New York passed one of the most ambitious climate laws in the country, but is now struggling to meet its goals. I’m joined by Doreen Harris, president of NYSERDA, the agency on the front lines of implementing the law. We explore what’s working, from community solar to new transmission lines, and what isn’t, including the slow pace of scaling up renewables and decarbonizing transportation.
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David Roberts
Aloha. This is Volts for October 17, 2025, “How to get New York back on track toward its climate targets.” I’m your host, David Roberts. Back in 2019, New York State passed some of the most ambitious climate legislation in the nation, including a wide range of short- and long-term targets — for greenhouse gases, for clean cars, for utility-scale and distributed renewables, and more. Since then, as you might have noticed, a great deal has changed in US politics. And many of the tailwinds that made those targets seem achievable, like, say, the Inflation Reduction Act, have vanished.
And sure enough, New York is not meeting most of its targets. And sure enough, the state is being sued by activists for its failures.
The agency charged with navigating this dilemma is [clears throat] the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, or NYSERDA, which is effectively in charge of state energy policy. How are the folks at NYSERDA thinking about the developments of recent years and how to get back on track?
To find out, at Climate Week NYC, I spoke with NYSERDA President Doreen Harris. We talked about what has changed to make things more difficult, what’s going on with the state’s suspended cap-and-invest program, where the state is succeeding, and how she envisions getting back on track for 2030.
Hello again. So just real quick, what the heck is NYSERDA? What does it stand for? Have you memorized this, presumably?
Doreen Harris
I’ve been wondering the same thing for 15 years, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got it figured out. I think Julian had it right. First of all, we’re a public benefit corporation. We are responsible for a few actions on behalf of the State of New York, but they broadly center around the energy transition — how to plan for the state’s energy needs, but also how to deploy programs and policies so as to achieve them. That’s our basic mission. Some might know it’s our 50th anniversary. Come on, come on. [applause]
So we came out of the energy crisis of the ‘70s really trying to bring solutions forward for New Yorkers. And that’s what we’ve been doing since then.
David Roberts
And to universal acclaim and appreciation?
Doreen Harris
I’d say it sort of depends on the day. I’ve had this job for five years. There’s been some high highs and low lows, but all in the direction that we’re supposed to be heading. So it’s good.
David Roberts
Well, let’s talk about this direction then. So New York famously passed, in 2019, very ambitious climate legislation with a bunch of discrete goals — not just a 2050 goal, but interim goals and goals for buildings and power. And it was a very big deal. New York is not meeting almost any of those targets, I believe. So I’ll just start with a very open-ended question. What are you trying to do to get back on track to meeting those targets?
Doreen Harris
I didn’t know this was going to be a budget hearing — this is like, this is tricky, tricky business.
David Roberts
It gets worse.
Doreen Harris
Oh great. It’s a fair question. So yes, as I said, I’ve been working in this role for five years. One of my primary responsibilities has been to set forth the actions that our Climate Action Council laid out. That was a multi-year process describing really what it would take to get to the goals of New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. And believe me, even at that time when that plan was finalized, the plan itself reflects the fact that these goals are transformational, challenging, and certainly disruptive in some instances.
And that’s certainly how this has played out. We have actually a state energy planning process underway — that’s one of my other jobs, is to sort of make the energy plan forward for our state’s needs for the coming 15 years. And we have, through that plan, really looked at where we are, where we’re likely to head against many potential futures, among them a net zero future. We have had to have a bit of a reckoning over the last, particularly the last year, around the progress that we’ve had, which I would contend is notable. You may disagree, but I would contend is notable, and I think reflective of the progress that you can make when you are striving for goals like those within our climate law.
We’re balancing multiple objectives, that’s the heart of the matter, is that yes, we have specific statutory goals through our climate law, but we also have the need to balance a lot of other objectives, including reliability and affordability and, of course, the economic health of our state. So we’re taking a clear-eyed look at that as we speak and really reconciling the progress that is still ambitious but also achievable for our state.
David Roberts
Let’s take a couple of pieces of this. So one of the key mechanisms that was designed and envisioned to help you meet these climate targets, or greenhouse gas targets specifically, was the cap-and-invest program, which is supposed to cap... I’m just going to assume everybody here knows what a cap-and-invest program is. Please don’t, please don’t make me explain it. But that program has been halted, canceled, vague-ified? It’s not happening. It’s not clear whether it’s going to happen. What’s going on with it? Is it going to happen? And if it doesn’t, how are you going to make up the reductions that it was going to be responsible for?
Doreen Harris
Yeah, so one of the work streams through our Climate Action Council had been — there’s a whole chapter if you would like to read about economy-wide solutions. And that’s an example of an economy-wide solution would be a cap-and-invest program like our Clean Air Initiative that had been moving forward certainly in a variety of ways. And I think it is important to note that I fully agree with the perspective that when you are looking at a level of transformation that’s present within our Climate Act, but generally within the energy transition, that you have to embed the motivation, if you will, or the requirement for parties to change the way that they function.
And that is across all sectors of our economy. And I would further say that the ways in which we are funding this transition remain challenging because, of course, much of the costs are embedded in utility ratepayers, electric rates in particular, which is the very thing that you are wanting people to transition to.
David Roberts
We’ll come back to that.
Doreen Harris
Oh great. However, at the same time, we have needed to take, as I said, a very objective look at where we sit today and fundamentally what we can be doing in the climate in which we’re working. So I would not say that the Clean Air Initiative is — I forget your term, but I could imagine what it was. It is the case that we’ve had to go about this in a phased manner. We have the DEC advancing the reporting rule right now for comment and eventual adoption. We also have the governor making, in my view, something that has not been adequately supported or reflected — she literally just made the largest climate investment in the history of the state of New York through the Sustainable Future Program.
Just today, she announced the ways in which we intend to spend those funds. I would say that we’re being smart about how we move these processes forward so as to enable their ultimate success. And we, in the meantime, are investing in a manner that perhaps would have exceeded the funds that could have been raised by a program this year in any instance.
David Roberts
One follow-up: Are you actively working on the cap-and-invest program and do you anticipate it going into effect?
Doreen Harris
As I said, DEC is leading most of the work around this and I sort of actually...
David Roberts
I’m sorry, DEC?
Doreen Harris
Oh, the Department of Environmental Conservation.
First Audience Question
Thank you.
Doreen Harris
They’re the sister agency. I co-chaired the Climate Action Council with DEC, and ultimately NYSERDA will jump in when it comes time to design an auction and, of course, how ultimately to program the proceeds accordingly. It is moving, but I would contend that it’s moving in a rational, phased manner.
David Roberts
Got it. So another key plank of New York’s carbon reductions was going to come from off... Well, the idea was it was going to come from offshore wind. There’s a lot of projects underway, a lot of projects envisioned, a whole process underway — that’s been disrupted. Let’s just say Trump has canceled a bunch of them and has expressed clear hostility to future projects. How’s that going? Are you going to be able to move forward with offshore wind without federal support or with federal opposition, or where does that stand?
Doreen Harris
Yes, it’s a bit of a complicated soap opera, as it were, but I will try to just paint the big picture for you. You know, offshore wind really was, and it remains, a central aspect of how we get from here to there. When we looked at our 9-gigawatt goal, that is also in our Climate Act, it is the case that that could potentially serve as much as 25 to 30% of New York City’s electricity needs when we got to those outer years. So it’s a big deal, and it was a very major pillar of decarbonizing this very city that we’re all inhabiting, including during Climate Week, when I’m sure our load increases due to all the people here.
All that to say, there are a few parts of offshore wind that I’d like to reflect on. Number one, we actually have an operating offshore wind project — South Fork Wind Farm — entered operation. They just produced some extraordinary data coming out of that project for its first year of operation: over a 50% capacity factor, almost 90% availability during the summer peak. And ultimately, it’s delivering and it’s available. And that is very much what we as a state are committed to scaling up. And I know the governor has gone to bat multiple times over this. We have two projects that are under construction — the Empire Wind project and the Sunrise Wind project — both of which are on schedule and advancing toward a 2027 commercial operation date.
David Roberts
Are they vulnerable to him in some way? Like, could... Are they insulated in some way from his interference?
Doreen Harris
I wouldn’t presuppose what the federal government may be doing on offshore wind, but what I can say is we certainly got Empire Wind back on track very quickly, as I said, through the governor’s leadership. And ultimately, it’s reflective of how committed we are to this industry. Now, after these two projects are constructed, we have a real challenge on our hands. And as I said, we need to be reasonable about what we believe can actually be happening in the coming number of years. These are projects that take 10-plus years to be developed and constructed. So, what is happening today?
Our goal is to be in a position to have as small of a gap between these now three projects and the next project — that’s like our top priority. It does seem that we’ve reached perhaps the bottoming out of the challenges that we’re seeing. And really, as a state, I think what New York does in this industry will matter a lot. We have definitely not only continued to need to rely on this resource, but frankly, the way we are responding to these challenges, others are watching. So offshore wind has a long-term future in the state of New York. There is no doubt about it.
David Roberts
But like, could you fund it yourself without federal money? Is that possible?
Doreen Harris
So the biggest challenge with offshore wind we have right now is the permits in the sense that, theoretically, yes, if there were no tax credits for these projects, if we saw the value, we could fund them from a generation perspective. But if they can’t be sited and permitted, then we’re not in a position where there’s an actual project upon which to deliver. And that is like borderline heartbreaking for someone like me who has worked on this for so many years. However, we need to be rational about our planning. And when we look at the projects upon which we can avail ourselves, we still see actually a very significant buildout of renewable energy in the coming 15 years — on the order of 85% of what we have now.
So it’s a huge buildout of renewables that is part of our state energy plan. But we also have to serve load. And we have a network of very complicated urban environments here downstate. And the resources that we had planned to serve that load are, at a minimum, going to be delayed. So that’s the facts as of today.
David Roberts
Well, speaking of the other renewable buildout, you know, the New York climate activists will say that the buildout of utility-scale wind and solar is also behind targets. What are the primary challenges in the utility-scale game? Are those NIMBY, permitting, et cetera, et cetera, or is that a money problem that’s slowing that down? Or all of the above?
Doreen Harris
So look, we’re trying to do new things, right? We’re trying to scale up from a project a year to 20 projects a year. And with that comes growing pains. We did a lot as a state in the early 2000s so as to expedite the development and construction of renewable projects as a general matter — first, by centralizing the permitting and siting of these projects, but also by advancing faster interconnection processes to get from here to there. And the results have been marked. I mean, we have, again, as I speak, well over 100 projects in our pipeline. We have 20 under construction, and projects are moving at a far greater scale than that which I had ever experienced when I came to NYSERDA in 2010.
And in fact, I guess one hidden gem of the reconciliation bill is that those projects need to move ever faster in order to capitalize on tax credits for which they are only eligible for a limited period of time. So when we look at it, there will be a good use of those systems that we put into place to get those projects built. And the results, as we have seen them, are going to be significant in the sense that we will be bringing on many more projects into the future. Many of these companies have really needed to mature their own operations.
