Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson makes a waving gesture while commenting on millionaires threatening to leave Washington state during her appearance at Seattle University earlier this month. (Screenshot via YouTube / Seattle Channel)
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson is being greeted with a bit of backlash over a recent “goodbye.”
During a conversation earlier this month at Seattle University, Wilson offered her take on the supposed threats of millionaires in Washington state who say tax policy will drive them to leave.
“I think the claims that millionaires are going to leave our state are, like, super overblown. And if — the ones that leave, like, bye,” Wilson said while offering a wave before laughing amid cheers from the crowd. (See the exchange at 39:09 in video below.)
The comments, which resurfaced online this week, have drawn criticism from some in Seattle’s tech community, who see them as emblematic of a broader hostility toward business in the region.
Wilson was joined by King County Executive Girmay Zahilay for an April 14 conversation with moderators about how their progressive approaches to politics and policies shape the future of the Puget Sound region. Both were elected in November.
The mayor was asked whether she thought progressive taxes — like the state’s recently passed 9.9% tax applied to taxable, personal annual income that exceeds $1 million — are an “easy and promising solution.”
“As someone who has been fighting for progressive taxes for a very long time, I can tell you they are not easy,” Wilson said, adding that she was “excited” to see the so-called millionaires tax pass the state Legislature.
Wilson acknowledged that Washington’s tax structure remains heavily regressive overall, and said her office is actively exploring progressive taxation options available to the city. While she noted that Seattle has more local taxing flexibility than the county, she cautioned that Seattle can’t stray too far from its neighbors — pointing to Bellevue as an example — without risking its competitiveness as a place to do business.
GeekWire reached out to the mayor’s office for comment and we’ll update if we hear back.
The debate over progressive taxation in Washington state has been building for months, with the tech community largely — though not uniformly — alarmed by what it sees as a hostile policy environment.
When the millionaires tax was still a proposal, a coalition of AI researchers, founders, and investors wrote to Gov. Bob Ferguson urging him to pause both the income tax and a proposed expansion of the capital gains tax, warning that the measures would push top talent and future startups out of the region.
Earlier, some startup leaders called a related capital gains proposal targeting startup equity an “extinction-level event,” with founders testifying in Olympia against the bill. The measure failed to pass.
Prominent voices like Microsoft President Brad Smith have been pointed in their criticism, warning that Washington risks taking its tech sector for granted and urging lawmakers to focus on economic development — not just revenue extraction.
Wilson’s wave and “bye” are drawing fresh scrutiny among some in Seattle’s tech community.
“Seattle is so f**ked,” longtime Seattle investor and entrepreneur Chris DeVore wrote on LinkedIn Friday. “When the person running the city doesn’t seem to understand that all jobs and tax revenue come from private employers, and driving employers away permanently hollows out her capacity to pay for her social programs, it’s clear that we’re in for a rough decade, if not a permanent decline.”
In an opinion piece earlier this month for GeekWire, DeVore expressed his frustration with Democrats at both the state and national level today who he said are turning capitalism into the enemy, “pursuing confiscatory tax policies that villainize entrepreneurial wealth.”
Charles Fitzgerald, another Seattle-area investor, warned earlier this year on GeekWire about the danger of Seattle becoming “the next Cleveland,” stating that the city’s success could unravel quickly in the wake of a deteriorating business environment.
On his Platformonomics blog on Friday, Fitzgerald posted several items — including a New York Post story about Wilson’s comments — under the “Don’t be Cleveland” header. Others included a report citing record office vacancy rates in Seattle, a downgrading of the state’s credit rating, and more.
Not everyone in the tech community shares the alarm. Jacob Colker, managing director at the AI2 Incubator, pushed back earlier this year on what he called a “breathless narrative” that Seattle is one tax bill away from collapse, arguing that a few points of additional taxation don’t outweigh the region’s deep bench of AI talent, investment capital, and quality of life.
“Should we be thoughtful about tax policy? