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Sightline Institute Research
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Cascadia’s sustainability think tank brings you a feed of its latest research articles, in text-to-audio recordings. Learn how the region can advance abundant housing for vibrant communities; reform our democratic systems and elections to honor the public’s priorities, including its support for climate solutions; make a just transition away from fossil fuels and into a 21st-century energy economy; and model forestry and agricultural practices that rebuild our soils, ecosystems, and rural economies. View articles in full at sightline.org.
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Oregon’s New Path to Inclusionary Housing: Fully Funded and Flexible
2w ago00:07:25Tap to summarizeUnderfunded inclusionary zoning programs, which likely slowed housing production in the City of Portland from 2017 to 2024, are on track to be illegal in the Portland area. A bill that cleared Oregon's legislature on March 4 requires jurisdictions in the area to regularly self-evaluate these mandatory affordability programs, if they have them, and to keep them fully funded. The legislation gained bipartisan support, passing the House 32–21, following a 21–6 vote in the state Senate in February. The bill's lead champion, Sen. Khanh Pham (D-Portland), wrote: "Senate Bill 1521 is the Oregon legislature's attempt to ensure that any inclusionary zoning program cost-effectively empowers communities to build both market-rate and affordable homes." So-called "inclusionary zoning" programs require a share of homes in all new buildings to be available below market rates. But when Portland imposed such a price control on new apartment buildings without fully offsetting the cost of those mandates, it contributed to a sharp drop in homebuilding, something that tends to drive up prices for every tenant and first-time homebuyer. That led the state's largest city to reverse course in 2024, using deeper property tax abatements to fully fund its program for rental buildings. Before that, the share of applications for small multifamily buildings had risen sharply, a sign that the program's costs outweighed its benefits and that homebuilders were deliberately avoiding the program's 20-unit threshold—or worse, avoiding building anything at all. Since the 2024 funding increase, that ratio has returned to normal, a sign that Portland's program is no longer accidentally damping production of the projects it aims to encourage. In Portland, the tax break for new buildings ends after the first ten years of a building's life, sending those future taxes back into state and local budgets. The city's 2023 economic study estimated the total cost of public incentives at about $230,000, a bit less than the average public subsidy for each similarly priced home in a 100 percent affordable apartment building. Pham, who also chairs Oregon's Senate housing committee, wrote: "I'm grateful we passed a bill that learns from Portland's experience with inclusionary zoning over the past decade. [...] I believe in inclusionary zoning as a mechanism to economically integrate neighborhoods, not as a tax on all new housing." The Oregon bill does not affect jurisdictions outside Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, Columbia, and Yamhill counties; outside those areas, underfunded affordability mandates remain legal, though tightly constrained in their design. Nor does it immediately affect any jurisdiction other than Portland, because so far only Portland has created a mandatory affordability program. Even Portland is largely in compliance with the bill. It gives Portland until 2029 to bring its currently underfunded mandate on condo buildings into balance, and also provides an option for the city to qualify by waiving infrastructure fees specifically for mixed-income condo buildings. In exchange for the funding requirement, the bill gives Portland-area jurisdictions more flexibility in program design. For example, a city can now set lower price targets for homes in new buildings, or a variety of price targets within a building. But the city must use some combination of tax breaks, fee breaks, or grants to keep the mandate's costs and benefits, whatever they are, roughly in balance for the prototypical project. "If you're going to have an inclusionary zoning program, you should fund it," said Portland City Councilor Mitch Green, a Democratic Socialists of America-affiliated member of the city's housing and permitting committee. [...] Otherwise, you get perverse outcomes such as 19 units instead of 20. You get a lot of uncertainty. You get into kind of a production-cycle lag that we can't really afford. [...] I think dollar for dollar, it's probably one of the most cost-effecti...
