanks for having me.

[00:01:12] Crystal Fincher: Hey, very glad to have you and have been reading your reporting for quite some time. So want to start off this week talking about the big debate. And by the big debate - obviously, I mean the Ferguson-Reichert debate. Bob Ferguson and Dave Reichert are running for governor, and we got to hear them side-by-side take on the same issues. What were your takeaways from that debate, Josh?

[00:01:41] Josh Cohen: Yeah, clearly the big debate that everyone was watching on Tuesday night. I think - almost in a similar way as the presidential debate - it was interesting seeing Ferguson try to appeal a little bit to the center, make sure he is not coming across as some wild lefty. They talked a lot about public safety issues and Ferguson talking about putting a fair bit of money - I believe it was $100 million - for police hiring. He said he supports the Climate Commitment Act, but maybe being open to making adjustments to it. I think we're in this moment where, whether it's on the city council or in state elections, progressive or sort of left Dems are trying to show themselves as these more practical, slightly centrist candidates to appeal and sort of move away from the 2020 era.

[00:02:37] Crystal Fincher: I read it a little bit differently. There is no universe that Bob Ferguson is a lefty Dem. He's a moderate Democrat. He's been a moderate Democrat his entire career, when he was on the King County Council and others. Certainly, as Attorney General, he's benefited from - and Washington State has benefited from - him taking on Donald Trump in his various policies and having a great record in doing that. And also taking on a number of consumer protection and resident protection issues, whether it's opioids or people with deceptive business practices - and the settlements that he has secured have been really good for the state - and people have seen that. And I think he's gotten cred for - Oh, he's fighting Trump. He must be some super liberal. But if you actually look at his record, he's been moderate the entire time. I may have a different view of the utility of the so-called move to the center. I think what we are seeing this year is the candidates who are successful - not necessarily at the gubernatorial level, but at the state and local level, State Leg, all those races - those candidates are looking more like Shaun Scott these days, rather than Mark Mullet or someone like that.

But I do think there was a sharp contrast. I think the biggest one was the Climate Commitment Act, as you mentioned, where Reichert is opposed to it - he would support the repeal of it, which is on our ballots in November. And that just doesn't seem to be a position that resonates with a state that has elected strong environmental advocates for years, that has taken seriously on a state and local level obligations to maintain and protect the environment, and upholding regulations to do that. So I think that's one. And certainly Republicans tried to make the passage of the Climate Commitment Act a big deal in the election after it was passed - and they were trounced. Public just doesn't seem to be there. So it's interesting to see him do that there, particularly with Jaime Herrera Beutler in the Commissioner for Public Lands race saying a number of different things there. I think another difference that people feel that Reichert realized was a difference was the issue of abortion rights. Reichert does not have a good record when it comes to protecting women's freedom. Reichert has given mixed signals before in what he would support. Certainly, he and Republicans understand that the majority of the public disagrees with them and they try to kind of dance around their record, dance around what they've said, dance around would they or would they not sign legislation and vote for that. I also think he tried to dance around his support for Trump, as we've seen before. There was a video from a private campaign function where he seemed to get real cute and indicate that - Yes, he would vote for Trump. He wouldn't say yes, but he was shaking his head and seeming to do the wink and nod thing and - You know, I need to be careful about what I say type thing. And then in this debate tried to say - I'm not voting for Trump. Well, that doesn't sound believable, that contradicts what was there before. But he also said he's not voting for Kamala either - we'll write in someone. What did you think of that?

[00:05:52] Josh Cohen: That was sort of what I was thinking - both of them maybe trying to hew to the center. And maybe that's just general election politics - you're trying to appeal to a broader base - it is interesting to watch. Maybe that is just a strategy - he knows he needs King County Republicans if he has any chance in the general in a gubernatorial race. And there's a lot of King County Republicans who do not support Trump and do not want their governor to be on the MAGA program. To my first point, I agree - the listeners couldn't see me nodding when you said there's no world where Ferguson is some radical lefty. But again, I just think it's interesting to watch the candidates aim for the center in this moment, and I think it'll be interesting to see how that politics plays out.

