Devastating tax defeat for Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, homelessness

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray suffered a devastating blow when he ended his futile pursuit of a city property tax to fund homelessness prevention. Consequently, if that money was truly necessary, the homeless suffered as well.

To make up for the lost money, Murray and King County Executive Dow Constantine announced a 0.1 percent regional sales tax they aim to pass in 2018. This will fail. Even if those dollars aimed to help the homeless in King County, the county tends to not give money to projects that impact Seattlites more than everyone else in the area.

This is a stinging defeat for the mayor and a welcome development for taxpayers who can’t keep shouldering the tax burden for nebulous projects that have a lofty and heart-felt goal, but lack details to show the money would be well spent.

The mayor has rightfully said he would end blank checks to programs that don’t show results. He should be lauded for that. But he should also follow through, cut off funding to ineffective programs, publicize the saved funds, then reallocate them to programs with verifiable results.

Follow @https://twitter.com/jasonrantz