So I think that there has been sort of a maturation-of-industry challenge that we’ve seen. We see some consolidations.
David Roberts
Do you think the loss of tax credits might force a little bit of that discipline?
Doreen Harris
Totally, totally. I mean, I think it is the case that when we look at the technologies that we’re delivering, energy storage included within wind and solar, there is necessarily a maturation of these industries that’s necessary. And I do think the situation that we find ourselves in will aid in that progress.
David Roberts
Okay, another big plank of your carbon reductions was supposed to come from the transportation sector. And a big chunk of that was going to come from the fact that you were signed up to California’s Clean Car standards, which were quite ambitious, quite progressive. Trump killed that too — killed the Clean Car standards, killed California’s waiver. So how do you envision compensating in the transportation sector for the loss of that sort of federal tailwind?
Doreen Harris
Well, one thing that is important to note is right now we’ve made really good progress in the adoption of electric transportation of all sorts across the state. We have many billions of dollars of investment that have gone in, both by NYSERDA as well as the utilities. And we do see these markets shifting in a very notable way. Now, we are not at a California-level penetration by any means, but we find ourselves at a circumstance where, when we’re at, say, 10-plus percent EV sales, we see market transformation. That’s what we’re in the business of doing at NYSERDA — transforming markets.
We see that happening and we see it happening, of course, because there are incentives that can help reduce the first costs of these technologies from an adoption perspective. But we also see uptake, frankly, because people like them, and I think that’s an important part of this as well. As an EV driver myself, I wouldn’t — notwithstanding the tax credit — I think what we are experiencing is more people recognizing that change can be a good thing. But will these headwinds have impacts on adoption? Absolutely. And will we have a necessary adjustment in the market uptake? Definitely. But I think, as with anything else, we’ve got the preconditions for this market change to happen, albeit on a different pace.
David Roberts
And are there policies you could pass to accelerate? Are you talking about policies to accelerate the transportation, or are you just relying on the shift to EVs to happen organically?
Doreen Harris
I mean, we have any one of a number of incentives. We have a Drive Clean Rebate that we fund at NYSERDA to help, as I said, bring down the first costs of adoption. But make no mistake about it, we cannot, as a state, make up for the amount of detriment that has occurred to us in every sector of our economy. That is not something that we can sign New Yorkers up for. And so, we need to be clear-eyed about what is achievable versus what is sort of a more optimal circumstance.
David Roberts
Okay, one more dreary downer question. The Clean Path transmission project, another big piece of your emission reductions, was supposed to be piping in clean energy to congested areas via this Clean Path transmission project, which was going to bring around 5 gigawatts of clean energy into New York City. That’s now been canceled. What’s going to replace that?
Doreen Harris
Yeah, that’s a complicated one. No, I say this because transmission development in our state can happen via a variety of means. And we’ve demonstrated, in fact, I would say some of the best use of FERC Order 1000 in advancing bulk transmission projects of various sorts that are, in many cases, operating, in other cases under construction, across our state. So New York has made great use, actually, of these processes that we have used to build out major transmission infrastructure. We also have used the instrument that is NYSERDA to build out transmission. The sister project to the Clean Path Project is the Champlain Hudson Power Express project.
370-plus miles of transmission coming from Canada. Hydro-Québec is delivering hydro right here into the city. It’s going to serve about 20% of New York City’s electricity needs, and it is under construction. I saw it with my own eyes. I went on the vessel in the Hudson River and watched the cable be buried. The point being, like, we are advancing transmission of extraordinary means. The Clean Path Project is really a different circumstance in which they were looking for more of an expedited approach, not through our standard practices. So it’s not to say that project may not have a...
It could certainly have a future. It was just the decision of the Public Service Commission that the approach being taken was not required.
David Roberts
Got it. Okay. On a slightly happier question, one of the goals that New York is hitting is the distributed energy...
Doreen Harris
Thank you.
David Roberts
...goal.
Doreen Harris
I appreciate that.
David Roberts
We love distributed energy around here. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about just what that program is and why you think it’s been so successful?
Doreen Harris
The story of solar is one that I think is so interesting to look at from a historical perspective. So, would you give me a minute on this one?
David Roberts
Please.
Doreen Harris
Okay. So NYSERDA actually — again, I mentioned we’ve been around for 50 years. One of the very early areas we were investing in is actually solar because of the fact that we knew that the technology existed, but it needed to be matured, right? To be developed to the point where it could be commercialized. And so on my table in my office is a coffee table book from the 1970s from NYSERDA talking about how to install solar, passive house standards, et cetera, really demonstrating that these were indeed possible. And so when we saw that technology reach that level of maturation, that’s when we really went to our utility regulator and built out a program called New York Sun that allowed us to scale up distributed solar — not only because it was ready for the market, but frankly, it’s extraordinarily valuable in a state like ours in which we have various ways in which we need to serve load, among them community solar, which is a central part of how we got to that goal so early.
So we built that program up and we, as you said, exceeded expectations. The market met that CLCPA goal a year early. And now not only are we the number one community solar market in the nation for two years running — come on — but also we see the real benefits of the technology in action. So I mentioned what South Fork was delivering this summer. When we saw those summer peaks this summer, that 6-plus gigawatts of distributed solar reduced that peak by 5% and saved New Yorkers $90 million. So, yes, it is a big deal to our state.
It’s something we will continue to build on. And it’s reflective of really how we can take these early-stage technologies — of course, not alone, of course, there’s a solar market outside of our state — but these are the types of activities that we need to be advancing for the next version of solar, coffee-table book notwithstanding.
David Roberts
Well, pivoting back to downer, it looks like now New York is taking the remaining money from that very successful distributed energy program, which is paying off — and the one thing that is paying off — and taking it and using it for other things. Why are you not instead doubling down and increasing funding for the thing that’s working?
Doreen Harris
Yeah, I think this is another kind of misunderstood action, but I’ll try to describe it in as simple terms as possible. You know, we receive funding from the Public Service Commission to administer these programs. These are ratepayer funds. And we are always trying to match the amount of funding needed to get to the number that we’re supposed to get to. And as of now, the number we’re solving for is 10 gigawatts, and we’re well on our way. I would agree this market continues to build, although challenged, of course, by the federal context in this instance. All that to say, it’s a pretty simple decision by the Public Service Commission, which is to say that there are funds that were not needed to get to the 10 gigawatts.
We’re spreading a limited resource and those funds were to be used for other purposes. But I would agree generally that I’m really excited to be tackling the question, which is like, “What does a post-10-gigawatt distributed solar goal look like?” Like, this is where we really start to look at the value of distributed energy resources in a more expansive way.
David Roberts
Those targets are legislative, so it would have to be... The legislature would have to set a new, bigger target?
Doreen Harris
Goals can be in regulation or in legislation. So theoretically, if there were a larger goal, we wouldn’t necessarily need to have that in a legislative manner, but it certainly would be one that we would be looking at in the context of our state energy plan, which does reveal a need for more solar to be contributing on the order of tens of gigawatts of solar, in fact. So we have to work on the market mechanisms to realize those numbers. And that’s something that we’ll continue to do.
David Roberts
All right, let’s talk about electricity cost, because this is, I think, one of the sleeper issues of coming elections everywhere — coming presidential election. And it is unfortunate for a variety of reasons that the rise in electricity costs is happening at the same time that high-profile climate policy is being implemented. Because it’s a very, very easy story to tell the public that the one is causing the other. So I have a bunch of questions about that, but one is, and I ask this of California people all the time, a lot of these goals are public goods, public good goals that will be good for all the people of New York.
Has there been any talk about moving those costs off the rate base to the tax base? Because paying for things through ratepayers is the most regressive, conceivable way to pay for anything. Has there been any talk of moving any of these costs out and just paying for them with the more progressive state tax system?
Doreen Harris
What was California’s answer? I know you know — I’m just kidding.
David Roberts
I don’t remember. Which I think should tell you there were words, but I don’t remember.
Doreen Harris
I’m just curious. Always looking to learn from others.
David Roberts
They’re thinking about it. It’s an intriguing idea.
Doreen Harris
So it’s kind of harkening back to what I was saying before, that there are a lot of ways to pay for energy systems. And I agree electricity costs have become a very significant flashpoint that we’re all needing to reconcile. It is interesting that these costs are those that are very difficult also to plan around. You get your bill, you have to pay your bill. And it is the case that I think we need to be more consumer-centric generally with respect to utility bills. However, let me be clear about one very important thing — and in fact, our energy plan is really talking about this in some detail — which is the fact that we have infrastructure, in the case of New York, we have many, many, many decades-old infrastructure that needs to be invested in.
I mean, we have power generating stations that are 70-plus years old, we have pipes in certain service territories that are nearing a century old. We have investments that we need to be making irrespective of the energy transition. And, in fact, when we really layered the energy transition on top of normal costs, it’s like low single-digit percentages different. And, in fact, the Public Service Commission just issued a report revealing just this, that it is a relatively small amount, certainly today and even into our analysis well into the future. But it is the case that when you look at the ways in which we pay for this infrastructure, we do need to be looking at tax policy, we need to be looking at other sources of funding.
Of course, federal was a big, big benefit for the state of New York that we’re now really reckoning with. But even as I had mentioned, the investment that the governor announced earlier this year, it’s reflective of the fact that we recognize that an energy burden is a real thing that we need to reconcile.
David Roberts
Well, here’s a political question which you probably won’t want to answer, but I’m going to ask it anyway and give you so you can refuse to answer it. It is the fact that climate policy is not a huge percentage of cost, as you say. And I think people who understand the mechanisms of climate policy and the larger mechanism know that and know that there are clean energy and climate policies that can directly reduce bills. But it’s very easy for the public to think otherwise. And do you worry that when Governor Hochul backs off congestion pricing because it might be too costly, backs off cap-and-invest because it might be too costly, that she’s out there sending the signal climate policy is costly, “I’m hesitant to do it because I don’t want to impose a bunch of costs on you.” Do you worry that that’s communicating to New Yorkers and Americans generally, “Yes, climate policy raises your bills and ergo you should probably be hostile to it.” Are you worried about people getting that impression from what’s happening in New York?
Doreen Harris
Well, she didn’t back off on congestion pricing. Just saying —
David Roberts
She halved it.
Doreen Harris
Okay, but we have congestion pricing.
David Roberts
It rules, by the way, and it’s working amazingly.
Doreen Harris
But yes, we need to do a better job of explaining what it is we’re even talking about. I think that it is absolutely true that most people have no idea what their electricity bill is comprised of, why it exists the way it is. Volatility is like another very real issue that we’re dealing with. And I’m sure that most New Yorkers would not understand that that volatility is largely driven by the fossil fuels that we’re relying on that is driving our generation, the majority of our generation, and therefore our prices that we pay every month. We have an educational issue that we have to rectify.