[00:06:38] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think you're right in that they are both aiming for the center here in making the case. We, as you said, certainly saw that with Bob Ferguson and Reichert trying to out-cop each other - and who wants to hire more and who's going to do more. I thought it was interesting that Reichert brought up - as Attorney General, Ferguson grew his staff. It seemed like there were lots of things for that staff to do, with as much litigation as he took on and the settlements that he secured - over a billion dollars worth. Sounds like that was a good return on investment to me. I don't know how other people see that, but I don't think there is any credible way to say that Attorney General Ferguson and a future Governor Ferguson wouldn't be absolutely in favor of hiring more police, wouldn't be absolutely in favor of collaborating with law enforcement and supporting them - as he seems to have done. This is a prosecutor who then was attorney general. Attacking Bob Ferguson on public safety just doesn't seem like that's landing at all. Do you see that?

[00:07:45] Josh Cohen: Yeah, I think you're probably right. And again, he's promising $100 million for police hiring. That is - probably when you get down to it, it's not actually that many police across the state, but it's a pretty hefty budget line item and shows that he, like many Democrats in this moment, are very committed to police hiring. And I think it's definitely a conservative strategy to hit on Dems for the defund movement. But A), most of them probably were not out there saying they were going to defund the police four years ago. And B), they are certainly not saying that now. We saw in the presidential debate also, Trump was saying that Harris was a sort of proud frontrunner in the defund movement. And that is clearly not true of a prosecutor-turned-centrist Dem senator.

[00:08:36] Crystal Fincher: Yep. But the Marxist accusations somehow keep flying. So we've got another debate between the two coming up on the 18th, so not too long - less than a week from now. We'll continue to follow that and see what else they have to say. I also want to talk about new polling news that broke this morning. What poll came out and what does it say?

[00:09:02] Josh Cohen: So for several good years now, we've been working with Stuart Elway, longtime pollster, on the Cascade PBS-Elway poll. And our most recent poll is about statewide races and a little bit of presidential polling as well. And to nobody's surprise, Ferguson is polling pretty well. 50% of respondents said they are either definitely voting for Ferguson or are inclined to vote for Ferguson. And between that, 39% said certain to vote for him. 11% said they're probably voting for him but haven't totally decided. And then another 39% said they'd vote for Reichert. I'm not sure how that tracks with past gubernatorial races and polling two months out from the election, but clearly this is Ferguson's race to lose.

[00:10:01] Crystal Fincher: By every metric, it's Ferguson's race to lose. Obviously, he's still taking the race seriously - he's still campaigning hard. But just the numbers in Washington - a majority of Washington votes land for Democrats, as we see in most of the statewide races, other races. I did see that it was registered voters in this poll, it's not a likely voter poll - so that can sometimes influence things. But I think it is showing what most people believe to be true, what most independent analysts believe to be true. Coming out of the primary, Ferguson had another challenger, but obviously the Democratic Party seemed to very conclusively, decisively unify around him. That wasn't the case as much on the Republican side. And so, while I don't think that it is going to surprise anyone that Reichert is trailing in this poll, I wonder how much of it is due to him maybe just not being the most electrifying candidate - because I think most people looked at his primary result and thought that was an underperformance. Or how much of that is due to split in the Republican base? The Republican base has gotten more extreme, is moving further to the right - to where former chair of the state party has endorsed Kamala Harris and is no longer considered a Republican by himself or the party. And so are there - that chunk of Semi Bird voters and loyalists and Trump MAGA diehards - who see his waffling around support for Trump and other issues as a bridge too far for them and he's just a RINO and he's not going to do it? I don't know if you had any insight there, or if the poll offered any insight with that. And I should note that we are not looking at the actual poll - we're looking at the reporting on the poll. It is useful to see the actual poll itself, but we don't have that yet.

[00:11:52] Josh Cohen: Yeah, by the time this podcast comes out, the full data will be available for folks. I'll have to do a deeper dive into that - I am doing a story that'll be out Friday when this podcast comes out about the presidential polling. Again, perhaps no surprise to any listeners - Harris has a pretty solid lead over Trump in Washington in our polling. But yeah, it'll be interesting to look at the crosstabs and that sort of confluence of Trump-Reichert voters versus maybe Trump-undecided governor voters or vice versa. I did speak to a woman out in Tri-Cities for the presidential polling story who is a proud Reichert voter - sees him as very much like a Republican in the mold that she grew up with - but cannot bring herself to vote for Trump and is sort of holding her nose and voting Dem despite having 70-some years of Republican voting in her record. So it'll be interesting to dig a little further into that - I don't have an answer right now about what the poll shows about the MAGA support for Reichert or lack thereof.

[00:13:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that will be interesting. And also wouldn't be surprising if the poll wasn't able to suss that out either - that can be a challenging thing to figure out and determine. Now I'm wondering - what did this poll have to say about the standing of the four Republican-sponsored statewide initiatives?