Transcribe →11% of Northwest Residents Live in Fire Country; 100% Pay the Price
2w ago00:02:56Tap to summarizeAs of 2023, nearly 1.6 million people in the Northwest lived in areas facing high wildfire hazard, a figure that climbed eight percent since 2018. In most Northwest states, population is growing fastest in the places most likely to burn. Yet the cost of continuing to build into fire-prone areas does not stop at the edge of fire country. About 80 percent of north-westerners live outside places subject to high wildfire hazard, but they increasingly subsidize growth into them—via higher taxes to fund escalating fire suppression budgets, steeper utility rates for wildfire mitigation, and rising insurance premiums. And when smoke travels hundreds of miles, everyone pays with their health. Sightline's newest report, Fire Hazard: The Mounting Costs of Northwest Sprawl, examines how Northwest policymakers can rein in the escalating costs that fall disproportionately on those who don't live in fire-prone areas, while protecting low-income families who do and have few other options. It outlines policy tools that can make transformative change long-term: steering new development away from the most dangerous areas, building homes that can withstand fire, and helping communities rebuild in safer locations after disasters. These are tested policy tools. Northwest states have long relied on land use rules and building standards to safeguard communities from the risk of building in places likely to flood. For now, though political will for these types of changes is lacking. Oregon, for example, repealed its wildfire hazard map and related building codes after backlash from property owners. And, if California's experience is any indicator, less than a year after the catastrophic 2025 fires in Los Angeles, city leaders moved quickly to rebuild in areas with very high wildfire risk and continue to push back on statewide defensible space requirements. If comprehensive reforms remain politically infeasible today, policymakers can still lay the groundwork for them by giving north-westerners access to honest information about the rising risk of fire. This means helping renters and homebuyers know the hazard wildfires could pose to their homes and allowing insurance prices to adjust (both up and down) to reflect actual risk of a property burning down. All the while, legalizing more homes in safer parts of the Northwest can ease some of the pressure pushing people to move into harm's way. Wildfires will continue to intensify as summers grow hotter and drier. The Northwest still has time to choose a more fire-resilient path, but that window narrows with each fire season. To read the full report, go to sightline.org.
Transcribe →How to Close Montana Primary Elections’ ‘Drop-and-Swap’ Loophole
2w ago00:04:37Tap to summarizeIt went down like a game of three-card monte, with Montana voters as the mark. Eight minutes before the June primary filing deadline, Kurt Alme, who until that day was the US Attorney for the District of Montana, put his name in the running for US Senate. Moments later, sitting Senator Steve Daines dropped out and announced his retirement. After that, he and President Trump quickly fired off coordinated endorsements for Alme. The backroom deal played out like clockwork: neither Democrats nor Republicans had time to field other candidates. Voters still technically have other choices on the ballot besides Kurt Alme, but Daines' behind-the-scenes maneuver nipped any chance of real competitiveness in the bud. A member of Congress ensuring the coast is clear for a handpicked successor is never a good look. To put an end to such drop-and-swap ploys, Montana legislators could adopt a simple rule from the state of Missouri, where officials extend the filing window if a candidate drops out just before the buzzer. On its face, Montana's deadline seems fair. From sitting senators to idealistic outsiders, everyone who wants their name on a primary ballot must file by the same time: exactly 5:00 p.m., 90 days before the primary election. But in practice, the no-exceptions deadline allows popular incumbent politicians to practice sleight of hand. As long as they are in good standing, incumbents know they are unlikely to face a serious challenge for their seat. If they drop out at the last minute, they can tee up whoever they like—a friend, a staffer, or even a family member—to take their place. Last time Daines ran for reelection, he breezed through the primary with 88 percent of the vote and bowled over then-Governor Steve Bullock by a ten-point margin in the general. With little reason to believe Daines would be any less successful in 2026, only two candidates mounted the longest of long-shot primary bids against the incumbent senator.1 It was the perfect set-up to drop and swap. Presto, hope you like Kurt Alme. While the Show-Me State has had its share of primary election drama this cycle, Missourians never have to worry about a Daines-style bait and switch: it's a mathematical impossibility. If any candidate, incumbent or otherwise, withdraws from the running within the two-day span prior to the state's filing deadline, filing re-opens for four whole days the following week. And just to be sure there are no shenanigans, aspiring candidates get an extra five days to file if an incumbent withdraws or is disqualified after the deadline but before officials lock in primary ballot lists. With these