Speaker 2: Yeah, let's step on that. Please read the next agenda item.
Speaker 4: The report on the Sustainability and Transportation Committee Agenda Item for Council Bill 119 329 relating to employment in Seattle required certain employers to offer employees the opportunity to use pretax earnings to purchase commuter benefits other than parking in accordance with federal law. Adding new Chapter 14.32 code and amending Sections 3.15 .00 and 6.208.0 24. Code Can we recommend civil bill as amended?
Speaker 2: Thank you, Councilmember O'Brien.
Speaker 8: Q I want to take a minute just to explain what this legislation would do, but I want to start by apologizing to Mr. Wasserman in the North Seattle Industrial Association. The first they I learned about it was in a newspaper article today. We've been discussing this legislation for over a year. And last year in the budget we reached out and we funded Seattle to do work to engage business folks, and they've been doing that with a lot of folks. And Mr. Weisman, I since I heard you, I've asked my staff to connect. Q Seattle, I actually see Nick Franklin with Seattle's in the audience, and I will make sure you can physically chat today to do some of hours work to your members to to make sure they understand it. I will also talk. So this legislation, what it does is it takes advantage of a piece of the Internal Revenue Service Code that allows businesses, allows the sorry employees to have transit passes deducted from their payroll pretax. The effect of that means is they get essentially the tax deduction for both their Social Security and Medicare and also their federal income tax from the costs of that pass. The result is that for a minimum wage worker who's in a 20 to 25% tax bracket, who's currently buying $100 a month transit pass 1200 dollars a year would save over $300 a year through this mechanism. Employers also get savings because the employer is no longer have to pay their payroll tax for that amount that's deducted. So on a similar similarly positioned employee employer would save close to $90 a year on that one employee who's taking advantage of it. This is one of those rare opportunities where I believe we have a win win win. The first win being for employees who get to save money on their transit. The second win being for employers who get to save some of their tax liability. And the third being for all of us, because when we make it easier, more cost effective for people to have access to transit passes and we reduce congestion and pollution and give people access to the mobility that they need. And in the process of this, I want to applaud Seattle for their ongoing work to reach out to both business owners and organizations that work with business leaders. Myself and staff have also met with a number of those folks. Obviously not everybody, but we will continue to do that work. One of the things we heard was folks wanted to make sure they had enough timeline to implement this. So in committee we extended the deadlines. This law we're passing it today will not take effect, meaning it will not be implemented for businesses to have the requirement to offer this their employees until January 1st of 2020. So a little over 12 months. And then we've put in another year of of what I call a grace period where we won't do any enforcement. It'll just be education. And if employees says, Hey, I wasn't notified that I have this right until January 1st of 2021. We've seen similar laws enacted in other cities around the country. New York City is one of those. In the first eight months of their implementation, they had eight complaints where businesses weren't doing what they were required. All eight of those complaints were resolved by simply educating the business and explaining how they could do that. And so I feel very confident in both what's been happening elsewhere and in the communication with local businesses that this is something that folks will be able to do without any significant burden, and that to the extent there is a burden, it should be more than offset by the tax savings to them. Again, we have another year and change to work with folks before this will be in effect. And I look forward to working with businesses and organizations who are just hearing about this and in the coming year to make sure folks are aware of how this will be implemented. And I want to just say that I'm open to in that process, if folks say, hey, there's a very unique concern we have in our business or in our industry where this may not work well, that we can always come back and make changes to that at that time.
Speaker 2: You concern, Brian. Any further questions on this bill? Councilmember Johnson.
Speaker 1: Just a couple of brief comments. I was just looking at the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics, which I know you guys all know off the top of your head. But for those of you who aren't tracking that, you know, the average person is spending a little bit under $10,000 a year in their transportation cost. This is part of their household expenditures. And we all know how critically important it is in a city that is becoming less and less affordable by the day, to give people more transportation choices, gives them more economic freedom. And I think that that's the intention here. We have a significant portion. We're still working on the statistics and the data, but a significant portion of Seattle's employers who are not required to offer transit benefits to their employees. This gives a pathway for those employees to get access to those benefits and will only prove good dividends for us who try every day to show up to the office to make sure that folks can get to work safely, easily, and reduce their household expenses. Oh, by the way, also being good for the environment, too. So I think this is a good bill. We heard from the Office of Labor Standards about their plans for enforcement and their plans to keep us in the loop if they do think that it will cost additional money in order for them to do more enforcement. So I'm proud to support this one today.
Speaker 2: Thank very much, Councilwoman Johnson. Councilman Herbo, thank you.
Speaker 5: I'm just taking a look at the fiscal note related to this legislation. And the fiscal note states that the legislation anticipates that the Seattle Department of Transportation will assist in education and outreach as part of the department's ongoing commute trip reduction program. And I'm thinking that it might make sense.
Speaker 0: To.
Speaker 5: To think about ways that the Office of Labor Standards can help in the education piece, because I think they have they have ways of engaging with employers because we often rely on their work to do the education piece for for new labor laws that the that the city establishes. And they might have deeper tentacles out into the employer community than the.
Speaker 0: Commute trip.
Speaker 5: Reduction program. So I think that might be something that we want to talk about.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Councilman Herbold. Any further comments? We're ready to move forward. Heritage comes from a brand like The Closet.
Speaker 8: Thank you, Councilman Harold. I appreciate that idea. And I know one of the things we anticipate is in the the signage requirements, the posters that go up, that this will be added in the future. As to one of those other requirements and I think a robust dialog with Office Labor standards and to help figure out how we make sure that word gets out to be on folks who typically think about computer production. I also want to just say thanks to some of the advocates. The folks at the Trans Writers Union have been key in the work, in the research, to make sure that employer employees who work at smaller employers, where the vast majority of us all work, often don't have access to the same types of transit benefits that those who work at the larger employers. And so your research on this and your advocacy on this has really helped get us to where we are today. So thank you to the Transit Writers Union and so many other transit advocates who've been part of this throughout throughout the work.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Okay. Please call the roll on the passage of the Bill.
Speaker 0: Herbold II Johnson Suarez. Macheda O'Brien, Swan Bagshaw, Gonzales, President Harrell. I nine in favor and unopposed.
Speaker 2: The bill passes and shows sign it. Please read the next agenda item.
AN ORDINANCE relating to employment in Seattle; requiring certain employers to offer employees the opportunity to use pre-tax earnings to purchase commuter benefits, other than parking, in accordance with federal law; adding a new Chapter 14.30 to the Seattle Municipal Code (SMC); and amending Sections 3.15.000 and 6.208.020 of the SMC.