[00:13:18] Josh Cohen: Yeah, I think that's probably the most interesting piece of this. I think your listeners probably know there are these four initiatives sponsored by Brian Heywood, a wealthy hedge fund manager - obviously seeking to influence policy and taxes, but also, I think, fairly transparently meant to drive turnout in this election. And yeah, the polling shows that the initiatives are not doing that well, less than two months out from Election Day. We polled on three of the four in the spring. We didn't poll on the...

[00:13:55] Crystal Fincher: The natural gas mandate one, because that one qualified later than the others.

[00:14:01] Josh Cohen: Yeah, the natural gas - thank you. None of them were above 50% in the springtime, but they're all pretty close. It was like high-40s support for the initiatives - for the capital gains tax repeal, for the Climate Commitment Act repeal, and the long-term care insurance repeal. And there was pretty high undecided at the time, not surprisingly. And now in our latest poll, it's 52% either definitely no or probably no on repealing the capital gains tax. It's 46% probably no or definitely no on repealing the carbon tax credit. And then quite close on the long-term care - it's 39% over 33% for repealing long-term care insurance. And so, clearly voter opinion is consolidating around not repealing these laws and taxes. I think it is conventional wisdom in state politics that support is always greater for initiatives in the springtime, and then tends to wane over the campaign as voters gain information. I heard some consultants saying that an initiative actually needs about 60% in springtime polling to survive through November. And I think this is clearly illustrative of - there was a court ruling that they had to put the financial implications in the ballot language. There was a big fight over trying to sort of hide the ball on what the implications of repealing these big taxes would actually be. And when people see that cutting capital gains and cutting the carbon tax has huge implications for schools and education funding and all these Green New Deal initiatives, that actually people do want to fund schools and they do want to make progress on climate issues in Washington. And so a more informed voter is a lot more concerned about repealing taxes.

[00:15:57] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and that was a conversation around the last round of polling, where there were many folks who thought that the numbers at that time for the initiatives weren't great - but even those were artificially inflated because it did not mirror what was actually on the ballot. And when you poll, you want to ask what is on the ballot. And yes - funding education, mitigating the climate crisis that we're in and its escalating impacts on everyone in our community is a very high priority for Washington state residents. And is a motivating factor for Washington state residents. So I was not surprised to see where that landed in this poll at all. I am eager to see the actual poll just to dive in and see what that really is. But I do think that overall, this is not very surprising when you look at - partly understanding the whole initiative - Oh, we're really defunding the state's climate response. We're really shifting the burden from where it is now and putting more of a burden on middle-income and low-income families and letting the uber-rich skate. That's really what this does - and seeing how massive the impacts are to existing state funding, I think, makes that plain and really underscores that this is just part of a larger effort for people who don't really believe in or respect government and democracy, in the words of them and their party and their platform. And we're seeing that manifest an attack on our collective services and what we collectively value. So I'll be interested to see other insights that come out from this poll over the next few days. But I think they were probably prepared to lose some of these because, as you said, a big motivation for this is driving conservatives to the polls - looks like Reichert is not the hook that a lot of people can really rely on to pull maybe some battleground legislative races across the finish line, and they were hoping this would happen. But the more people learn about it, the less they like it.

Now, speaking of lots of people not liking something, I do want to talk about news that broke this week - the Seattle Public School District released two options of plans for schools to close. And my goodness, these were some really significant cuts. They had signaled that they would consider closing schools, they would formulate a plan or options. But that is a lot different, I think, to parents and families emotionally and situationally than looking at the list of schools that they have here. And so many people's neighborhood schools are impacted - from Licton Springs to Green Lake, Decatur, Stevens, Orca, Boren, Graham Hill, just schools everywhere. So the first option that they had would close 21 schools - some of those schools also serve middle school students. The second proposal would shutter 17 schools and leave only one option K-8 school open in the district's five regions. The most aggressive option, the first option, would potentially save the district $31.5 million, which interestingly is not the whole deficit. The whole deficit is estimated to be around $100 million for next year - most of that due to staffing costs - which are not dealt with in this consolidation. How did you feel when you heard this?

[00:19:35] Josh Cohen: Like you said, it's striking to see such significant cuts on the table. I'm not a parent. I don't have kids in Seattle Public Schools, but it's striking to think about 21 schools closing permanently and the impact that has on neighborhoods and parents and kids, obviously. And a colleague of mine - her oldest starts elementary school next year right as this shuffle of school closures and, I believe, a new teachers' union contract fight all begins. I think there's just all of this uncertainty and anxiety on the horizon for parents and it's a lot.