I would agree, the politicization of costs and of energy as a general matter is something that is new for us. We’re not used to being the proverbial price of eggs. Right. We are reckoning with that in a way that the story will continue to play out. But one of the things that we produced in our draft state energy plan was an affordability study. And I think the other thing NYSERDA needs to do more of is explain more clearly how New Yorkers can actually lower their energy costs. Many, many New Yorkers — we looked at myriad sort of use cases across the state, from a rural upstate consumer to a low-income New York City consumer — and by all accounts, there’s operating costs to be saved if one converts from fossil fuels to an electric residence and, you know, transportation systems. But at the same time, we also recognize that there is an upfront cost in making that transition. And that is our other job, is to aid in realizing that transition on behalf of New Yorkers. And that’s going to require investments. But the topic of investment is one that needs to be better explained as well.
David Roberts
Speaking of money and investment, this came up in a California context too. And I would also like your take on it. One of the things all states are dealing with is this rush of data centers that want to hook up giant inflexible loads, which, you know, depending on how they’re hooked up and how they’re run, could either help the grid or hurt the grid. But one notable thing about the hyperscalers who want to build all these data centers is that they are very wealthy. They come bearing giant bags of money, and they’re in a hurry. Given the drying up of federal funds, you look around, who’s got bags of money? They do. Have you thought at all about trying to get investment out of them in exchange for hookup, in exchange for room on your grid?
Doreen Harris
I’ve totally thought about that. Well, again, when we look at our load growth as a state, this plan, our energy plan, is looking at approximately 20, 25% load growth over that planning horizon.
David Roberts
Over what time?
Doreen Harris
15 years. And we know that we already were planning for the load associated with transportation and building electrification, which is actually a very different load to plan for than these large loads that you’re referring to. And now our energy plan is really layered on the interconnection queue that exists primarily in upstate, but also here in the city around those large loads.
Now in New York, they take various forms. We have a major investment in the central New York area by Micron focusing on semiconductor manufacturing. And this is a huge, major... Well, it’ll be a multi-phase project, but it will ultimately be built out over the coming decade-plus. I would say economic development loads of all sorts are a really interesting opportunity to build generation to serve that load, both because of perhaps a willingness to pay. I’m not sure they all have that willingness to pay — just for clarity, it does seem to be somewhat dependent on the sector.
David Roberts
Well, put them in a vice and squeeze a little bit, let’s find out.
Doreen Harris
Well, but also it is the case that I think is a very useful way to sort of put the tools of the state behind that partnership that ultimately could lower cost, to your point, for consumers. Even if the entire project is not funded by a load, if there is a sort of partnership that can be forged, I think it is a very good thing to be considering. You know, NYSERDA is the primary buyer of new electricity generation in the state of New York. Like, actually, we’re the only buyers so much these days. So we have a really interesting opportunity to sort of pair our buying power with the buying power of others, but also with the technologies that can really be most useful to those types of loads.
And I don’t know if we’re ever going to talk about nuclear, but we probably will.
David Roberts
I was just about, literally just about to. So let’s do that. So Governor Hochul has said, you know, even as like offshore wind is getting smooshed and utility-scale wind and solar behind schedule, the governor has proposed building a giant nuclear plant. Now I’ll just say 100% of the evidence from the last several decades of experience suggests that that project will take way longer than anyone says it will take and will cost way more than anyone says it will take and will end up... You know, I don’t have to reprise the history of the nuclear industry.
The last example we have is in Georgia, which I don’t... I stopped tracking the cost overruns after a while. I don’t know what they ended up amounting to, but it’s a huge burden on Georgia ratepayers now. So why, why — like why, why? What reason do we have to think that a giant nuclear megaproject is going to be anything but what all the other nuclear megaprojects have been for the last several decades?
Doreen Harris
All righty. First of all, I think it’s important to note that we have not arrived at a technology solution that we are advancing with respect to her one-gigawatt directive to the New York Power Authority, it does not necessarily need to be an AP1000. It could be several smaller projects. It could be a lot of different things. That story has not been written yet with respect to how that...
David Roberts
So she means a gigawatt cumulatively, not necessarily like a gigawatt plant?
Doreen Harris
At least. So that’s point number one. Point number two is if we have learned anything over the last 10 to 20 years, and certainly if I have learned anything over the last 10 to 20 years, we need a diverse set of energy resources upon which to rely. Because if you had asked me five years ago if our offshore wind industry would be struggling in the way they are, I wouldn’t have said yes. Right?
So we need diversity and we need to keep multiple balls in the air in order to achieve a reliable, affordable clean grid of the future. So nuclear power in theory is one of those diverse resources. But are we taking a measured approach through a multi-year planning process and ultimately an order book? They talk about order books, right? Like we’re working with a number of other states to develop not only standardization with respect to technology — because there are many, many, many, many designs one could rely on — but also the longer-term vision to allow for the first of a kind to become something of a, as you said, a reduced cost for consumers.
But it is at the same time that there are other resources that we’re advancing too. The state energy plan takes a very clear-eyed look at the ways in which we believe we need to maintain our current fossil infrastructure, perhaps repower certain facilities while we continue that renewable buildout. But we need some of these emissions-free resources, nuclear being a great example of them, as options moving forward.
David Roberts
And geothermal too, just to tie the pods together.
Doreen Harris
That’s right.
David Roberts
Tie the pods together here today.
Doreen Harris
And of course, look, we saw what happened even under the Biden administration with respect to the ADVANCE Act, which really opened, as I said, kind of like solar. You have to take a look at where the market is. And when you see bipartisan federal support through the ADVANCE Act for these types of technologies, you have to say that the market will follow that lead and we want to be part of it. So it is not to say that we would ever believe New York could do this alone. We need to see where the market is. And I’ll tell you, I was just at a nuclear event earlier today and reflecting on what can happen in a year.
It’s really quite extraordinary. But we’re also clear-eyed about the challenges that exist, given our own history. I started my career in a nuclear power plant. I’m very familiar with the risks and the challenges. But I am here to say that technology evolution is one that we really want to be part of.
David Roberts
Interesting. Okay, one final question and maybe a question or two before we wrap up. There’s this lawsuit. So you have all these very ambitious goals, and then sort of like in the years since you passed them, there have been a number of adverse developments, as you say, at the federal level, particularly loss of offshore wind, the loss of just money, the loss of the transportation standards. The goal looks much more difficult now than it did then, but it is in statute. You have to do it, and it’s not getting done. And so there’s this lawsuit now. I know obviously you can’t sort of speak to the details of the lawsuit, but I’m just wondering how you’re navigating this kind of rock and a hard place between the statutes and the activists that are suing you to hit those goals and all these headwinds.
I don’t know what to say about that. But how do you feel about all that?
Doreen Harris
Well, I can’t comment on litigation. I can just say that I choose to look at this in a different way than you, clearly. I choose to look at it as we have demonstrated what it takes to be successful in advancing major infrastructure projects that require not only fortitude, but durable commitment and time. Now, we’ve also demonstrated the challenges of the energy transition, and I am also objectively knowing that this is not simple and it is occurring on a different timeframe, certainly than that which we would have anticipated at the time of the Climate Act signing. We have to just be okay with those differences, as far as I’m concerned.
I do not see this as anything other than the reality of major changes in the way society operates as opposed to an impossible outcome. And I agree we’ve got to start carrying that message. We’ve got a lot of successes that we can demonstrate as a state that we wouldn’t have had it not been for these goals, had it not been for the level of ambition that they established. I know we acted a lot, you know, in major ways we changed the way we worked at NYSERDA because of it. So I think it has value and I don’t want that to be lost on, you know, whether you hit a number or you don’t hit a number, it has more to do with the level of ambition that you’re solving for.
The State Energy Plan will be binding in the sense that state energy offices, agencies will need to consider it in their decision-making. And the Climate Act will be where it is — like, we are conducting bottoms-up planning to preserve and expand the benefits of the energy system for New Yorkers. And that’s my remit as the chair of the State Energy Planning Board.
David Roberts
All right, we have time for, I think, one or two questions.
First Audience Question
Hi, I’m Dave Velasquez, a climate-tech investor and also a New York City resident. So my question is, as a New York City resident and as somebody who lives in a co-op here in New York, a shareholder, I know Local Law 97 is something that has been... it’s basically the goal to decarbonize in the built environment here in New York City. And I’m curious how NYSERDA is helping to support that, you know, provide information and support those buildings that are trying to decarbonize.
Doreen Harris
Yes, great question. Looking around this beautiful city, it is, it’s one of the biggest challenges that we have is these buildings. And of course, Local Law 97 moving forward in the pace that it is. You know, we as a state, you know, this is a city versus a state ecosystem. But from a statewide perspective, we have a variety of pieces of work that are underway that, in the first instance, can fund some of these upgrades that are necessary through utility programs as well as NYSERDA. We have a new... We’ve been investing about $7 billion in energy efficiency and building electrification.
We now have a coming five-year tranche that will be invested against that as well. So that’s kind of point number one. Point number two, though, is on a statewide basis, we have been advancing different aspects of this building energy transition. We’ve actually started, coming January, with a zero-emission new construction requirement as a state that will apply, again, to low-rise buildings in the first instance and then a few years later, taller buildings. But one of the things that we know to be true — you and your co-op, not necessarily quite spot on — but like, you can construct these buildings in that manner far more easily than you can retrofit them.
So we’re actually super excited that we have the tools and resources to help support these buildings as we demonstrate the fact that they indeed are not only affordable, but people really like living in them. They’re quiet and clean and comfortable, but also these taller existing buildings — there’s a variety of market development initiatives that we have underway and Team NYSERDA can fill you in.
David Roberts
Is there work on the building code? On the state building code?
Doreen Harris
Absolutely. So this is through the code, the energy, and the building code.
Second Audience Question
Michael Downey with Energy Futures Initiative. We’re a clean energy think tank. One of the things that you hit on early in the conversation was some of the successes around distributed resources, community solar, et cetera. And then you’ve also talked about the need for a lot of these large loads to come on as quickly as possible, given that so much of the challenge that grid managers are facing today is about managing peak loads — so a few hours a year. Are you seeing any interest or starting to have conversations with some of these hyperscalers or other large loads about how to invest in deploying water heaters, other controllable loads at the residential/commercial level, to manage that peak load off-site?
Doreen Harris
Yeah, absolutely. There’s a number of proceedings at the New York Public Service Commission around this topic. I’m not the utility regulator, but it fundamentally is looking at just that. How can loads be more flexible, how can we use grid-enhancing technologies to get more out of the grid that we have, and ultimately how to use those loads in a more productive manner? Just like why you don’t want someone to charge their EV at peak, right? Like, it’s the macro version of that for a data center or others. Also, we have a very ambitious energy storage goal that we are now investing against, both from a retail, residential, and bulk perspective.
NYSERDA has a number of different programs that are heading toward a 6-gigawatt goal. Like, that’s going to be a big game changer, I think, in upstate New York in particular, from a bulk storage perspective, providing those same benefits, albeit not from the load perspective, but sort of complementary to the generation.