backstops, parties, the press, and voters have a matter of days to vet candidates and uplift alternatives—not a matter of minutes. The Missouri Secretary of State announces when filing opens again after the deadline, and news outlets amplify the message. No smoke, no mirrors. Full transparency. Two days before the deadline, US Representative Ryan Zinke also made a surprise announcement: he would not run for re-election in Montana's 1st Congressional District. It may have been short notice, but it was still enough time to draw in a healthy slate of contenders, including Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen, conservative radio show host Aaron Flint, and "Doc" Olszewski, Zinke's most formidable challenger from four years prior. If Montana had the Missouri rule in place when Daines withdrew, Kurt Alme could still have been a primary participant. But with five extra days to coordinate, other Republican heavyweights could also have had their moment to make a case to the public, and Democrats might have called in one of their own statewide stars to contend for the open Senate seat. Instead, Daines denied voters' power to choose. Thankfully, Montana lawmakers are not averse to refining the filing process. In 2025, Republican-led legislation trimmed 45 days off the candidate filing window. By opening a few of those days back up under specific circumstanc...
Transcribe →How Threats to Voting by Mail Could Affect Cascadia
2w ago00:22:39Tap to summarizeHow Threats to Voting by Mail Could Affect Cascadia Voting by mail has a long and proven track record. It increases turnout, gives voters more time to consider issues and candidates, and saves election administrators money. It's just as free from fraud as other methods of voting—which is to say, there's virtually none. Neither Democrats nor Republicans get a particular boost from expanding access to mail ballots. Unsurprisingly, it's also popular. Across the five states that make up most of Cascadia (Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington), four in five voters receive their ballots in their mailboxes. Cascadia has always been a leader in this form of franchise: Oregon was the first state to hold an all-mail election in 1995 and made it permanent in 2000; Washington followed suit in 2011 after long offering an absentee option. Many states across the US expanded the option during the COVID-19 pandemic, and while some have reverted to offering it only to overseas and military voters, close to one-third of American voters still take advantage of the benefits of voting at home. But this easy method of voting is now under threat. From postal service policy updates to a case before the US Supreme Court, voters long used to dropping their ballots in the mail may no longer have them counted in time. Fortunately, the biggest dangers, such as the US House's proposed ban on mail-in ballots, don't seem likely to go into effect any time soon. In this article, I lay out the existing and potential federal threats to Cascadia's favorite voting method. I then examine available data and policy on how they might affect our region's elections. Of the five main Cascadian states, Idaho, will have the fewest hurdles to overcome, as its laws already match some of the potential additional restrictions and fewer Idaho voters use the mail-in option. Yet plenty of Gem State voters—rural and urban—still benefit from access to absentee ballots. Montana has similar laws to Idaho, but Montana voters return their ballots by mail at the highest rate of any state in the region (most Oregon and Washington voters return ballots through drop boxes), so USPS delays might affect more of them. Like voters across the region, Oregon voters would do well to get ballots in early or use the state's many ballot drop boxes. Oregon's May primary election was a good messaging test for election administrators and advocates. Voters in Washington, which currently allows ballots to arrive at elections offices later than any other state, might have to adjust their habits significantly, depending on the scope of the changes. And recent elections already show a larger proportion of ballots invalidated for tardiness compared with previous years. Any changes might have the most impact in Alaska, not for a large number of voters, but for those in remote areas with few fallback options. The challenges that might affect mail-in ballots, described below from most to least likely, vary in the scale of their consequences. The most pervasive threat to mail voting isn't an outright attack; it's a secondary effect of USPS decisions that are already impacting voters. The US Supreme Court has not yet ruled in the relevant case, but its decision would affect as many as one in six voters in some states and is worth preparing for. More overtly anti-mail voting efforts in the form of congressional legislation and a presidential executive order have greater potential impact but murky prospects for success. The United States Postal Service (USPS) both delivers unmarked ballots to voters' homes and returns completed ballots from mailboxes to election centers. Its long-standing organizational challenges are already besetting voters. Facing a financial crisis, USPS started consolidating mail processing centers more than two years ago and reducing delivery and pickup times in early 2025. Then in December 2025, USPS declared that postmarks show the date mail goes through an automated processing f...