[00:20:19] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's a lot. There are 16 schools that actually appear on both lists. This is a significant percentage of the district closing. And it's notable to say that if they move forward with these, the district is saying that they're going to need to plan to consolidate middle schools after this. So this isn't even seemingly the end of the closure conversation - it feels like the beginning of the closure conversation, which is very troubling. And again, there's lots to be discussed with this. Parents are just beginning to absorb this and what this means and what the reconfigurations that are proposed are. But it really can't be stated enough that this - people hear - Okay, closures, that's supposed to save money and that's going to close the deficit and that'll get us back in the black, right? That doesn't. This does not fix the school district's funding problem. This does not even close the entire gap. For the amount of pain that this causes, for the impact that we have seen - both in the Seattle School District and across the country. For the harm that school closures do to students who would have gone to those schools - test scores and grades suffer. And this process, it's disruptive to families. And when Seattle did this before - when Seattle closed schools before - it didn't save money. In fact, that's kind of the thing here. The superintendent said before that these proposed savings don't even all come in one year - they can be spread out over the next few years. But what we've seen and what makes it hard to believe that there's any savings at all is that closing schools creates a ton of new costs that don't seem to be factored here, which is why the last time Seattle closed schools - instead of saving the district money, it costs the district money. We've seen the same thing around the country. So this has certainly been talked about by a lot of parents, a lot of education advocates, the union - before. If their real plan to close the deficit is going to wind up being the necessary conversation about state funding with our legislators and/or news of teacher cuts and layoffs, they should actually be honest about that and engage with that - since that is going to be necessary to deal with the root of the problem. And they really need to involve parents in this process. Parents have been saying that they have not felt meaningfully included up until now through this entire conversation. And to make decisions of this magnitude that impact the future of the city - and that's not hyperbole - they need to involve parents to a much greater degree than they have in these conversations. I have just talked to a number of parents who were just shocked - shocked at the level of this. And other people in the community who aren't parents who are shocked that a district is looking at closing so many of its schools right now and perhaps more in the future. Just really challenging - we will continue to follow this story and we'll link, obviously, to resources to get more information about this in the show notes.

I also want to talk this week about a new progressive PAC that has been formed to support Alexis Mercedes Rinck in her City of Seattle City Council race. What is this PAC? Who put it together? What is their goal?

[00:23:53] Josh Cohen: Yeah. So as you say, a new PAC - they call themselves the Progressive People Power PAC, or P3 PAC - launched by Carrie Barnes, the head of the King County Dems, some of the folks who ran for City Council in the more progressive slate last time, including Maren Costa, who ran against Rob Saka, and Ron Davis, who ran in D4 against Maritza Rivera. Some folks on the board include folks from Puget Sound Sage, a former legislative aide to Councilmember Lisa Herbold, Teresa Mosqueda's campaign manager for King County Council. They explain it as they want to fight fire with fire. In 2023, in the Council races, PAC money played a huge role. A lot of business and real estate folks, Trump's biggest donor from Washington state - all pooled money in five or six of the City Council races, and I think really moved the needle for our new, more conservative, moderate - however you want to frame it - City Council majority. Those races were quite close in the end - not all of them, I think Cathy Moore and Joy Hollingsworth both won with pretty convincing margins - but it came down to hundreds of votes for Andrew Lewis when he lost re-election and it was pretty close for Ron Davis and Maritza Rivera in D4. And PAC money clearly played a role - I think it was more than $1.2 million in PAC spending when all was said and done in 2023. And that goes a long way in a local election where candidates are raising $200,000, $300,000.

[00:25:31] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. It does go a long way. And I think people see those numbers and there's no reason for people who don't work in politics to like know what that means. So sometimes people hear a big number and they're like - Okay, yeah, big corporations have big money, so they give a donation. This isn't donating to the campaign - that money was funneled through independent expenditures. They communicate, they send out the mailers and do the commercials and all of that - without coordination with a candidate, but in support of or in opposition to candidates. That's communication. Direct voter communication is impactful, does make a difference, does move votes. And especially in this world where we have a lot less media coverage than we used to - not just during campaigns, but year-round about everything - so there's not the kind of coverage of what elected officials have been up to as there was before. You do the absolute best that you can, but you're one person covering City Hall when there used to be teams of people sometimes covering city affairs and City Hall. And so there's only so much you and your cohorts at the other major media institutions that we have here can do. We have fewer media institutions in the city of Seattle. Outside of the city of Seattle, they've been decimated - if they even still exist, most are limping along. So the only way to kind of get your message out is to pay to get it out, which is really unfortunate because that's part of what makes elections so costly, which makes money a factor. And the more of it that you have, kind of the bigger bullhorn that you have - the more you're able to get your message out and you can just drown out everything else. When you're getting three, four or five mailers in your mailbox a day, that's all funded by that stuff. And when someone just has the budget to send one or two for the whole campaign, that gets lost in the shuffle among the rest. And that's what that money equates to - it's so impactful, and we saw it make a difference in City races. We saw it make a difference in the balance of the Seattle City Council. And we're seeing the impacts of that right now.