David Roberts
Are there VPPs in New York State? I think part of the question was about how to bring that spare household capacity to sort of apply to these macro problems.
Doreen Harris
Yes. So that’s what I was getting at with the Public Service Commission — we’re really making the consumer see value in those actions. Those are some of the rate designs that they’re looking at and technologies alike.
David Roberts
Got it.
Third Audience Question
Hi, Greg Remsen. I work at Luminary Labs, which is an innovation consultancy in New York City. Quick question about NYPA and if there’s anything exciting in the realm of public renewables that you could talk about or kind of like update us on?
David Roberts
Oh, right, I forgot to ask about that. You have this whole law, this whole program where you’re supposed to build public renewables. Who’s supposed to build them? Maybe give us a little 30-second background on that.
Doreen Harris
Well, it’s the alphabet soup of New York energy.
David Roberts
There are a lot of acronyms.
Doreen Harris
So the New York Power Authority is a sister authority to NYSERDA. They’re a public power utility who, via statute, now has formed and is executing against aspects of the Build Public Renewables Act, really focusing on using their own buying power, their own capacity, their capabilities as a public entity to further build out renewables. And so I don’t have their exact numbers underway, but it is the case that we have a bit of an interesting circumstance in which now NYPA is partnering with a variety of private sector developers with the intention to, I’d say, make more feasible the projects that they were already advancing and we would hope, as buyer at NYSERDA, more affordable. So that’s underway.
They report to their board quarterly. I always take a look at their pipeline of projects. They have a rather extensive pipeline of both large-scale distributed and now energy storage projects in addition to their nuclear objectives as well. So there’s a whole development aspect that NYPA is advancing through that statutory authority.
David Roberts
All right, we solved it.
Host
Thank you for, you know, putting up with David and standing up for New York State.
Doreen Harris
It’ll prepare me for January budget hearing. I’ll be ready. It’s all good. It’s all good. These are good questions to ask, right? It is not a simple situation that we find ourselves in. However, I really do want to say that, like, where I sit today, I want people to feel optimism that you live and work in a state like New York that is recognizing the challenges of the day, but also not backing down. So that’s where I am and happy to take the arrows. But ultimately, really good progress upon which to reflect. So, thanks for having me.
David Roberts
Thank you for being a good sport.
Thank you for listening to Volts. It takes a village to make this podcast work. Shout out, especially, to my super producer, Kyle McDonald, who makes me and my guests sound smart every week. And it is all supported entirely by listeners like you. So, if you value conversations like this, please consider joining our community of paid subscribers at volts.wtf. Or, leaving a nice review, or telling a friend about Volts. Or all three. Thanks so much, and I’ll see you next time.
In this episode, I talk with Seattle mayoral candidate Katie Wilson, a longtime transit and housing organizer who scored a surprise primary victory against the city’s establishment-friendly incumbent. Wilson makes the case for why her deep experience as a community organizer and coalition-builder is precisely the kind of leadership needed to restore faith in government and get big things done.
(PDF transcript)
(Active transcript)
Text transcript:
David Roberts
Hello, hello, hello everyone. This is Volts for October 15, 2025, “Seattle mayoral candidate Katie Wilson on governing a blue city in 2025.” I’m your host, David Roberts. There’s a big blue American city where an establishment-friendly Democratic incumbent mayor is being challenged by a progressive up-and-comer who scored a surprise victory in the primary by focusing on cost-of-living issues, especially housing and transportation costs, and attracting attention with youthful energy and a lively social media presence.
I know the one you’re thinking about, but I’m talking about the other one.
I’m talking about Seattle, Volts world headquarters, where progressive Katie Wilson, founder and longtime head of the Transit Riders Union, is taking on Bruce Harrell, the latest business-friendly placeholder in a series of them.
For Volts purposes, Harrell’s main sin is that a certain Seattle NIMBYism seems to be among his very few consistently held values. Even though his staff was reportedly ready to push an ambitious vision in Seattle’s latest comprehensive plan, he forced them instead to release a weak and stripped-down version where many new neighborhood centers — small areas where multi-story mixed-use development would be legalized — were removed, including the one in Harrell’s own neighborhood.
The comprehensive plan has recovered somewhat since then, but the point is Harrell will always be an anchor on the ambitions of Seattle’s municipal planners. Now more than ever, Seattle needs someone who will unleash and empower them.
So I am going to ask Katie Wilson, who has joined me here today, about her take on housing, the comprehensive plan, Seattle transit, public order, the threat of Trump, and much more. Enjoy.
All right then, with no further ado, Katie Wilson, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.
Katie Wilson
Great to be here.
David Roberts
Very excited. Got a ton of stuff I want to ask you about, but let’s start with, I bet, a question you’ve answered 400,000 times. First question on most people’s minds: you are coming from an organizing and activist background and so lack executive experience — basically, lack experience running a large organization. And it’s funny, I’ve heard Harrell challenge you on this before and I’ve heard you say that you’ll put your legislative record up next to his anytime, which is amusing since you haven’t actually been in government, but arguably have gotten more stuff done in government than Bruce Harrell has.
So just for Volts listeners who might not be familiar with this race, when you say that, what do you mean? Just give us a brief bit of history about the kinds of things that you’ve pushed at and gotten through city government.
Katie Wilson
Yeah, it was funny there was a big debate a few days ago, and the first question that I was asked by the moderators was something like, “You have no political experience.”
David Roberts
“What are you doing here?” I’ll just note, I’ll just note, because you probably won’t — but the tone in which people ask this particular question to female politicians tends to be slightly different than the tone they use with inexperienced male politicians.
Katie Wilson
Yeah, I believe that. I believe that. So, I have been a community organizer with the Transit Riders Union and a coalition builder for 14 years. And the work that we do, I would say, is all kind of loosely focused on issues of economic justice. We started out fighting for better public transit, for more affordable public transit, and have done a lot of work over the years on progressive revenue, on affordable housing, renter protections, higher minimum wages. And that work is pushing from the outside. So, yes, I’ve never been an elected official, but we’re talking about bringing together dozens of organizations, coordinating their efforts toward a piece of legislation often, or a program.
So early on, we built a coalition to win the ORCA LIFT Low Income Fare program, which now tens of thousands of transit riders around the region are able to ride for a dollar a ride instead of 2.75 or 3 bucks, and passed higher minimum wage laws in Tukwila, in Burien, in unincorporated King County. And a couple of those campaigns were citizens’ initiatives. So we gathered signatures to put a measure on the ballot that voters then voted on. And then others are legislation where we’re pushing elected officials. And I really think that the mayor’s comments and the way that a lot of people are talking about this in the race kind of shows a lack of understanding of power and how things get done.
Because as a community organizer, I know very well that the kind of legislation that we’re pushing through, we don’t start with a majority on the council that’s willing to do that. We’re starting with something that people are telling us, “You’re never going to get that passed. That’s going to anger the big businesses, that’s going to anger the landlords.” We have to do the work of building that coalition to push the elected officials and to build that public support through a media strategy. There’s a lot of pieces of a campaign, but it’s about getting to a point where a majority of council members, for example, feel that pressure and support from their constituents and from stakeholders, and then they’re willing to pass this piece of legislation which at the beginning maybe they wouldn’t have touched with a ten-foot pole.
So that’s how power works for a lot of these kind of transformative policies. And I don’t think that the mayor understands that. He kind of thinks, politicians hand things down from above.
David Roberts
Well, also — pardon me, I’m a Seattle native, so I’m going to editorialize a bit throughout this — but it does seem like we’ve had a series of mayors who view their job as mainly physically occupying the building. Like that’s “experience,” just being there. There’s not a lot getting done. But I will say one note of caution, and someone asked me about this online, it actually struck me as a good question. We have some experience in Seattle. A few years ago, Mike McGinn, who you may remember was a Sierra Club activist, the great hope of the Seattle left, Seattle elected him, but then he started sort of cracking heads and trying to do things.
And it looked to me like, well, two things; one is he might not have been as good at sort of legislative whispering as he was as an outsider. And two, Seattle’s sort of inch-deep appetite for progressivism kind of dried up and we reverted to our natural sort of small-c conservatism. “Oh, he’s actually doing stuff.” And then we voted him right out. So I think people remember that. So how do you think about that transition to executive leadership? What lessons do you take from his experience and what sort of style are you going to try to bring to that leadership role?
Because it is different than campaigning. And I know you’ve probably given this a lot of thought.
Katie Wilson
Yes. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there’s a number of things I’ll say here. So first of all, and I love Mike and, I’m not going to — I’m not going to try to explicitly distinguish myself from his style of leadership. But I do think that if you talk to anyone who knows both of us, I am a very different style of leader. And over the years in the work that I’ve done, it’s all very collaborative and it’s really about listening, bringing people together across differences. So we don’t always agree on everything.
And there’s obviously a difference. When you’re an advocate, when you’re an organizer coming from the outside, you’ve got a goal, you’re kind of assembling a coalition around that goal and you’ve got people that you’re opposed to. And you’re fighting hard. And it’s a very directional kind of thing.
David Roberts
Very clear.
Katie Wilson
Very clear. Yeah. And I think, in an executive position, the mayor — you’re the mayor for the whole city. And I think it’s very important for a mayor to be building kind of working relationships with everyone. Even if we’re not going to agree on everything. And, for example, the business community. A lot of the campaigns that I’ve run over the years have not been popular with some in the business community, at least big businesses. And — but, I’m reaching out. We’re having conversations. And I know that there are going to be issues that we don’t agree on, but others where we really have to work hand in glove for the good of the city.
And so I think that that kind of relationship building is very important and it’s something that I’m doing. I mean, I guess just to go back to the experience question a little bit. I think sometimes people have maybe an incorrect idea of what the job of the mayor is. The mayor’s not up there kind of personally managing 15,000 city employees. You’re assembling a team. And obviously you need to be very careful about how you’re choosing those top positions. And I’m very aware that I’m going to need people on my team who have deep experience in city government.
Who knows the ins and outs of how the bureaucracy works. I know that I’m going to need people on my team who have credibility and relationships in the business community and speak that language. So it really is about assembling that team. And I feel very confident about my ability to do that, partly because of the work that I’ve done over the years. And the fact that I do know the landscape. In a lot of ways, I think that I’m probably better suited to step into this role than if I were off managing a Fortune 500 company for the last 15 years.
David Roberts
Well, I mean, again, to editorialize, I agree, because this — I’ve been doing this for 20 years now. I’ve spoken to a lot of politicians and I will just say that, there seems to be a sort of consensus, a coalition-building, supportive, role that tends to get more stuff done. But it’s the kind of showboating that attracts more attention. In politics, if you want, you could succeed in politics by just being a peacock, whether you get anything done or not, at least if you’re a man, but at least just in my experience, talking to people in state government, it is these sort of quiet people in the background who are building teams and not sticking themselves out on the poster who get more stuff done. I’ll just say that.
