They skipped the ballot and called it the only tool. I know the sentence. It is what a council says when it has found a way to raise a tax without asking the people who pay it, and would like the missing vote filed under urgency rather than convenience.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, October 6, 2026, The Seattle Times\u2019 David Gutman reported that the Metropolitan King County Council approved a 0.01% sales tax increase intended to expand emergency shelter options for homeless children and families. The increase is one penny on a $100 retail purchase, or about $4 a year for the median taxpayer, and it would raise a maximum of about $10 million a year for the county for the next three years. When it takes effect Jan. 1, it brings the sales tax in Seattle to 10.56%, among the highest in the nation. There was no vote of the people, and there did not need to be, because the state Legislature, earlier this year, gave local governments authority to pass this small tax for childcare, shelter, youth services, after-school programs and similar services. The Legislature, Gutman writes, \u201cdidn\u2019t get much more specific than that,\u201d and the legislation the council passed says only that the new revenue will be used for the purposes the Legislature stipulated. Councilmember Jorge Bar\u00f3n said he intends the money to go toward shelter and rental assistance, but that its ultimate destination would be determined during a later budget process. Council staff, in their summary, wrote that the legislation \u201cprovides the Executive broad authority to determine how proceeds resulting from the sales and use tax would be allocated.\u201d County Executive Girmay Zahilay was already anticipating passage when, last month, he announced plans for new affordable housing, tiny home and shelter projects. Bar\u00f3n noted that there are significantly more homeless children in King County than there are shelter beds available for families. \u201cI recognize that this tax may be an imperfect tool, but it\u2019s the only tool that we have now to open these beds,\u201d he said. \u201cI do believe it is important to act urgently when you have children and families unsheltered in a community like ours.\u201d The vote was 6-3, with Councilmembers Reagan Dunn, Sarah Perry and Pete von Reichbauer opposed. Dunn noted that the council has more often been getting permission from the Legislature to raise taxes rather than asking for a vote of the people, including for a roads measure this summer and for Harborview Medical Center two years ago. \u201cFamilies across King County are being squeezed by the high costs of housing, groceries, and fuel,\u201d Dunn said in a prepared statement. \u201cAt the same time, the county has had to take repeated steps to address waste and fraud in its own spending. The difficult truth is that raising taxes will not make life more affordable.\u201d The Legislature also gave cities the option to impose the same tax; if a city in King County does, that amount is subtracted from the county\u2019s revenue so shoppers are not charged twice.<\/p>\n
Deb read the story off my laptop, went to the junk drawer, and came back with last week\u2019s grocery receipt to work out the damage to the penny. Then she asked to see the ballot she didn\u2019t get. Buck says a penny is a penny until somebody stacks ten million of them, and then it is a budget process. I love them. They are seasoning.<\/p>\n
The only tool is the alibi. The skipped ballot is the policy. Sit with the arrangement until it confesses, because the arrangement is the story. The Legislature hands the county a key. The county uses the key without knocking. The council passes a tax whose stated purpose is the Legislature\u2019s list, \u201cand similar services\u201d included. And the actual spending goes to the Executive\u2019s \u201cbroad authority\u201d and a budget process to come. Three layers of government, and the one participant none of them needed was the person at the register. I believe the children are real. I believe the shelter beds are short. I do not believe a cause that urgent and that sympathetic required a mechanism built so nobody would ever have to persuade a voter of it. When a bureau wants your money for a thing you would plainly support, it can ask. When it skips the asking, it is telling you something \u2014 about how sure it is, or about how much else fits inside the word \u201csimilar.\u201d A man who has lately learned to read his own county\u2019s fine print notices these things. And I am not crowning the three no votes. Dunn\u2019s complaint is fair as far as it goes \u2014 the permission-slip habit is real, the roads measure, the hospital \u2014 but a prepared statement about waste and fraud is not a ballot either, and voting no on a council is not the same as handing the question to the people. Both parties are the help. One side writes the enabling law and spends the penny; the other issues the statement and keeps the habit in the record for the next time it holds the pen. A penny is small. That is the trick. They always start with the tax too small to march about and the precedent too big to notice. Seattle did not reach 10.56% in one vote; it got there one imperfect tool at a time. I am keeping the cardigan. Fill the notebook. Then watch the budget process line by line and ask, out loud, who decided where your penny went, since it was not you.<\/p>\n