And so making a real effort to compete with that. And I think they're saying - We're never going to have pockets as deep as them, but at least we can even the playing field and do enough to get the candidate's message out, to communicate with people across the city. That's the other thing - this is a citywide election in Seattle. And so you're dealing with so many more people than in an individual district, like the races that we just had last year. And so the amount of money that it takes to communicate with a jurisdiction the size of Seattle is vast. It may not be a million bucks, right? It's not going to be a million bucks. But if you can get a couple hundred thousand, few hundred thousand targeted and spent the right way in addition to what the campaign is doing, that's a start and gets us further on our way. And looking at the primary results, the city is receptive to what Alexis Mercedes Rinck is saying - certainly seems to resonate with the vision that Alexis has more than the vision that Tanya Woo has. So I'm really interested to see how this unfolds. And to see - I think the other thing is that this is more of a regular people PAC, I think, they're targeting. They're asking for donations and their first fundraiser is actually happening on Tuesday, September 17th at 6 p.m. It will be King County Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, Maren Costa, Ron Davis, Andrew Lewis, and Carrie Barnes - who are listed as co-hosts. And we will provide a link to information about the PAC, and you can track down more information about that there. Certainly they have some notable people and some funds to get them started in there, but hopefully this at least levels the playing ground so that you have the opportunity to, as an average voter, hear from both candidates - because that is a really hard thing to get through and penetrate to the people who aren't listening to Hacks & Wonks, who aren't reading Cascade PBS news coverage, and who just figure out that an election is coming when they're reminded by someone and they see their ballot and they see all the reminders - Get your ballot in. So people living regular life and busy with families and jobs and all that kind of stuff, who aren't weird like us.

[00:30:10] Josh Cohen: Yeah, yeah. It'll be interesting to see what kind of money this PAC raises. Like you said, I think they don't have expectations that they are going to be a one-to-one with some of the business PACs from years past. And we have a lot of wealthy and progressive-leaning tech folks out there who can probably contribute, but they're not probably writing checks for $20,000, $50,000, like some of the donors to the business PACs last year. There was a PAC for each race, basically, in 2023, and you had the same names in almost all of them across the races - that's some real deep pocket spending. It'll also be interesting to see how those same folks respond. Tanya Woo had, I believe, more than $100,000 in PAC spending when she ran in 2023 against Tammy Morales - and she narrowly lost that race. So far, she hasn't had the same sort of spending. The Washington Realtors PAC did spend $60,000 on her in the primary - that's very real money, but those same donors haven't chipped in yet. But, I also was going back and-

[00:31:20] Crystal Fincher: We usually don't see that happen until October.

[00:31:22] Josh Cohen: Yeah, it didn't really kick off until end of September, early October last time. So TBD.

[00:31:29] Crystal Fincher: TBD. We will see, but hopefully this will help level the playing field a bit more than it has been there. Also want to talk about news this week that King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay has proposed $1 billion for middle income public housing. This is a big deal. What is he proposing?

[00:31:50] Josh Cohen: Yeah, it's pretty much the same thing that folks are talking about in Seattle. We're going to get real wonky for a second on Hacks & Wonks. But Zahilay wants to use King County's excess bonding capacity to borrow up to a billion dollars at good rates and use that money to help fund construction and acquisition of essentially public housing. He wants publicly-owned, subsidized affordable housing projects that are affordable to - they use the term "workforce," I'm making air quotes here - but workforce housing. It's basically middle income housing, it's - you're anything from a barista to a waiter to a teacher and a firefighter. The region's housing has gotten just so expensive that middle class jobs that used to help you at least afford a decent home in Seattle or the Seattle area no longer covers the cost of living. And so he's looking at these mixed income places that would be for an individual earning basically $55,000 to about $126,000. And the vision is that basically rents would be on a sliding scale that matched your income. And those folks at the higher end of the income scale would pay more rent and that would help subsidize the costs of lower rents for people earning less money. And for those listeners out there who are like - This is a European socialist idea that would never work in America - the Housing Authority in Montgomery County, Maryland, which is right outside DC, has been doing this for the last couple of years. And they are building these lovely, mixed-income apartment buildings. They look like any other sort of fancy new apartment building on Capitol Hill that you would see - got amenities and nice common rooms and gyms and whatever else. And folks at the higher end of that income spectrum are helping subsidize the costs for lower middle-income earners. And it's clearly an idea that's catching on - folks in California are starting to experiment with social housing, Hawaii has passed legislation to allow it.