Katie Wilson
Absolutely. And the other thing that’s been interesting in this campaign, when I stepped into it, I was aware that things weren’t going great on the inside of City Hall. But having been in this campaign for the last seven-plus months, I hear a lot of stories, and it is very clear that the level of dysfunction inside City Hall right now is pretty darn bad. And this is one of the reasons why PROTEC17, the largest union of city employees, sole-endorsed my campaign actually before the primary, taking a very big risk because their members are living that dysfunction every single day.
David Roberts
Yeah, that was striking. There’s been leaks over the years about the internal culture there, which goes back to exactly what I was saying — peacocking. And not doing the work of sort of building the relationships.
Katie Wilson
I believe really strongly in good government. And some of the dysfunction predates this administration. And it just sounds like there’s been a lot of breakdowns of the kind of communication and collaboration that needs to happen among city departments, between the mayor’s office and city departments, in order to actually be effective at delivering things for the people of Seattle. And we need to get that right. I think it’s very bad when people start losing faith in the ability of their government to deliver for them. And that’s kind of what’s happened. I mean, it’s almost just as important as the kind of policy goals of my administration is just getting the government working well.
I mean, what’s this, four deputy mayors? No one knows who to talk to.
David Roberts
This is much on everyone’s mind with the Abundance book and everything else, this sort of crisis of governance in blue cities. And it’s not really about wanting the right things. It really is about competence and execution. So let’s turn to some substance. So the Seattle Comprehensive Plan has sort of been worked on for a while. It’s kind of up for a vote. It’s very hard for people to follow exactly what state it’s in and when it’s done and what done means. But I want to pull the lens back to the bigger question of Seattle land use.
And I’ll just say I’ve always wanted to ask someone in government this and you — maybe you’re going to be in government. So to me, the original sin of Seattle land use is we started out as this kind of series of villages, these little suburban villages, and only sort of later got kind of stitched together into a city. And so consequently we have these giant swathes of single-family homes where no one will allow anyone to build anything else. There are some single-family home areas in Seattle which have lower population density now than they did in the 1970s and 80s.
It’s crazy. Even as the population of Seattle grows and grows and grows. So what do we do with all the new people? We channel them into the corridors in between these swaths of single-family homes, these big four-lane, five-lane roads, and we put all the new density there, we put all the new people there and we call them “urban villages,” which to me is borderline obscene. No one in the history of the universe would purposefully build a village around a four-lane road. Big roads are supposed to be on the edge of the village, not running right through the center.
And furthermore, the urban villages only extend one block on either side of the corridor. So it’s literally just one busy street that we’re calling a village. And we’re channeling all these new — often sort of poorer, middle class or working class people who come to our city — we channel them along these corridors so that they can buffer the people in the single-family homes from all the noise and the pollution of the roads. And to me, that is sort of the backbone of Seattle land use and utterly unjust and grotesque and a horrible way to build a nice city.
It’s just not nice. You don’t build nice places around four-lane roads. It’s just go to any other city in Europe or anywhere. So I want to know, how do we get at that? That seems to me the core, very difficult to dislodge that pattern. But until we do, until we break out of that pattern, everything else seems a little bit nibbling around the edge. So A, do you agree with that assessment? And then B, what would you like to do about it?
Katie Wilson
Yeah, I think I do agree with that assessment. And I’m coming at this too from the perspective of someone who has been a renter the whole time that I lived in Seattle. I’ve lived in a number of different places. And where I live now is in Capitol Hill, one of the densest neighborhoods in the city. And I live in one of these big old brick apartment buildings which probably you couldn’t build there today. And it’s not on a busy four-lane road. It’s beautiful, it’s relatively quiet, and it’s really a magical neighborhood where we have so many apartment buildings, multifamily housing, big old trees.
Street trees. And it’s the kind of —
David Roberts
That’s rare in Seattle.
Katie Wilson
Well, that’s what I’m saying is we, more people should have the opportunity to live in a neighborhood like that. And instead what we are doing with the comprehensive plan is, as you say, kind of concentrating new multifamily apartment construction along these busy arterials where it’s not safe and the air quality is not great and is noisy. And so I do think that’s a big problem. And, and also, as you say, it’s hard not to crack. I mean, I think that part of this is broadening that walkshed or that area in those urban villages or those neighborhood centers where multifamily construction, apartment-style construction is allowed.
So that’s one piece of it, which doesn’t kind of entirely get at the problem, but at least helps a little bit. And so maybe it’s a five-minute walk from transit stop or whatever, but it can’t just be that one-block radius. And then of course we need also more neighborhood centers. And that’s something that the original plans drawn up by staff called for — many more neighborhood centers — that ended up in the final plan.
David Roberts
And just briefly, this is sort of a quasi-technical term here in Seattle. So just describe briefly what a neighborhood center is.
Katie Wilson
I mean that’s going to be basically an area where there’s going to be some, I think up to five-story construction allowed maybe. And now I’m also admit to not being 100% in the weeds on every aspect of the complex.
David Roberts
And mixed use?
Katie Wilson
Mixed use, yes, exactly. Yeah.
David Roberts
And I believe Bruce Harrell, our current mayor, before that plan was released, went through and took about half those out.
Katie Wilson
Correct. Including his own neighborhood, right?
David Roberts
Yes, including in his own neighborhood. And I try to explain this to people who aren’t from Seattle, why someone would oppose a neighborhood center because they just seem to me a little cluster in the middle of your neighborhood where you can have a shop and some apartments — just seem to me so puppies and grandma, who could not want that? Why would you oppose that? Why do people oppose those?
Katie Wilson
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s kind of the disruption of the construction, the fear about the kind of buildings that are going to go in there, perhaps, the aesthetics, maybe, maybe some aesthetic concerns with having these big apartment-style buildings going on or condos and maybe, for some people, concerns about the people who are going to live there. Yes, maybe these are lower income people and they don’t like what they imagine that might mean.
David Roberts
So — though they don’t say that out loud, it’s always about trees. It’s always about the frickin’ trees.
Katie Wilson
At the same time I think that there’s — we need to build coalitions. And so I think that when people express concerns, we have to assume that some of that’s in good faith and that people have some concerns about livability and what it’s going to feel like to be in their neighborhood. And the more that we can present and develop with people a vision of what this could be that they can see themselves in and their children in and they can understand the way things will go if we don’t do this right. And the continuing high housing costs that are going to impoverish our city in so many other ways.
David Roberts
So are there — are there specific, the comprehensive plan that’s before us, are there specific changes you’d like to make to it? Do you have any sort of particular agenda with regard to the plan? I’m not clear whether it’s done or there are still parts to be done. There are phases of doneness.
Katie Wilson
Yeah, there are phases of doneness. And again, I’m not coming in here as someone who knows all the details and has them on the tip of my tongue, but the bulk of the plan is being passed this year, and I believe that there — I mean, there is annually the chance to reopen and make changes. And so done is not done-done.
David Roberts
Right, right, right.
Katie Wilson
And I believe that there’s a discussion around adding some more neighborhood centers, which has kind of been punted to next year. So there’s some kind of analysis going on and then there will be a juncture next year where it will kind of make sense to reopen that conversation. And, I am at a point where this is very important stuff and I am not afraid if I feel that we have the public support, if we’ve been able to build the public support and we have the will on the council to make some changes to what’s just been decided, I think that’s a perfectly legitimate thing to be thinking about in the next few years.
David Roberts
So let’s talk about housing then. There’s an interesting, I think, interesting and also quite contentious, I would say, sort of tension on the left between this sort of new movement of abundance YIMBY — the YIMBY people who say “The main problem with housing, the main reason it’s so expensive, is just that there’s not enough of it. And the main thing we need to be doing above all else is just building more, more, more, more, more, more, build more, faster.” And then there’s another faction of the left who is much more concerned with, well, “We want to build certain kinds of — We want to build social housing or when we let a developer build private housing, we want to charge them a fee that we then put to social housing or charge them a fee that we put toward this or that.”
Basically, much more sort of concerned with regulating the kinds of housing that get built. This is a fruitful tension, I think. But I wonder how you think about that. What is your housing priority? Do you just want mostly to accelerate building or are you concerned more with what kind gets built? How do you think about that balance?
Katie Wilson
This is a great question, and I think the answer for me is really all of the above. I think that you’re right that that tension exists on the left and has existed for quite some time. And is sharpening now with, yes, with the “abundance” agenda. But I will say that I think here in Seattle, I think we’ve done a better job on the left than in many cities of kind of not having that tension become a problem. I think in Seattle we have a fairly strong kind of urbanist left that also understands that just building more is not enough.
And I think we have a little bit less of the kind of “NIMBY left” that is anti-developer in a way that ends up being anti-new housing in the private market.
David Roberts
Well, we’ve got some.
Katie Wilson
I’m not saying we have none. I’m not saying we have none. I’m just saying that I think —
David Roberts
I’ve seen them.
Katie Wilson
For sure, for sure. But I just think, for example, compared to San Francisco, I think we’ve done a decent job at squaring that circle. So for me, it’s yes, we absolutely need to be making it easier to build more housing. We need the private market to build a lot more housing around the city in order to address our housing shortage. And one of the big reasons why we’ve seen these astronomical rent increases over the last 10, 15, 20 years is because housing production in the private market has not kept pace with the growing population and especially the influx of higher-paid tech workers.
But in addition, that is not enough. And another thing that we’ve seen happen over the last, I mean, maybe let’s say 50 years is federal disinvestment from subsidized housing programs of various kinds.
David Roberts
That’s not getting better.
Katie Wilson
And that’s not getting better. But we just have to accept that we can build a lot of housing and still the market is not in any kind of near or medium or perhaps even long-term scenario going to provide housing for the lowest-income households. So that means that we do need to do more both on the public side of investing in affordable housing. And there are a number of ways to do that. And social housing is one of those ways.
David Roberts
I guess if I’m thinking about abundance-coded critiques, there’s the “What kind of housing?” And then there’s also the focus on process, which I think really does apply to Seattle. The critique being there’s, with design review, oh my God, we could just do a whole pod about design review, but with design review, permitting, red tape, environmental review, etc. etc. etc. These are all — all sort of examined individually, might be socially minded, might have good goals in mind, but you add them all together and it just makes a tangle which makes doing anything really slow.
And I’ve watched, followed big buildings through the process here in Seattle and it’s wild. It just takes four or five years. At any given point in the process, one person can sort of wander in and be like, “I don’t like the brick on that facade.” And that’s another year of review and revision. It’s crazy. How do you think about that problem?
Katie Wilson
I think that’s a real problem. And it’s not just a problem in the housing world, it’s a problem in transportation too. Thinking about the Sound Transit projects and the kind of reviews that those have to go through. And, obviously a lot of that is well intentioned or at least, you want some oversight. But I do think that there’s a strong argument for really putting some effort at the city level into figuring out how we can streamline those processes and even do away with processes that aren’t really serving the public interest.
So I’m very interested in figuring that out because, yeah, we just can’t have — I mean, all of those delays add to the cost, add to the frustration, add to the loss of trust in government’s ability to deliver.
