Effort to Repeal Gig Worker Wages Appears Dead; Design Review Chair Says City Should Get Rid of Design Review

Today's Morning Fizz.

1. The massive lobbying effort to reduce the minimum wage for "gig" delivery workers who drive for companies like UberEats, Doordash, and Instacart appears to be over, after Council President Sara Nelson's aggressive efforts backfired earlier this year. The Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm that spent more than $1 million over ten months lobbying on behalf of Doordash had stopped spending money in Seattle by the end of July and reportedly has no plans to renew efforts.

The reprieve (or defeat) is no huge surprise, given how unpopular the proposal was to begin with. Gig workers, unlike regular employees, are independent contractors and must pay for all their own expenses, including gas, both employer and employee taxes, and mandatory business insurance, among many other costs.

The app companies are required to partially reimburse gig workers for costs that they would have to pay if they were regular employers; Nelson's bill would have slashed reimbursement almost in half and would have allowed companies to pay workers less than Seattle's minimum wage as long as their hourly pay averaged out, across a two-week pay period, to the minimum. (The app companies' bill would have also charged workers $5 if they wanted their money before their pay period was up—even though each driver is ostensibly running their own business.)

In all, Doordash alone spent well over $1 million lobbying the council to cut workers' wages. Working Washington spent just over $200,000 in five months in an effort to defeat the minimum wage repeal.

2. This afternoon, the city council's land use committee will take up a proposal from Mayor Bruce Harrell's office that would temporarily exempt new residential, hotel, and life sciences buildings in the downtown area from design review—a lengthy process in which volunteer review board members judge the appearance and design of proposed new buildings and, more often than not, require aesthetic changes that add costs and delay development. 

Earlier this month, the legislation gained an unlikely proponent: Christopher Bendix, the chair of the Downtown Design Review Board and the project developer at Mercy Housing. In an email to land use committee chair Tammy Morales, Bendix wrote, "The design review program, while well-intentioned, results in little public benefit at substantial cost, in the form of increased housing costs and unpredictability in the development process. ...

"While I will personally miss the opportunity to comment on the design of new projects, as an affordable housing developer focused on ensuring every Seattle resident has access to a home they can afford, I am happy to take a back seat and find a different avenue for public involvement, outside the design review program. 

Design review has been used both to remove housing units and renter amenities and to dictate details as minute as the shade of brick and the orientation of open space. 

At a committee meeting earlier this month, Morales expressed concerns about the proposal, saying there was "really no evidence" that the design review process increases costs because developers haven't provided financial projections to the council. Morales also said the downtown-only proposal was a kind of "spot rezone" that was taking up a huge amount of staff time, when the city still needs to overhaul the design review process in general; a new state law requires cities to streamline design review and use "clear and objective development regulations" to guide design review, rather than individual aesthetic preferences.