More MIZ: SEPA Problems and a Rift Between City Staff and HALA Co-Chairs

Posted by on Monday, August 15, 2016 · Leave a Comment 

When legislation is about to pass things can get interesting. As I pointed out in a previous posts more problems have emerged with legislation being considered today by the Council to pass the Framework for the Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning (MIZ) program. The issue is whether SEPA has been done properly or whether the City is trying to break up the process so that it can avoid doing a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the whole Grand Bargain. I think they are being clever. But it really doesn’t matter what I think, only a judge could make that determination.

Oddly, the only response to my e-mail came from Faith Pettis, Co-Chair of the Mayor’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) Committee. Pettis, a attorney with the Pacifica Law Group a firm that specializes in housing finance, especially Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC), protested my characterization of her passive agreement with City staff about whether MIZ is inflationary.

Pettis apparently DOESN’T agree with the staff writing the value exchange part of MIZ. What’s odd about that is she could have said so, on the spot while the camera was rolling. She didn’t. I figured that meant she agreed. She also refused to be on a panel with me on it, a panel where we could have had this debate. Anyway, here are the e-mails — no Russians were involved.

Unfortunately, due to a peculiarity with my email set up I don’t have my response to Pettis’ response which was essentially to affirm what I wrote and to urge anyone interested to watch the video themselves. I didn’t make the point that when sitting right next to Geoff Wentlandt Pettis didn’t disagree with what Wentlandt said.

In the end, as I pointed out on Publicola, this Council will grind ahead today over all this falderal and pass the MIZ Framework 9 to nothing: getting yet another wrong thing done.

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Greetings Councilmembers,

I want to be sure that we are on public record expressing concerns about the passage of the so called Framework tomorrow (Council Bill 118736).

We have already expressed substantive disagreement: Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning (MIZ) is an inflationary policy that will only make housing prices worse for consumers by adding additional costs and slowing production with inclusion mandates and fees. The City and the Chairs of the HALA Committee have publicly agreed that this “a valid way to view the program.”
Now, the City appears to be sequencing the SEPA process to avoid a full EIS for the MIZ proposal otherwise known as the Grand Bargain; something that could be illegal. 
Councilmember Johnson has expressed the City’s view that the Framework for the Grand Bargain is covered by a previous SEPA process that arrived at a Determination of Non Significance (DNS). The City apparently has decided that Determination of Significance recently issued covers only proposed zoning changes. And it appears to argue that no zoning changes that would create and environmental impact would be created until actual zoning changes are passed. This might be literally true, since the Framework’s scheme of value exchange would only operate with upzones covered by the Framework. Without upzones, the argument goes, the Framework is inert.
 
However, that DNS was published on June 8, 2015, a full month before the Grand Bargain was actually finalized and signed on July 13, 2015. The Bargain is of questionable value as an agreement (e.g. was it approved by the City Attorney the way a labor agreement might have to be?) since it doesn’t appear to be legal binding on anyone. But the City can’t have it both ways, suggesting that there are two SEPA outcomes that are totally unrelated while claiming publicly (claiming it a lot, over and over again) that the City has a deal of value exchange of zoning for fees or inclusionary housing through a unified, single, Grand Bargain document. 
 
We strongly suggest you table the approval of legislation tomorrow and ask for a full legal review to verify these dates and facts. Otherwise you are exposing the City to a lot of legal risk and further questions about he legitimacy of a Bargain signed by so few on behalf of so many. 

Roger–

Roger,

We want to set the record straight.  Your statement, taken from your below email:

We have already expressed substantive disagreement: Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning (MIZ) is an inflationary policy that will only make housing prices worse for consumers by adding additional costs and slowing production with inclusion mandates and fees. The City and the Chairs of the HALA Committee have publicly agreed that this “a valid way to view the program.”

is flat out wrong.  Neither of us made the statement you are attributing to us and furthermore neither of us agrees with your larger misconstruction of a supposed point.  We request that you not misquote us or twist our statements to appear to serve your interests.

Faith Pettis and David Wertheimer

HALA Co-Chairs

 

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