David Roberts
But each of those delays represents a constituency which is sort of on your side, sort of on the left. So this is a matter of giving hard words to friends — not to enemies.
Katie Wilson
For sure. And I don’t want to pretend that there’s not hard questions there too when you get in the weeds. So for example, there’s the MHA program. This is our Mandatory Housing Affordability program, which basically requires certain kinds of developments to either have some below-market-rate housing on site or pay into a fund to build affordable housing. And I think there’s some real questions there. You’ll hear from — there was a study that kind of seemed to suggest that that was depressing development in zones which are affected by that program. But it’s kind of disputed.
David Roberts
It stands to reason any additional fee, any additional fee or delay is on some incremental marginal level going to make things take longer.
Katie Wilson
Maybe, maybe. But there’s trade-offs there. So, I’m not sold on the argument that we shouldn’t have that program. Because I think also you can’t take what the big developers say at face value because they’re certainly going to say that anything that you’re requiring them to do or to pay is going to result in less housing. But there are some complicated questions in the weeds there about how we analyze what’s actually going on. Because we also — also capitalism, we’ve got big developers making a lot of profits and I’m sure they would love the answer just to be, “Let them do whatever the heck they want with no process.” But that’s also not the answer.
David Roberts
So let’s talk then about transit. You’re a transit advocate going way back, I have some substantive transit questions, but just at first, I sort of traced the fight over congestion pricing in New York and it was sort of remarkable watching the public discourse around that in that everybody who you heard from is basically a wealthy person who doesn’t take transit. Like that entire debate was conducted among people who probably never subway into Manhattan, despite the fact that more people do than don’t. Like that was the majority. And I just wonder, how has being an actual transit rider — you don’t own a car as I understand it
Katie Wilson
Correct.
David Roberts
— sort of affected how you think about that. How deeply do you think that matters?
Katie Wilson
I mean, I think that matters a lot. Because the experience that I have getting around the city on a daily basis — and to be transparent, so I have a two-year-old and before she was born, my primary mode of transportation was actually bicycle. And the reason that it was bicycle instead of transit is that you go on Google Maps or whatever and figure out how long it’s going to take you to get somewhere. Riding your bike is almost always significantly faster than transit.
David Roberts
Yes.
Katie Wilson
And so now as a mother of a young child, we take the bus and the train all over on a daily basis. And it’s great, it’s fun, and also it takes a really long time. And so you think about Seattle as a growing city and people are going to keep moving here for all kinds of reasons. And we have this problem of geometry where we can’t just keep adding more cars to the road. And so really, for everyone’s sake, we need to turn the city into a place where more people can do what my family does, which is live without a car or live without driving most of the time.
And it’s hard because when you’re expecting people to switch from driving to transit, if it takes three or four or five times as long to take transit as driving, that’s a real problem. So anyway, that’s just my perspective as a transit rider, I just have that personal experience of, you’re waiting for the bus and it doesn’t come and then you’re waiting half an hour and it’s very, very demoralizing.
David Roberts
Or if you try to bike your kids around, I mean, it’s —
Katie Wilson
Doesn’t feel safe.
David Roberts
It’s genuinely terrifying a lot of times, genuinely dangerous on a lot of Seattle streets. So what are your sort of priorities then? Transit priorities? What are the top three things that you want to go after, transit-wise in Seattle?
Katie Wilson
I would say that — and obviously, the city doesn’t directly run our transit systems. With the exception of the streetcar. We have King County Metro, we have Sound Transit, which is a multi-county agency that runs our light rail system.
David Roberts
And complicates everything.
Katie Wilson
Yes, but I would say, I mean, where the city has a lot of control is over kind of infrastructure — bus lanes, shelters, seating, and signal priority. The city, because of its control over the right of way, does have a lot of ability to make our transit system work better and more efficiently. And so I definitely want to use that capability. And we also do purchase bus service from Metro. And so we actually have a funding measure that will be up for renewal next year. And potentially we could think about expanding it to purchase bus service from Metro.
I’ll say that another thing that I and the Transit Riders Union have been in support of for some years, but haven’t managed to get across the finish line, is passing legislation that would require at least large employers to subsidize transit passes for their employees. And, this is kind of an equity issue, but it’s also about how do we just get more people riding the bus and the train. And, right now, if you work for Amazon as a coder or you work for Starbucks in their headquarters as a tech worker, you get a fully subsidized transit pass. But if you work as a Starbucks barista or you work as a cashier at Whole Foods, which is owned by Amazon, you’re not getting any transit benefit.
So this is really something which could get a lot of lower-wage workers in our city having that employer-paid transit pass in their hands.
David Roberts
Maybe this is too in the weeds, but one of the sort of perpetual questions, dilemmas in transit is if you had a fixed pool of money, would you rather increase frequency or coverage? In other words, do you want to put more bus stops in more places or do you think more frequent buses at current stops would be a priority?
Katie Wilson
It’s a little hard for me to answer that question in the abstract. Because it depends a little bit — so for example, I live pretty near the G line, relatively new RapidRide line. Which is amazing. And there is kind of a trade-off there where there are fewer stops than you would see in more of a local service line. But on the other hand, it’s faster and it comes very frequently and it’s great. So I don’t know, it kind of is a little bit case by case, but we need — I mean, I really believe in building, building out that RapidRide network where we have these lines. The ideal is that you’re not having to look up when the bus is going to come because there’s always going to be a bus coming soon.
And so we need to build out that network. But then in addition, that does need to be supplemented by more local service which stops in more places and gets people into their neighborhoods and kind of provides that last little bit. So I don’t know, it’s always just a balancing act. And again, Seattle, the city doesn’t generally make those kind of in-the-weeds decisions as much. We’d have to kind of work with Metro on that.
David Roberts
Well, we do buy the service for Metro, which means everything this comes back to money. And as I understand it, we’re facing a bit of a fiscal cliff. This is the term that’s flying around. Transit systems all over the US are facing this. Our government is in sort of structural deficit already. And then there’s specifically this transit cliff coming up. So where do you find more money? Have you thought about any transit improvement costs money? Where do you think about finding money for that?
Katie Wilson
Yeah, I mean, this is pretty scary because as you say, it’s the transit agencies, it’s local government. Seattle has its own budget shortfall. King County has a budget shortfall. Metro has a fiscal cliff.
David Roberts
Washington, the US.
Katie Wilson
Yes. And then, Sound Transit. They’ve got a $40 billion kind of deficit compared to what they thought. I mean, it’s very scary. So there’s no good, quick answer here. But the big picture answer is that here in Washington state, we still have the second most regressive tax system in the country. So we’ve got a lot of wealthy folks who are —
David Roberts
Oh, I thought we were first. Who — who took our spot?
Katie Wilson
Oh, yeah, you didn’t hear the news. So in the — in the last couple years, we’ve — now Florida has the most regressive tax.
David Roberts
Oh, well.
Katie Wilson
So we’ve been eclipsed. We’re no longer number one. And you know why that is? So it’s because we have now a statewide capital gains tax. And it’s also because of Seattle’s JumpStart tax, which I’m proud of my work to help design and pass. And those two taxes together have moved us from number one to number two in terms of —
David Roberts
So we’re now the 49th most progressive tax system in the country. Awesome. Awesome. We’re moving in the right direction. That’s one thing you can say that puts Seattle government in this vice. It’s my whole life. Anything good it wants to do, it has to draw on regressive funding sources to do it. So it’s like this constant — progressives are in this constant sort of, damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation here. What about Sound Transit? I know it’s its own agency. Seattle has limited control over it.
You are, as I understand it, on the board of light rail. My main question about light rail, I won’t go off on my whole long rant complaint, but to me, it was just insane to spend billions of dollars building this thing and then just to put it along the interstate, just to make it basically a park-and-ride commute vehicle, which is just the lowest use of a transit system. What I mean is, you’re sacrificing all that. If you put the stations out in the neighborhoods, you know this, they grow.
You grow a community around them, you create tax revenue, you create more housing — but if you put them all along the interstate, you sacrifice all of that. And that’s mostly what we did.
Katie Wilson
Totally.
David Roberts
The one exception might be this station in Ballard. But of course, that’s — I don’t even know what, 2035 or some ridiculous distance from us. So I just — my question is, is there any prospect, is there any way that that Ballard line of Sound Transit could happen sooner? Is there a tool, a mechanism that could make that happen?
Katie Wilson
It’s a good question and probably my honest answer is I don’t know yet. And as mayor, I will have a seat on the Sound Transit Board. But there is also a lot that the city can do to make Sound Transit projects happen faster and less over budget. I’m not going to promise anything more than that, but the city can be more creative at actually using our right of way. My understanding of the way that it’s often done now is that the city ends up trying to cobble together kind of purchases of private property and is kind of reluctant to actually use our right of way.
David Roberts
Which makes every property owner veto over the whole system.
Katie Wilson
Which is part of why things take so long. And also our permitting processes — I understand that our kind of fire code is weird and different or something. And there’s all kinds of in-the-weeds things where the city could really be a much more active partner in trying to make these projects move faster. And currently we’re just not doing that. And actually, the current mayor and his administration have contributed to slowing things down by suggesting alternate station locations that have to be shot down and things like that.
So I really do think that the city can be a better partner to Sound Transit in getting this stuff done. Now, I’m not going to promise that that means that Ballard’s going to happen in 2030 instead of 2035, but —
David Roberts
I mean, you would think that there are so many big tech businesses that sort of located themselves in Ballard kind of on the promise that they were going to get transit. And now all those employees are stranded there. There’s not really a good way to get there. You’d think they would be more active trying to push this thing along.
Katie Wilson
Yeah, well, they need someone to organize them, I guess.
David Roberts
There you go. There you go. One other transportation question that we have — like many US cities, I think we have these lofty goals about pedestrian safety and traffic safety that we are just not meeting.
Katie Wilson
Yeah.
David Roberts
And I live up on near North Aurora, which is just grim for a lot of reasons, but mainly it’s this highway. It’s a highway that runs right through Seattle, basically. And as far as I can tell, Seattle has decided there are too many deaths. We need to do something about it. But it can’t not make it a highway. It’s trying to be a residential street and a highway at the same time. And so what we’ve come up with is let’s put some trees down the median. To make it mildly more aesthetically appealing. But the problem is it’s a city street and a highway and those two things just don’t go together well.
So I’m wondering, is there something bigger we can do on places like that, where the safety is terrible, the safety record is terrible. There’s all these promises. It just seems like that’s insoluble. As long as we want to keep a bunch of urban highways running through our city, you just can’t make an urban highway nice to live by. Those things are incommensurate. I wonder how you think about that North Aurora project and projects like it.
Katie Wilson
Yeah. I’ve been really impressed by the work of the Aurora Reimagined Coalition, which has done a lot of kind of visioning around what Aurora could look like. And, and then we have some funding. I believe it’s $50 million from the state legislature that is supposed to be used.
David Roberts
Which is in danger of going away because they’re not doing anything with it.
