‘We can’t become callous’: KIRO hosts debate what a startup’s departure to Texas says about Seattle’s business climate

Another Seattle-area tech startup is heading to Texas, and KIRO host Ursula Reutin and KIRO fill-in host Angela Poe Russell said the region can’t afford to shrug it off, even as KIRO producer Andrew Lanier argued the business-exodus narrative is overblown.

Supply chain software company Auger, founded in Bellevue in 2024 by former Amazon operations chief Dave Clark, is moving its headquarters to Dallas. Clark has raised $150 million and counts Meta, Fanatics, and Kimberly-Clark among his customers. In a GeekWire interview, Clark said the move was about family, weather, and access to Dallas’s deep pool of supply chain talent, not taxes. Angela said she found that refreshing.

“I thought it was refreshing that someone was saying, ‘You know what? We’re not leaving because of taxes,'” Angela said on “The Gee and Ursula Show” on KIRO Newsradio. “It has to do with, and he even mentioned, weather for him and his family, kind of having more sunshine. I have to admit, there is a part of me that’s like, is it true?”

However, Clark offered a warning. He said he has sensed an anti-business climate in the Seattle region and cautioned that the area should not assume major companies will stay forever. Lanier wasn’t buying it.

“I roll my eyes at all the stories because I don’t have a lot of patience for anecdotal evidence,” Andrew said. “Like, ‘Immigrants are doing all the crime.’ Like, ‘The Trump administration set up a website where you could report immigrants who are committing crimes, and it’s well documented that they commit crimes.’ The same thing with businesses leaving because of taxes.”

Andrew argued that business owners have an outsized voice in public discourse compared to the average citizen, and that companies use “Seattle sucks” as a convenient explanation for problems that may be internal.

“No boss wants to be the bad guy,” he said. “They don’t want to say, ‘Hey, our business failed because I’ve been drawing too large of a salary and I’m going through a painful divorce, so I have to lay you off.’ It’s a lot easier to say, ‘Seattle sucks.'”

Ursula says Seattle can’t afford Wilson’s ‘bye’ attitude toward business

Ursula pointed to the data behind the headlines.

“One of the messages in this article and from this guy was that there is an anti-business attitude, and the region should not assume that major companies are going to stay always,” she said. “I mean, I like to dunk on Starbucks, Howard Schultz. And he had a similar thing, but we can’t become callous. Or we cannot, the whole Mayor Wilson saying, ‘Bye.’ That’s the wrong attitude to have. We absolutely should be trying — at a time when companies, tech companies, are doing these massive layoffs — we should absolutely be working toward making this a business-friendly climate.”

Ursula cited several data points. Downtown Seattle has lost about 30,000 jobs since 2020, with many blaming the city’s JumpStart payroll tax on large employers as a contributing factor. Office vacancy rates in the downtown core have climbed past 32%. Starbucks moved some operations to Nashville. And a survey by the Association of Washington Business reported that nearly one in four employers considered moving out of state specifically because of rising tax burdens and regulations.

“I think it’s a mistake to just say, ‘Eh, let them move,'” Ursula said.

A look at where Seattle’s policies could lead

Angela steered the conversation toward specific policies that she said can influence where people choose to do business. She noted that in Seattle, the maximum late fee a landlord can charge a tenant is $10 per month.

“Is that going to make someone want to be a landlord?” she asked. “And is that going to be a motivator for someone trying to game the system?”

Angela also pointed to the city council’s recent ban on rental junk fees, including monthly pet charges. She said she visited an Arizona apartment complex that had to install a camera system in their park area because pet owners were letting their dogs go to the bathroom everywhere.

“There is a cost that comes with that when you have a pet in a group area,” she said. “Policies can influence where people choose to do business.”

‘We have to figure out how to strike the balance,’ Angela says

Andrew conceded the point on specific policies but maintained his broader argument.

“Angela, your example of the landlord late fee thing, that’s a perfect example of legislation that, I would say, is not friendly to landlords, right, and overly sensitive to tenants,” he said. “That being said, we’ve also had a system that has been overly favorable, in my opinion, to landlords for a long period of time.”

Andrew pointed to Boeing as an example of a company that received tens of millions in tax breaks yet still moved its headquarters.

“When they face a similar tax burden as the average individual, they say, ‘You’re anti-business,'” he said. “No. I think a lot of us think, actually, we just want you to pay your fair share since you have such an accumulation of wealth, while the average person, senior citizen, is being asked to fund all of the public works, and they can’t stay in their home, because that’s the way our tax system is structured.”

Angela said both sides of the argument can be true at the same time.

“We have to figure out how to strike the balance between how we create an environment that is competitive and also taking care of people,” she said. “At the end of the day, I still, we still have a great value proposition in the city of Seattle. I really do love the city. I love my neighborhood. I love downtown.”

She added that she believes Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson “seems like a person who can take feedback and pivot.”

Ursula paused.

“I’m hoping,” she said. “Again, you and I have a vested interest in this. We want that to be the case.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to Gee and Ursula on “The Gee and Ursula Show” weekday mornings from 9 am to 12 pm on KIRO Newsradio.