Mayor Bruce Harrell signed landmark building emissions performance standards (BEPS) into law this week after months of dragging his feet on climate action.
The new standards require 4,100 of the city’s largest existing buildings, including retail space, multi-family homes, and community centers to reduce how much planet-poisoning emissions they pump into our air. According to the Mayor’s press release, BEPS will slash about 325,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, which amounts to a 27% decrease in building-related emissions. While Seattle’s biggest environmental enemy remains single-occupancy vehicles, the decrease in emissions caused by the new standards equates to taking more than 72,000 cars off the road for a year. Do that next, Harrell!
Supporters of BEPS—unions, climate groups, the Housing Development Consortium, and others—will tell you this policy has been a long time coming. The BEPS legislation dates back to the Durkan administration when then-mayor Jenny Durkan directed the Office of Sustainability & Environment to draft such legislation in 2021 to be implemented in 2022 under the incoming Mayor. Harrell introduced a weaker version of Durkan’s policy in June of this year, but environmentalists accused him of slow-rolling the standards because he did not transmit the legislation in time for council to pass it ahead of budget season. They thought his slowness would put the fate of BEPS in the hands of the incoming council because the council typically does not pass policy during the budget process or in the few remaining weeks after.
Some thought the Mayor abandoned BEPS because the Unholy Trinity of corporate interest—Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, the Downtown Seattle Association, and the Commercial Real Estate Development Association (NAIPO)—wrote him a whiny little letter begging him not to implement BEPS because it could hurt the corporate landlords they represent while downtown tries to bounce back from the pandemic.
If the Mayor wanted to do his political allies a solid, the new Mayor-aligned council would likely support him, as most of them won their seats backed by the same interests.
Though the Mayor’s spokesperson said Harrell remained committed to passing BEPS, Council Member Kshama Sawant accused him of killing the bill in a September 11 council briefing when the Mayor failed to transmit the BEPS legislation in time for her Renters Rights and Sustainability committee to discuss it that week as planned.
“I can only assume that this legislation is being held back at the request of the wealthy owners of Seattle skyscrapers and other power players, who yet again are prioritizing their real estate profits over the existential crisis of the climate emergency,” Sawant said in the briefing. “This is nothing new.”
Council Members Lisa Herbold and Teresa Mosqueda shared in her frustration, suggesting the council write its own bill instead of hoping Harrell presses send.
But eventually, things sorta fell into place, Herbold said. The Mayor’s office approached Herbold and asked her to shepherd the legislation. With time running out, Herbold could not make many changes. However, she did make the penalties for non-complying buildings harsher, which landlords agreed to if the City dealt pro-rated penalties—if a building complies halfway, they face half of the penalty.
Still, as Mosqueda said, the council heard from stakeholders that “now is the time to rally around this legislation. Don’t amend it. Get it through. We all know there’s things we’d like to see added or changed in different ways, but this is the building block for future climate action.”
In their jam-packed final meeting of the year, the council passed the legislation 8-0 with Sawant absent.
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“In their jam-packed final meeting of the year, the council passed the legislation 8-0 with Sawant absent.”
A fitting coda to her legislative career.
I hope Harrell had the foresight to pass this through knowing comrade Sawant would be absent (as her intentions are to grandstand, not actually pass legislation). I especially appreciated the callback to the outrage which setup the final line so, so well.
How Hannah and her ilk can support performance art masquerading as governance is baffling.
I’m surprised by Hannah’s characterization of Harrell “caving” or “dragging his feet.” In her prior reporting on this back in August, she noted:
“Harrell plans to submit the policy to council after the passage of the City budget in November, a timeline that will “not delay any of the critical implementation milestones in the proposed bill, nor impact its urgency once adopted,”
It would be nice if The Stranger staff could employ some rational thinking based on the knowledge of City Government that they should have.
1) Making buildings electrify and encouraging electrification of transportation will increase revenue to City Light, which is one of city government’s most lucrative profit centers. The rates all include a utility tax that is paid to the general fund, and City Light is required to cover all of their expenses (the SCL slogan used to be “Tax-Paying and Self-Supporting”)
2) The city is sending a conflicting message (as well as a big sloppy kiss to developers) by encouraging electric vehicles, but not requiring parking at all the little boxes that they are allowing developers to put in every square foot of space. The Bright Young Things in SDOT may think that we have a utopian future ahead where everyone takes transit from one “walkable” neighborhood to another, but a century of Capitalism telling people that their car defines their self-value will eat their lunch.