[00:34:07] Crystal Fincher: Georgia - city of Atlanta. Yeah.

[00:34:09] Josh Cohen: And then obviously right here in Seattle, we have the newly voter-created social housing developer - they're trying to get off the ground. They're trying to pass another ballot initiative that has qualified for the ballot, but is held up with Seattle City Council opposition right now. But yeah, the idea of publicly-owned housing that is not just for those at the lowest end of the income spectrum, I think, is having a moment right now as every city in America, every metro region in America grapples with our insane cost of living and just our broken housing systems.

[00:34:50] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. Our housing affordability crisis has gotten so vast that I do commend the Councilmember for attempting to use all of the tools at our disposal here. I do think it's an all-hands-on-deck situation and this is an appropriate response to that. We do have a number of programs for people on 50% and lower AMI. This is targeting 50% to 120%, as you said. What really makes this unique and appropriate - and that's why Dwight Dively, the Budget Director for King County, has been intrigued by this because, really, getting wonky - this would be a billion dollars in debt. King County has about nine billion dollars in unused debt capacity. The problem is - you take on debt, you need to pay it off. And King County hasn't taken on more debt for other things where they're going to be spending - maybe the time horizon for getting the funds back is really long, they aren't sure about that, and they're limited in the amount of taxes that they can raise to ensure that they can cover it. So they just have left that capacity alone. The difference between this type of plan and other housing subsidization programs is - there, it's largely a flat subsidy and that's it. This is investing in the building and basically owning and operating the property, but people are paying rent. These are lower to middle-income people paying rent, so you are actually getting that money back and that's the money that you can use to pay back the bond. And so that is why this looks like a promising proposal for King County that has a lot of people saying - Okay, this looks like it has a ton of potential - and I'm glad they're talking about this, they're getting it moving. Also will enable them to coordinate with the City of Seattle, state of Washington. The more that we have figuring this out and sharing information in our state, in our region, I think the better - so I'm excited to see that this has come out. What do you think about the plan so far?

[00:36:57] Josh Cohen: Like you just said, we need so much housing of all types at this point to address the problem. Like we just have a housing deficit relative to demand from a booming population and just a ballooning cost. And so, I think it makes all the sense in the world to try to experiment with housing that helps out middle-income earners, especially if the projects pencil and those higher rents actually are covering the operating costs and the debt service and all of that. It's obviously not a no-risk proposition, but if you can actually have these self-sustaining properties the way that a market rate apartment complex is self-sustaining, then I think it's a huge win to be able to provide housing for folks earning $50,000. Like $50,000 does not go that far in the Seattle area for a single person anymore. Anyone working on housing will say there are no silver bullets, and that is extremely true. We are going to continue to need that deeply subsidized, low-income housing for folks exiting homelessness, for folks living off disability and SSI. And we're going to need a lot of housing for those middle-income earners and maybe social housing - this sort of middle-income, mixed-income public housing is a path to that. And then we're going to need a lot of new housing of all kinds. It'll be interesting to see how that all shakes out with the Comp Plan updates that everyone's going through right now around King County, and if we start getting some of that "missing middle housing" that the State Legislature cleared the way for. But we need something like 309,000 new units of housing in King County in the next 20 years, which is actually really the next 19 years as we're having this conversation. And yeah, it's time to get rolling on that construction.

[00:38:49] Crystal Fincher: I agree. Well, we will continue to follow along and see how that progresses. There was a lot of news this week - we would love to get to more, but we're going to have to call it.

So with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, September 13th, 2024. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was Cascade PBS city reporter covering Seattle government, politics, and the issues that shape life in the city, Josh Cohen. You can find Josh on Twitter or X at @jcohenwrites. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter, and you can find me on whatever platform you want to find me on at @finchfrii, with two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.

Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.