Transcribe →Seattle's No-Cost Emissions Cut
Feb 1700:16:39Tap to summarizeThrough the first decades of this century, the greater Seattle area had a secret weapon for fighting climate change: it let people choose to live closer to each other. Using a study of neighborhood-level carbon emissions, Sightline estimates that new residents to the Seattle area produced about 5 percent less greenhouse gases from 2000 to 2020. That's simply thanks to their metro area being better than any other in the United States at adding homes to existing neighborhoods. The region eliminated about 1 million tons of potential greenhouse gas emissions basically for free: no government spending, no tax credits for efficiency, no carbon trading market, no carbon tax. This public benefit came just from reducing red tape and letting construction workers build the kinds of homes that people want to live in. Building those homes created jobs. Letting people live in them created economic growth, more location choices, and lower energy bills. The metro might have done even better, of course, if it had allowed more homes throughout the region; and it can keep improving in the future. But for the economy of greater Seattle, this category of climate action has been better than a free lunch. It's been a lunch the region got paid to eat. In general, it's a simple relationship: when people live close enough together, they use less energy and emit less greenhouse gases. Take it from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: "compact and resource-efficient urban growth through co-location of higher residential and job densities, mixed land use, and transit-oriented development (TOD) could reduce GHG emissions between 23 percent and 26 percent by 2050 compared to the business-as-usual scenario." This effect comes from three main factors: less driving, more energy-efficient buildings, and less displacement of nearby ecosystems by energy-intensive objects like pavement. Cars and trucks are the leading source of greenhouse gas emissions in most states and provinces. Residents of the most compact neighborhoods—areas of apartments mixed with workplaces and shops, whether in cities or suburbs—drive much less than residents of spread-out neighborhoods of detached houses on large lots. "Infill housing reduces pollution by reducing driving," as UC Berkeley's Terner Center for Housing Innovation puts it. A Terner Center study finds that San Franciscans emit less than a third as much carbon from transportation as residents of the sprawling Bay Area exurb of Oakley, while making a similar number of trips for the same purposes. Another found that households in California's suburban, single-detached neighborhoods drive more than twice as much every weekday as households in urban neighborhoods with high transit usage. And public transit usage increases with population density (among other factors). In places where few people live close enough to walk to the bus stop, transit can even be less climate-friendly than personal automobiles. These emissions benefits also accrue to existing residents of a neighborhood that adds people, not just new residents moving in. When there are enough people in your neighborhood to support a grocery store or a new bus line, now you get to walk to the grocery store or take the bus to work instead of driving. There's no better insulation than another entire climate-controlled home on the other side of your wall. Urban neighborhoods are much more likely to have such wall-sharing multifamily housing, which one study finds uses 35 percent less energy for heating and 21 percent less energy for cooling than equivalent households in single-detached houses. (What's more, multifamily homes generally have smaller floorplans, which further reduce energy consumption from heating and cooling.) It takes energy to make stuff, and spread-out cities require more stuff. One researcher at Delft University of Technology found that "urban sprawl accounts for a third of all greenhouse gas emissions" via increased raw materi...
