Advocacy Update - June 2023

Article provided by BOMA President, Rod Kauffman

Government and Industry Affairs

Recent actions and developments impacting commercial real estate include:

• A court ruling this week prevents Seattle law enforcement from protecting property rights from taggers and those that would deface property with graffiti. BOMA will meet Monday, June 19th with a large group of real estate coalition partners to discuss avenues to restore property rights and protections. In a recent update, Judge Pechman clarified property destruction police action prohibition ruling to only include graffiti. Here is an excerpt from a Seattle Time article from June 15, 2023:
  
  "The original injunction, however, encompassed the broader property destruction policy, which also includes non-graffiti property crimes such as smashing windows, slashing tires or destroying someone’s personal property, a category of arrests that makes up about 900 referrals to the city attorney each year.
  
  After concern from both the plaintiffs and the city of Seattle on the scope of the injunction, Pechman filed an order early Thursday clarifying that only the graffiti subsection is affected by the injunction. Now Seattle police can make arrests related to other types of property damage, but are still prohibited from enforcing the graffiti portion of the law."
  

• On June 6th, the Seattle City Council voted 5-4 to reject the new State of Washington adopted drug possession law and thus preventing the Seattle City Attorney from prosecuting infractions as misdemeanors. BOMA and other downtown business leaders will actively advocate for Seattle elected officials to reconsider this vote.
• Mayor Harrell just endorsed Seattle’s proposed Building Performance Standards (BPS) on energy and emissions reduction targets for existing buildings.  BOMA has been actively advocating for our members for years and has been successful in modifying the final proposal. BOMA supports carbon reduction measures and affirms that our industry continue to be leaders in carbon reduction. BOMA’s position is that the proposed regulations are still overly aggressive, too fast and cost too much.