Seattle City Councilmember Bruce Harrell

As you know, the City Council has begun discussing the possibility of repealing the employee head tax. Businesses whose annual gross income is greater than $80,000 are required to pay $25 for each employee who logs more than 1,920 hours per year and travels to work in a single occupancy vehicle. The tax is part of the Bridging the Gap Transportation (BTG) Levy, which voters passed in 2006. The levy amount was $365 million. Funds generated from BTG are to address more than 20 years of maintenance backlog for paving, sidewalks, bridge repair and the planting and pruning of trees. Over the 9 year duration of BTG, the employee head tax is projected to generate $51.5 million. Last year, it raised about $4.5 million. Relatively speaking, $4.5 million is not large when compared to the $365 million levy and I support repealing the tax in order to ease the financial burden on local business and simplify the process. I want to make sure these types of taxes actually decrease the public’s reliance on single occupancy vehicles, as well as create incentives and alternatives for employee travel. Many citizens are rightfully concerned about how pedestrian and bicycle projects will be impacted. Before I agree to the repeal, I must be convinced that these projects will not be left on the cutting room floor or be subject to long delays.

According to City of Seattle Finance Director Dwight Dively, the commercial parking lot tax (also a component of BTG) is projected to generate $59 million more than expected over the nine-year duration of BTG. That alone, would cover the loss of the employee head tax money. There may be proposals to increase parking fees, commercial parking taxes, meter fees and other taxes as a means to change people’s behavior and to some extent, penalize those who continue to rely upon single occupancy cars as their sole means of transportation. While gas at $4 dollars per gallon clearly changes behavior, I am not fully convinced that significant increases in parking taxes and fees is the immediate answer to change people’s frequency and vicinity of where they drive. For example, increases in taxes may only shift the payment of parking taxes to people who can afford to pay the increases; it may not actually decrease the number of people parking. Before we explore punitive measures that may only result in short term or temporary gain, I believe we should first fully exhaust incentives that could support sustainable change. For example, we could provide incentives for employees to carpool and assist them in using local websites that facilitate safe carpooling schedules; incentivize lot owners to allow half-month permits in lieu of monthly permits, allowing employees to commute half-time; we could incentivize downtown building owners to have their full tenant base coordinate their travel and travel times to the building with each other; and we can incentivize the use of multi-passenger electric vehicles.

How we behave in terms of our modes of travel are cultural changes that occur over the long haul and not overnight. While I believe we must encourage people to get out of their cars as a means to environmental sustainability, there must be a realization that many people will remain car-dependent in the near future because of their circumstances. I believe our strategies must be cognizant of this reality in order to achieve long-term environmental sustainability.

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