Transcribe →Fast, Affordable, Illegal
Feb 1700:12:45Tap to summarizeSince NW Tiny Homes opened on Columbia Boulevard in Portland, Oregon, last July, business has been good. By September, the company had already hit its sales goal for the year. It sells stylish park model RVs ranging from $49,900 to $83,000, making them great options for people who are otherwise priced out of the housing market. Unfortunately, owner Jimmy Hickey frequently has to deliver bad news to prospective customers: in their city, it's illegal. Hickey told Sightline: "Pretty much every week or every couple days, we're running into someone that's excited for one of these and then, 'oh sorry.'" He recalls one family in Gresham, Oregon, that was hoping to move their mother out of a nursing home and have her live with them. "We had tears of joy turned into tears of sadness in the same transaction." Portland is one of the few cities that allows people to live in mobile dwellings on any property that already has a house. But elsewhere across Cascadia, local zoning codes prohibit them, forcing people with limited financial means into scarce manufactured housing parks or living under the radar and hoping for the best. City and state officials are trying to change that, with Washington State Representative Mia Gregerson leading the charge. Her proposal, HB 1443, would allow these low-cost dwellings in backyards around the state. Living in RVs, like the ones NW Tiny Homes sells, has been allowed in Washington state for nearly twenty years, but only in manufactured housing parks. Opportunities to live in these communities are limited. The ten manufactured home parks in Bellingham, Washington, for example, can fit just two percent of the city's households combined. Since the Great Recession, demand to live in these places has soared. Jax, who lived in White River Estates in Auburn, Washington, saw the change firsthand. The 204-home park had been purchased by a California company, which raised her rent every six months. Over the years, her monthly rate more than doubled, from $400 to $900. The financial strain was compounded by a car accident that left Jax disabled. She told Sightline, "We realized, if we didn't do something, we were going to end up living in a car." She estimated that by the time she left in 2015, only five families remained who had lived there prior to 2008. Even her three-bedroom trailer in the park had risen in value. She was able to sell it for $80,000, five times what she paid for it a decade prior. Jax then purchased a tiny home for herself and her youngest son to live in for $45,000. Designed by an Oregon builder, their home is a certified RV that can go totally off-grid. "Long story short, it has been the best thing we could have done. Our quality of life has been better because of that." Since then, Jax and her son traveled regionally, towing their house behind them to Seattle, Gold Bar, and Seabeck, before buying a rural property of their own. Despite the stability her tiny home has brought, what she's doing is technically not allowed. "We own the land. We own the house. But technically, we're not living legally in either one." Outside of manufactured housing parks, jurisdictions typically only permit RVs to be inhabited for a prescribed number of days or under special circumstances, like while you are building a permanent house nearby. This is a huge missed opportunity, according to Jax: "Tiny homes are a perfect niche spot for affordable housing that is really not taxing on the government. You can put aging parents in the backyard and keep them out of the nursing home, and keep the corporate nursing home from stealing all the family income. I've seen too many of my friends lose their inheritance." Jax warned this issue would worsen as the population ages. "There are a lot of people who are seniors—in their 50s and 60s, a lot of Gen X—who are going to need tiny homes. We don't have retirement. We're screwed as a generation." Jax has been advocating to legalize tiny homes for years, emailing legislators ...