Katie Wilson
Because there’s not the political will to really implement this and say, look, we’re going to envision how this could be transformed into a place that is safe for pedestrians and for cyclists and where you might want to hang out.
David Roberts
All those visions are incommensurate with it being a highway. And SDOT, as I understand it, the Seattle Department of Transportation, insists on keeping it a highway. So I wonder if you — if you can cut that Gordian knot.
Katie Wilson
Yeah, I mean, I think. And, I’m not the mayor yet, so I don’t have access to all the kind of internal debates and trade-offs that I’m sure have been discussed. But, at some point it becomes, we have to. Again, we have this funding from the state legislature on the assumption that we are trying to turn this into a safer street and a livable street. And so, I mean, I think that it requires that kind of vision from the top to say, “Look, this is the direction we’re moving in and it’s not going to be popular with everyone, but we’re doing it.”
David Roberts
Well, quickly about SDOT, just because it comes up a lot. You talk to some people in Seattle, they’re just, “Seattle Department of Transportation is utterly car-brained. All they think about is throughput, basically, car throughput. That’s what they think streets are for. They don’t let you do anything to streets or roads if it’s going to reduce throughput.” And that’s sort of the original sin. Everybody’s trying to work around them. And then you hear from other people, “Oh, there’s a lot of people in SDOT who would like to do better, but who are basically not being allowed to by their mayor.”
So I wonder if you — I mean, maybe you don’t have the visibility to determine which of those is true yet, but, what would you do about SDOT? Sort of just reorienting it.
Katie Wilson
Well, I believe, and also know from talking to people, there’s a ton of wonderful people in SDOT, dedicated public servants who share this vision of a city where people traveling by all modes are safe. And this vision of mode shift, too. I think when we’re thinking about throughput, I mean, obviously, we do need to think about throughput. But it’s also having that bigger vision of how are we shifting the way that people are getting around. And Seattle’s even articulated ambitious goals for mode shift, I think, from 2019 to 2030, which we’re definitely, definitely not on track for.
David Roberts
We love ambitious goals around here.
Katie Wilson
We love articulating goals and then — and then just kind of not even publishing the data that would tell us how we’re doing. So that’s kind of what’s going on now.
David Roberts
And receiving international awards in exchange for articulating those goals, it’s as if no one’s checking the work.
Katie Wilson
It’s really shameful.
David Roberts
Shouldn’t you have a committee that looks into whether —
Katie Wilson
Yeah. And again, I know that there are a ton of wonderful people within SDOT, and I really do think it is about that vision from the top. And really — and this is — it’s not just SDOT. When I think about so many of the city departments and what I’ve been learning over the course of this campaign and talking with folks is that there really needs to be some work done internally within the city so that we have this vision. And this vision is really — it’s not just something that’s being imposed from the top, but we’re actually doing the work with the departments, with the people who work in the departments, so that we all really feel like we’re pulling in the same direction.
And they’re being involved in how this vision is being developed into something which is actionable. And I’m really excited about that work. And I think that SDOT is definitely a prime example of a place where that work needs to take place if we’re actually going to be able to make the changes on the street that people are going to feel in their everyday lives. And Aurora is absolutely one place where that needs to happen.
David Roberts
Comes back to getting the right people again. One of the critiques of blue city governance that you hear a lot these days is they’ve been captured by all these kooky liberals and consequently do not properly prioritize or care about public order, basically, which is akin to crime, related to crime, but not necessarily really the same thing. You and I know that the crime statistics are going down, crime as such, it’s safer to be in Seattle than it is to be on a — on a highway in rural Mississippi or whatever.
But then there’s public order, which is just sort of people walking around downtown and seeing nastiness, seeing people out on the streets, seeing drug use out in the open, etc. And the idea of the critique is basically, if you want people to jump onto this vision of a denser, more urban, basically fabric, you need to address this. People won’t come along with you if they think that this is what comes along with density.
Katie Wilson
Yeah.
David Roberts
So I’m just curious how you think about balancing that sort of legitimate public concern with what we know about the policy here, which is just that sweeping people up and shuttling them different places from place to place doesn’t do anything, doesn’t help anything. So, how do you think about that balance, that issue?
Katie Wilson
I think it’s very important to take seriously people’s concerns around public safety and public disorder. And that’s something that really has been underlined for me during the course of this campaign. And I think, thinking about my career, previously, I think at some points I probably didn’t really fully grasp the importance of this.
David Roberts
You talk to people and it comes up spontaneously.
Katie Wilson
It comes up. It comes up and it’s — it’s real. And it’s very — obviously crime and homelessness are not at all identical, but having a widespread crisis of unsheltered homelessness where many folks are struggling with drug addiction and/or mental illness, that spills into these public disorder and public safety concerns. And I’ve talked to plenty of people who’ve been assaulted or felt extremely unsafe in situations that —
David Roberts
Or just menaced, that sticks with you just as much almost. Just the feelings.
Katie Wilson
I feel this, as a — as a mother who’s always out and about with my daughter and waiting at a bus stop when there’s someone who’s clearly not well and maybe behaving erratically, slightly aggressively. It’s like, yeah, I’m a pretty tough person, but I get nervous because I’ve got a two-year-old there. And so I can certainly understand this. And the more that I think about it and talk with folks is like — I think progressives kind of need to grab this issue and run with it in a different way than we have in the past.
Because what we’re seeing now with the current administration in Seattle is that they are just chasing people from one place to another and that makes things worse. And the real solution is to provide what people need and that’s not throwing people into jail because we know that that doesn’t work. Although there are cases where arrest is a necessary thing. But, for the most part we need to open shelter, emergency housing. We need to actually have the support that people need to be successful there with long-term case management for some folks and treatment and all the rest of it.
And also community. And this is something that’s really been brought home to me when we’re thinking about these kind of hotspots in Seattle, whether that’s in Little Saigon or downtown where there’s a lot of open-air drug use, drug dealing, other kind of illicit activity. And not all those folks are homeless. People come there because that is their community. And we need other options for people to have community and meaning and social relationships that aren’t that. Because it also just — even if you’re able to offer someone housing, then if they’re just kind of isolated in a room in a permanent supportive housing building, then they’re going to go out because they want to be with their community.
And so there’s some really tricky issues here about how we’re helping people into a better situation than the one that they’re in. And there’s a very human aspect to it. It’s not just about finding a room that they can sit in.
David Roberts
Yeah. And talking about this, I’m just curious how you talk about this with — because it’s so tricky because I think, at least in my opinion, and I think the research sort of backs this up, is if you’re looking for the root cause of homelessness, it’s generally right there in the name. People don’t have homes. It’s housing. Housing is the root of the problem. But that is not what the public thinks. That is not what I mean. Just the average — you go on Nextdoor or whatever. People are not doing social science on this. They just think, “Oh, these people are like this.” How do you navigate talking with people about it where you sort of validate their concerns but don’t inadvertently sort of reinforce the idea that these are “ criminals, nasty criminals loose on our streets”?
Katie Wilson
It’s tricky, but if you have five minutes with someone, you can make some progress. Because it is a housing issue. In the sense that if — I mean, very strongly correlated, if you look at cities around the country — housing costs and levels of homelessness. So there’s a very straightforward way in which it is a housing issue. But on the other hand, I think what people kind of legitimately see and experience is that especially for folks who are chronically homeless, often whether this prompted their homelessness or whether it’s been exacerbated by homelessness, drug use and mental illness are really big factors in a lot of people’s struggles.
David Roberts
Well, especially the ones that people see. You don’t see the homeless people who are just tucked away somewhere. You see the ones that are acting out.
Katie Wilson
Exactly, exactly. And I think the danger in just kind of focusing on the housing aspect of it, which I do think was kind of in the work that I’ve done over the years, and I think that’s kind of a false or an inadequacy of the approach that I and many others on the left have taken in the past, is that by kind of not entirely ignoring, but just kind of downplaying the addiction and mental illness aspect of it, it kind of sounds like you’re saying, “Well, all these people just need a home. Just put them in housing.”
And then what happens in practice is that we have this housing first model, which is really successful when done right, which basically says in order to address whatever challenges someone’s facing, they need the stability. But then you have housing providers which are supposedly doing housing first, but then they’re under-resourced and they don’t actually have the support staff on site or the ability to provide all those things that people need. And so then people in neighborhoods who live near a permanent supportive housing facility, they have the experience of potentially that facility having issues around it, where there are 911 calls all the time.
David Roberts
This is my life up here near — near North Aurora. I live very close to one of those. And it is borderline — I don’t know. If you watch The Wire, you remember Hamsterdam in The Wire, it’s borderline lawless up there. It really seems like the housing does not have the staff or support it needs. And there’s no — the police aren’t paying much attention either. The whole thing seems kind of abandoned.
Katie Wilson
Yeah. And then you can understand how you get the backlash, where the right — the right can come in and say, “Well, it’s not a housing problem, it’s a drug addiction problem, it’s a mental illness problem. And we need to warehouse these people, we need to lock them up because they’re just — we’re being too permissive.” And so that kind of whole narrative then has an opening because we haven’t on the left, managed to really explain to people what’s going on in a way that resonates with their experience.
David Roberts
Let’s talk about the JumpStart tax. Earlier when you were mentioning your sort of legislative achievements, you mentioned that in passing. But it’s kind of a big deal. The whole thing’s a bit baroque if you don’t live in Seattle; we’re not allowed to pass income taxes here. We’re very restrictive on the kinds of taxes we can pass. So this is basically a payroll tax that exclusively applies to large employers and only to employees over a certain income. Basically it’s like a tax on wealthy businesses. You sort of got that thing passed a few years ago against quite a bit of resistance. Now because it’s producing revenue all of a sudden, it’s patching up these holes in our city budget. And all of a sudden everyone loves it. All of a sudden we’re like, “Yes, we love this revenue.”
But originally it was supposed to be sort of the funding — the revenue is supposed to be dedicated to particular things — green things, housing things. And it’s been sort of shanghaied into just serving as a supplement to the general fund. So I’m wondering, do you — what do you want to do about that? A, given that it’s, as you mentioned before, almost the only progressive source of revenue available to Seattle, full stop, I’m wondering if you have thought about tweaking it, raising it, or reforming it in any way and what you want to do about this question of what happens to the revenue?
Katie Wilson
Yeah, great question. And I guess just to back up a little bit without going into too much detail. So, yeah, the JumpStart tax passed in 2020. And this was kind of the outcome of a multi-year complex battle over taxing big business in Seattle.
David Roberts
Yeah, we tried once and then it got undone by the council.
Katie Wilson
Yes. And the JumpStart tax, it really — I mean, it was this moment, where the pandemic had just hit. The economy was in free fall. There were very obvious enormous kinds of needs for revenue in the context of the pandemic. And also companies like Amazon were reaping pandemic profits. And so there was this political moment where it was very hard for them to argue that they shouldn’t be contributing more.