@1: After ten years of CM Sawant “packing City Hall” for her vanity projects with stooges supplied by her own Socialist Alternative, she’s not there when actual concerned citizens attend to support passage of truly progressive and useful legislation. As you noted, a fitting end for her career there.
@2: When the Stranger began, Dan Savage’s ‘real’ job was as an impresario for camp theatre. The Stranger never really left those roots.
Bubbleator dear, have you seen 4th Ave though downtown? It’s insane. You’ll be driving along and all of the sudden your lane becomes a turn lane or a bus lane. Thankfully, the cops don’t enforce any of that nonsense. Just like on Rainier.
2nd Ave and 4th Ave were originally designed to get people into and out of downtown in an expedient way. Now they’re configured to cause accidents.
Potholes (a bigger risk to cyclists than cars) everywhere, several of the bridges are known to be deficient, but the paint keeps flowing.
I read this article trying to figure out why it was so hostile to Harrell with seemingly no reason to be until it hit me:
“Though the Mayor’s spokesperson said Harrell remained committed to passing BEPS, Council Member Kshama Sawant accused him of killing the bill in a September 11 council briefing…”
That’s the real story, buried deep in this article, that explains the negative framing towards the mayor. Sawant claimed Harrell killed this entirely. He obviously didn’t, but rather than expressly acknowledging that Sawant was wrong about something, The Stranger has to write an article framing the passage of something they support as a negative because Harrell supported the legislation after Sawant said he’d kill it. Contort yourself to make this a story about how Harrell is bad to bury the fact that Sawant — as usual — was wrong.
There’s a clear editorial policy at work here in The Stranger office: do not criticize or publish anything about Kshama Sawant that makes her look bad under any circumstances, ever.
@3, @9: To enact this legislation, Mayor Harrell worked methodically to his timetable, just as the Stranger had reported in August (quoted @3). From the Stranger’s point of view, that was bad enough, because the Stranger will never, ever forgive him for terminating the political career of one of their favorite officeholders. (Give the Stranger long enough, and they’ll fault him for his continued breathing.)
Worse yet, CM Sawant had demanded Mayor Harrell expedite this legislation, because she wanted it for some grandstanding before her Committee For Not Ever Passing Rent Control. He simply ignored her, which neither she nor the Stranger will ever, ever tolerate. So she threw her hissy fit, blatantly lying that he had “killed the bill,” when he was in fact still advancing it, per his long-announced and long-followed timetable.
Mayor Harrell completed his legislative submission per his timetable, and massive public support for the bill meant it passed without a dissenting vote. Unable to countenance her own utter irrelevance to this legislative process in person, she instead confirmed it with her absence. (Hilariously, the Stranger failed to note this inherent irony.)
‘Bye, Felicia.
Bubbleator dear, is that still a thing? I thought it died a death by paperwork and benign neglect.
The streetcar doesn’t bother me that much, except on Broadway. And that’s partially because they have Broadway so hopelessly over-programmed.
@12: Last I heard someone installed the bubbleator in their front yard to serve as a green house.
@9: “There’s a clear editorial policy at work here in The Stranger office: do not criticize or publish anything about Kshama Sawant that makes her look bad under any circumstances, ever.”
The Stranger’s editorial policy is even more ridiculously pro-Sawant than you’ve described. The entire extent of her involvement with the legislation was to lambaste Harrell for killing legislation he was actually advancing. Yet, the Stranger here writes the entire story of the legislation’s passage as a fight between Harrell and the Sawant-led Council, at the end of which Harrell “caves” — by doing everything he’d said he would do, and getting pretty much everything he’d wanted. Yet the Stranger presents Sawant, who stormed off in a huff, having accomplished nothing, as hero of their story.
I didn’t read through the new ordinance carefully (at all, actually). How does it handle the costs of implementing the new standards, particularly when applied to the older more affordable housing which is probably more in need of the upgrades. Will any of the renters be writing “whiny little letters” when the costs and subsequent rent increases become known?
What about those buildings that are existing right on the edge of economic viability? When the oil/gas fired steam heat has got to come out and the heat pumps and double pane windows go in, what happens to the buildings that aren’t worth the investment, rent increases or not? Food for the bulldozers? Prime real estate for some developer to build Gentrification Towers and market them to the growing software developer class in Seattle? Never mind the marginalized workers living there now.