Transcribe →Ranked Choice Voting, the Utah Way
Feb 1700:19:06Tap to summarizeJanuary 1, 2026, marked the conclusion of a remarkable experiment in American ranked choice voting. A bipartisan bill passed by the Utah legislature in 2019 led some of the state's reddest cities to adopt a ranked choice voting pilot, a program widely appreciated by their mostly Republican voters. These cities reduced their election costs by 40 percent, had fewer low-plurality winners, improved representation, and saw more positive campaigns. At the program's zenith, 23 Utah cities opted to use ranked choice voting methods in their elections, and voters largely approved. Polling found that a majority of voters enjoyed using ranked choice voting, more than 75 percent found it easy to use, a majority were more likely to vote for their preferred candidate, and a majority wanted to continue to use ranked choice voting in local elections. Out of the 23 participant cities, 13 were in counties that cast ballots for President Trump in 2024. In the two inaugural cities, nearly 70 percent of voters voted Republican. Moreover, most of the champions of the policy in Utah are card-carrying Republicans. Yet in recent years, the national Republican Party's official stance on ranked choice voting has soured. Increased partisanship on the issue led to the pilot project sunsetting in 2025, contrary to the values and wishes of its many conservative proponents. How and why did a very red state come to embrace ranked choice voting? What impeded its broader adoption? And as the pilot concludes, what lessons might fellow conservatives draw from Utah's experience? To find out, Sightline spoke with four key players who have helped bring ranked choice voting to the state. The Utah ranked choice voting experiment is notable not only for its popularity among conservative-leaning voters, but also for its origin story. While parties are becoming more polarized in their attitudes toward ranked choice voting today, Utah's experiment began with a notable display of bipartisanship in 2017. The bill to usher in ranked choice voting in Utah was the brainchild of the most progressive member of the state house—and the most conservative. Former Rep. Marc Roberts had been a proponent of ranked choice voting since using the method himself in Utah Republican Party caucus meetings: "In my neighborhood caucus, the precinct chair was a huge proponent of ranked choice voting. He was the one that introduced me to it. We would use it every now and then in our county convention and even the state convention. I loved it because, from a voter's perspective, I hated being stuck in a situation where I got to pick between the worse of two evils." Roberts attempted to advance the policy when first elected to office but faced strong pushback from county clerks, who argued that it would be far too expensive to implement, given the limitations of their voting equipment. Undeterred, when it came time to solicit proposals for new voting equipment, Roberts ensured the new machines would be ranked choice voting-compatible. Former Rep. Rebecca Chavez-Houck, who served as the Minority Whip for the Democrats at the time, became curious about ranked choice voting while serving on a commission to strengthen Utah's democracy. She viewed it as a way to increase Utah's voter participation levels and electoral competition in a state where a small number of Republican primary voters can effectively determine outcomes. The two lawmakers realized they were aligned on the issue when Chavez-Houk filed a bill on the topic. Roberts reached out, telling Chavez-Houck, "Look, I've been at this for three years. Here's the lay of the land, and here's what I've tried. I'm more than happy to help co-sponsor this thing." Roberts and Chavez-Houck joined forces. The bill sailed through the state house, backed by some of the most conservative members at the time, many of whom strongly favored local control of election methods. "It was awesome," recalled Roberts, and the novelty of the bipartisan collaboration h...
Transcribe →Districts Won’t Truly Represent Deschutes County Residents
Feb 1700:15:10Tap to summarizeA new proposal to create districts in central Oregon's Deschutes County illustrates all the flaws of the winner-take-all election model that predominates in Cascadia and beyond. It's also a case study of how much better our elections could be. The Deschutes County Board of Commissioners recently proposed switching the county's election method from at-large numbered seats to single-member districts. The board-appointed committee tasked with drafting a possible district map, however, ran into a number of challenges in fulfilling its charge, including outdated data, unequal puzzle pieces, and a lot of concern over partisanship. In an increasingly liberal area, the conservative-majority committee ended up with a map that favors Republican voters. Unfortunately, the current at-large winner-take-all model also fails to provide reliable representation for both majority and minority viewpoints. But there's another solution that offers consistent representation for people of all groups, whether based on neighborhood, party, or another unifying factor: proportional representation. Drawing districts inevitably brings up the specter of gerrymandering, but mapmakers didn't have to gerrymander to prove that districts are a poor solution to the problem of how to best represent county residents. It's difficult to draw districts fairly, and any mapmaking committee will trade some criteria for others. Deschutes County currently elects county commissioners to numbered at-large positions in staggered terms. County board seats were partisan positions for most of Deschutes's history, but in 2022 voters approved a switch to nonpartisan elections, effective in 2024. Then in 2024, voters increased the number of commissioners from three to five, effective in 2026. After the expansion proposal passed in 2024, the board of commissioners proposed an additional modification: abandoning the at-large numbered seats in favor of five geographic districts. Commissioners appointed