David Roberts
They argued, they did, they tried —
Katie Wilson
But it was a moment where they weren’t going to be able to win that argument. And so that was the context in which this tax passed. And since my opponent has now started claiming that I’m taking credit for something that I had nothing to do with, I’ll just say this was a partnership with Council Member Teresa Mosqueda, who was the champion on the council and —
David Roberts
Sure.
Katie Wilson
But yeah, no, I played a big role in designing and building the coalition around that tax. And it’s a tax on the businesses, not the employees. And as you mentioned, originally, the initial revenue was supposed to go to kind of emergency pandemic-related uses, but then there was this long-term spend plan which was passed, which was supposed to dedicate revenue to affordable housing — the bulk of the revenue, 52% — and then Green New Deal programs, the Equitable Development Initiative, small business support, kind of economic development for small businesses. And what’s happened is that as this kind of structural budget shortfall has widened up, the mayor and council have basically taken those guardrails off and kind of removed any commitment to that long-term spend plan and used most of the revenue just to put it right into the general fund to kind of backfill that budget deficit.
I don’t love that. Last year during the budget process, I was coordinating a coalition to try to push for new progressive revenue instead to address the budget deficit so that JumpStart could be used for its intended purposes.
David Roberts
Well, what does that look like? Let me pause you there then because I was just describing this sort of weird constrictive state we’re in where it’s very hard to think of how to do progressive taxes. What would be a new source? What would be a supplement, a progressive source of revenue, that is not the JumpStart tax?
Katie Wilson
Yeah, so, I mean, well, first of all, you did mention the possibility of getting more money through JumpStart, and I do think that’s a possibility. So turning the dials on JumpStart in various ways to raise more revenue. I do think we have to be a little cautious about that right now because there are some indications that — I mean, in addition to JumpStart, the social housing developer tax was just passed in February. And that’s not just JumpStart, but it’s similarly a tax on corporations with very high-paid employees. And there’s some indications that Amazon and some other businesses may be shifting some high-paid jobs to the Eastside to avoid those taxes.
I don’t think they’re doing that at a large scale, but it’s something to keep an eye on. And the other thing that I think politically in this moment we have to recognize is that tech workers are starting to feel pretty anxious about their jobs for a number of reasons. We’ve seen some big layoffs from tech companies, and I think there’s a lot of questions around AI and anxiety about what that is going to mean for the tech workforce. And so for me that just means that if we’re thinking about raising more money from JumpStart, we do have to be cautious because I could certainly see a flip in public opinion where people — it’s perceived that basically we’re going to be taxing away jobs.
So that doesn’t mean we can’t get any more revenue from JumpStart, but we just have to be careful about it. We could also do a city capital gains tax in Seattle. So we have this statewide capital gains tax and the city could in principle layer a percentage or two on top of that to get some revenue locally. That’s not going to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars, but it would be something.
David Roberts
It seems the Washington left has kind of given up on attacking the root cause of all this, which is the stupid constitutional provision we have that prevents income taxes. Do you think they’re right to give up on that? Do you think that’s impossible to ever change? I mean, they’ve tried.
Katie Wilson
I don’t think it’s impossible. And I was part of an effort to challenge that right back in 2017. This was actually the first big campaign that I kind of co-ran or helped to run around progressive taxation. And we got the Seattle City Council to unanimously pass an income tax on high-income households. The campaign was called Trump-Proof Seattle because this was right after Trump got elected the first time. And we knew that the city would be sued after passing this legislation. And we hoped that it would get up to the state Supreme Court and give them a chance to overturn some court decisions from the 1930s, which basically are the reason why we supposedly can’t do a progressive income tax.
I’m not going to go into all the details, but it was really good that we did that because we did make some progress in terms of the kind of legal fight. But the state Supreme Court ended up declining to hear the case because it was a political hot potato, obviously. So I don’t — but I don’t think it’s impossible. I just — I think that what needs to happen is there would need to be a statewide progressive income tax passed, and then the state Supreme Court would have to hear that and would probably overturn those decisions.
And that could be done at the ballot or it could be done by the legislature. This was tried in 2010 and it was voted down at the ballot. But you have to understand that was the Tea Party year. That was not the time to put a tax on the ballot.
David Roberts
Yeah, the mood is a bit different these days, I think.
Katie Wilson
Well, I think it’s possible. I mean, you gotta — you gotta find the right year, you gotta find the right narrative, but I don’t think that people should give up on it.
David Roberts
Well, it seems the only time liberalism ever gets anywhere is in the midst of a backlash against right-wing overreach. And it sure looks like we’re going to have a backlash toward right-wing overreach pretty soon. So maybe the left should be thinking about, “What should we do with this one? What should we do with this backlash?” I did want to get to a question that is on a lot of people’s minds, including mine, which is that if you do become mayor of Seattle, there is a non-trivial chance that Donald Trump will send federalized National Guard troops from frickin’ Texas to patrol the streets of Seattle and theatrically rough people up and brutalize minorities and create this fascist theater that he’s putting on TV and social media.
What do you do about that? I don’t know what anybody does about this. Are you talking — I wonder, are mayors or mayoral hopefuls talking, anyway, how do you think about resisting that?
Katie Wilson
Yeah, I mean, first of all, we absolutely have to resist that. And within the limited tools that we have. And so obviously part of that is fighting in the courts. And we’ve seen court cases play out in many of the cities and states where Trump has tried something like this. So we need to learn from all of those experiences and be ready. And so that’s going to mean the mayor’s office working very closely with a new city attorney next year, and of course, with our Attorney General, Nick Brown, and with the governor’s office and really presenting that united front.
Trump picks on the weak. And the more that we can show that we are united, the stronger we are and the less attractive we are as a target. And that also means showing that we’re united within the city. Not just elected officials, but community groups. All the organizations rooted in immigrant communities that are trying to protect people from ICE right now, the LGBTQ+ community, everyone standing together and in the case that federal agents or troops are sent in, making sure that we have a plan and that we are keeping people safe and deescalating. Not giving those theatrics that they want to see. So there’s a lot of work that needs to be done there. And definitely working, learning, being connected with mayors around the country and having that kind of united front, I think is really important.
David Roberts
It does seem, in response to this, there’s going to be the formation of these sort of community response and community sort of aid, kind of mutual aid sort of things. I just, our culture has so lacked that. We’re so atomized and separated and lonely, and it does seem like an opportunity that the city could nurture that, somehow build something out of it.
Katie Wilson
Absolutely. And I really think that this is something that I will bring to the mayor’s office as someone who’s been a community organizer for 14 years. I will continue to be a community organizer and a coalition builder in office, and I’ll bring those relationships with me, and I’ll also continue building those relationships. And I think that really, having a city that doesn’t feel like it’s separate from the people and from all the organizations, all the groups and folks who are doing great work on the outside, and that’s such a resource. Their expertise and their passion.
And, the city should be using that, not seeing them as kind of oppositional or annoying people pushing from the outside. So the more that we can use that, I think the better.
David Roberts
As a final question, I do — Volts is about climate, ultimately about decarbonization. And obviously, if anybody who’s listened to the pod for a while knows that in the urban context, I think the big piece of that is land use and transportation, which we have discussed, obviously, just getting more people out of cars, driving less. Although all the message experts tell me that I’m not allowed to say that, I’m not allowed to badmouth cars, but I can hardly help it.
Katie Wilson
“Ban cars” shouldn’t be my campaign slogan.
David Roberts
Yeah, you should probably not put that on the poster. We’re also not allowed to say the word density, FYI. It’s all “main streets like you remember from your small town,” all this. Okay. Anyway, but when you think about climate adaptation and climate alignment, what are your broad thoughts about this, about what the city should be doing? Obviously, there’s the land use piece we talked about, there’s a transportation piece. Are there other pieces that you have in mind on the decarbonization front, in the greening front?
Katie Wilson
Yeah, I mean those are two huge ones. And I think it really is important to emphasize to people that housing is a climate solution.
David Roberts
Yes!
Katie Wilson
The more that people can actually live in the neighborhoods where they work, where they shop, where they hang out. Then that’s really, really the key because right now we just have so many people who are commuting in, often by car, from God knows where, from Kent, or long drives into Seattle because they can’t afford to live here. And it’s not just the lowest wage workers. It’s City of Seattle workers. People who you would think are making a comfortable salary, but it’s just so prohibitive to rent, let alone buy a house in Seattle.
And so we — we gotta tackle that. And yeah, obviously transportation, I think mode shift is a bunch of kind of transportation demand management strategies I think we can employ better in addition to obviously just infrastructure and making it easier and safer to bike, walk, transit and — yeah, I mean beyond that, I mean there’s definitely kind of climate adaptation, kind of understanding that we already are feeling the effects of climate change and we need to make it possible as we have more heat waves, as we have wildfire smoke for people to be safe and cool. And can the city — can we do a revenue bond and help people install heat pumps and make sure that everyone, including apartment dwellers, have clean, cool air in the summer. And so there’s things like that.
I mean in terms of carbon emissions, it’s really — I mean we have pretty new kind of building emission performance standards legislation. So there’s some more stuff on the kind of building front that is happening and that, maybe we can accelerate on emissions, but housing and transportation are really, really the big ones there.
David Roberts
Yes. Could not agree more. I mean, lots of blue cities are doing lots of good stuff on buildings, on power, on all the other stuff. But it’s like housing and transport are the — are the molten core of that along with — they’re also the core of everything else, inequality and quality of life. And the note I wanted to finish on, even though it’s not a big thing, but just because I appreciate it, I really love that you are pushing for public bathrooms. And it just seems like this — the idea has taken over Seattle, that because there’s this sense of public disorder and there are people on the street that we need to make public places hostile and unpleasant so they won’t hang out there.
And that just seems like such a perverse —
Katie Wilson
It’s horrible.
David Roberts
Such a perverse way to respond to that problem.
Katie Wilson
Absolutely. I mean, and it’s just — it just gets us into this negative spiral. It’s horrible. And we spend so much money cleaning human feces off the street. We got to find another way.
David Roberts
Surely that line item could go to something else. But, yeah, I just — I just wanted to say I appreciate that, just the sentiment of, let’s make the public places — non-private, non-commercial spaces — nice and well-shaded and pleasant to hang out in. It’s like — like a real city.
Katie Wilson
Like a real city. Exactly.
David Roberts
All right, thank you so much. This is super interesting, super fun to talk about, and good luck in the coming — what is it, a month?
Katie Wilson
Less than a month.
David Roberts
Less than a month! Oh, my God.
Katie Wilson
Wild.
David Roberts
Good luck in the coming weeks then.
Katie Wilson
Thank you.
David Roberts
Thanks, Katie.
Katie Wilson
Okay, take care.
David Roberts
Thank you for listening to Volts. It takes a village to make this podcast work. Shout out, especially, to my super producer, Kyle McDonald, who makes me and my guests sound smart every week. And it is all supported entirely by listeners like you. So, if you value conversations like this, please consider joining our community of paid subscribers at volts.wtf. Or, leaving a nice review, or telling a friend about Volts. Or all three. Thanks so much, and I’ll see you next time.
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