Kshama Sawant says Governor Jay Inslee’s updated proclamation on public meetings during the COVID-19 crisis opens the door for the Seattle City Council to begin debate again on the Sawant-Morales Amazon Tax legislation, a push to create a local COVID-19 relief program and a new tax on large businesses to fund $500 million a year in new affordable housing.

“For the last three weeks, the Democratic Party political establishment, led by Councilmembers González and Herbold, has tried to shut down debate on our movement’s Sawant-Morales Tax Amazon legislation,” the council representative for Capitol Hill and the Central District said in a statement Monday. “Their excuse was that Governor Inslee’s proclamation #20-28 limited what subjects city councils could discuss and vote on. Our movement rejected both the idea that the Governor had the authority to limit what city councils can legislate on, and the political establishment’s interpretation of his order.”

Friday, Inslee issued an updated proclamation (PDF) focused on requiring public meetings to provide “telephonic access” plus “electronic, internet or other means of remote access” —

Any public agency, subject to RCW 42.30, is prohibited from conducting any meeting, subject to RCW 42.30 unless (a) the meeting is not conducted inperson and instead provides an option(s) for the public to attend the proceedings through, at minimum, telephonic access, and may also include other electronic, internet or other means of remote access, and (b) provides the ability for all persons attending the meeting to hear each other at the same time

In her statement, Sawant cites attorney Dmitri Iglitzin’s interpretation of the updated proclamation as Inslee using “his emergency powers to clarify that, for the duration of the pandemic, all-virtual meetings are a perfectly acceptable way for public agencies to meet and legislate.”

The battle of proclamations and legal interpretations comes as Sawant has stubbornly continued to push forward on the legislation. The proposal to tax big business to the tune of $500 million per year seemed to be moving through the council last month. It had a public hearing in late April and seemed on its way to a committee vote in May. But it was suddenly stymied as council president Lorena González tabled the tax proposal over concerns that dealing with the legislation could violate public meetings law during the COVID-19 crisis.

The legislation from Central Seattle rep Sawant and South Seattle’s Tammy Morales would push forward on two fronts. First, it would move funding from other programs for emergency cash assistance for up to 100,000 low-income households, “including those that have lost income as a result of the pandemic.” Then, starting in 2021, funding raised by the business tax would be used for affordable social housing, and a Green New Deal jobs program.

Sawant and the Tax Amazon group pushing for the new tax, meanwhile, are also working toward a ballot measure. Their challenge in that process is to collect enough signatures to qualify the proposal. The group was joined by the National Lawyers Guild in a call for Seattle and Washington state officials to act to allow the initiative signature gathering process to move online during the COVID-19 crisis. To qualify, the campaign will need to collect signatures equivalent to 10% of the votes cast in the 2017 mayoral election, which means more than 22,000 valid signatures. At that point, the council can either pass the initiative or let it go to voters.

The initial Sawant-Morale proposal would have instituted a 1.3% excise tax on “the corporate payrolls of for-profit companies whose payrolls are greater than $7 million annually.” Nonprofits, public employers, and grocery stores would be exempt. The original push was for the new tax to begin today — June 1st.

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