a District Mapping Advisory Committee (DMAC) to draft a district map and set guidelines for the task. In early December 2025, DMAC proposed a five-district map to the county board, which appears likely to offer it to voters for approval in May or possibly November 2026. The board may have tried its best to create a fair process. The problem? Bias is hard to escape. The current board of county commissioners leans right. Tony DeBone and Patti Adair are Republicans, elected in 2022, before elections were nonpartisan; Phil Chang, the third member, was elected in 2020 as a Democrat and then reelected in 2024 in the technically nonpartisan race. These three commissioners appointed DMAC's seven members. DeBone and Adair each selected two members and Chang chose three, so the majority of the committee owed its seats to the conservative commissioners. And the proposed map, with districts A through E, favors conservative voters. In the 2020 presidential election, 53 percent of Deschutes County voters chose the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden. The same proportion selected Kamala Harris for president in 2024. Yet under the proposed district plan, three of the five districts would reliably vote conservative, constructing a conservative-majority board of commissioners, contrary to the partisan leanings of county voters. Based on the precinct breakdown of the 2024 presidential results, more voters in proposed districts A, C, and E chose Donald Trump over Kamala Harris; the opposite is true in districts B and D. Sometimes local elections contradict trends displayed in national races, when county candidates connect with voters on day-to-day issues and national partisan platforms hold less sway. Not so in Deschutes. For instance, in 2020, when Democrat Chang won his countywide seat with 53 percent of the vote, he would have lost in the same three conservative districts. The same trend holds in voter registrations. In November 2025, as in every month since early 2020, the county saw more Democratic re...
Transcribe →A Charter Commissioner’s Guide to Election Reform
Feb 1200:10:25Tap to summarizeThis January, dozens of Cascadians are sitting down for the first meetings of charter review commissions across the region with the same goal in mind: improving local government. They picked a great place to start. Municipal charter reviews—during which a panel of residents suggests amendments to what are basically local constitutions—can be a powerful and collaborative way to kickstart positive change. Healthier elections can ultimately mean better outcomes for voters and communities that achieve their local priorities. So, if election reform is a goal, where's a commissioner to begin? Sightline staff reached out to former commission members and researched past efforts to answer that question. The result is a list of six recommendations for getting election reform from initial commission discussions to a ballot measure in front of voters, spanning from whom to contact to how to frame the case for your community. Whether you just landed a seat on an upcoming charter review commission or want to stand out as one of the thousands of residents living in the cities and counties under review, this guide is here to help. More than half of US states allow municipalities to adopt home rule charters, which allow local governments and services to differ from what is laid out in state law. Essentially, the charter serves as a local constitution, dictating the government's design and setting ground rules for how it will run. Typically, amending the charter requires voter approval. Municipalities change over time. Populations and industries grow and shrink, and as such, a community's wants and needs may not be the same today as they were ten years ago. A charter review commission allows residents an opportunity to review the charter, take public input, deliberate on improvements, and suggest amendments to improve local government. Take Snohomish County, Washington, for example, where population increased by an estimated 43 percent from 2000 to 2024. That's about 258,000 new residents, more than the entire population of nearby Whatcom County! Snohomish County's 2016 charter commission posed seven charter amendments to the growing and diversifying voter base, which approved the establishment of an advisory commission on human rights and a new Office of Public Advocate to mediate community complaints (among other changes). Election reform is one avenue to reaching a commission's goal: a local government that better serves voters. (Other paths include government restructuring, rethinking public officials' roles, and creating, merging, or eliminating offices and divisions.) Depending on local and state law, electoral reforms may help solve specific problems. Here are a few examples: If an Alaskan municipality sees consistently low voter turnout, commissioners could consider changing the timing or frequency of local elections (thanks to flexible state statutes). Denali Borough, for example, aligns municipal elections with statewide ones. If residents are concerned with the sway of wealthy individuals in local politics, a commission might suggest a democracy voucher or small donor elections program. Or, in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, forms of local ranked choice voting can address problems like spoiler candidates or a council that only represents one kind of voter. Past Cascadian charter reviews have delivered voters a fairer redistricting process for Snohomish County, a Portland City Council that finally reflects its population, and a prohibition on government interference in Whatcom County's ballot initiative process. Ushering an election upgrade from the ideas phase to action requires research, collaboration, and more than a little tact. Former local charter review commissioners from Oregon and Washington offered the following advice to those just kicking off the process: lay the groundwork, do your homework, and communicate how better elections can address real concerns from community members and leaders. If commissioners can agree on ...
Transcribe →Katie Wilson Can Be Seattle’s Climate Mayor for Renters
Feb 1200:11:35Tap to summarizeSeattle's new Mayor, Katie Wilson and I share more than a few things in common. We're both parents to toddlers. Scandalously, our children's grandmothers help cover a portion of sky-high Seattle daycare costs (though my daughter's 2026 daycare cost hike just swallowed my in-laws' contribution). We're also among the roughly 50 percent of city residents who rent. Seattle renters contribute less to climate-warming pollution, on average, than homeowners. Renters in the city are nearly twice as likely to heat their homes with clean electricity as homeowners, more than half of whom burn natural gas for warmth. Seattle renters occupy smaller homes, with more people in them, than residents who own where they live. Renters are six times more likely than homeowners to get around Seattle without a car. (I feel optimistic that Katie Wilson, with her transit background, will do everything she can to make the city safer and easier to navigate for bikers and walkers. This is one of the best climate bets she can make.) Ironically, though, Seattleites who rent are excluded from enjoying many of the upsides of the clean energy revolution. Renters cannot lessen our rising electricity bills by adding solar panels to our rooftops. We cannot rip out our gas stoves in favor of healthier, better performing induction cooktops and ranges. We'd be laughed at, at best, if we asked our landlords to remove our baseboard heaters or gas furnaces and shell out tens of thousands of dollars for more efficient heat pumps. At least, we can't cash in yet. Mayor Wilson could change that. Mayor Wilson enjoys an unusual opportunity among her peers: the city she runs owns its electric utility. One of the largest municipal utilities in the United States, Seattle City Light could make or break the city's climate goals. It could also create new ways for renters to participate in the clean energy economy. With Katie Wilson installed in City Hall, City Light could launch US-leading heat pump, induction stove, and plug-in solar programs. For those of us forking over hefty rent checks every month, the mayor could let us in on cost-saving—and emissions-lowing—clean energy action. Converting homes from low-efficiency electric furnaces or baseboards (the most common heating sources for Seattle's renters) to high-efficiency heat pumps would lower monthly heating bills by reducing electricity use by up to 75 percent. More efficient electric rentals would also free up space on City Light's grid to connect the thousands of homes and businesses in Seattle currently burning fossil fuels, thereby reducing the likelihood that the utility will have to buy expensive, dirty energy in the event of an energy supply crunch. (Most of the United States' electricity comes from burning fossil fuels, whereas roughly 90 percent of City Light's power sources are carbon-free.) For the minority of renters who burn gas for heat (including yours truly), upgrading to heat pumps would loosen our yoke to the fossil fuel price roller coaster. Plus, heat pumps also cool; half of Seattle renters lack air conditioning, compared to just a quarter of the city's homeowners, a figure with potentially deadly consequences as the region's summers grow hotter. Heat pumps are, however, basically impossible for Seattle's renters to access. No renter will succeed in convincing their landlords to shell out the $15,000 to $20,000 the appliances cost. And renters are unlikely to afford the systems themselves even if a landlord consented to associated renovations. Seattle's renting households earned less than half the median income of homeowning households in 2024. Under Mayor Wilson's leadership, Seattle City Light could launch an ambitious program to front the cost of heat pumps for renters. Renters would pay a monthly service fee to enjoy the equipment, but the electricity savings from the upgrade would offset the fee. In other words, electricity bills would go down while comfort would go up. In these types of program...
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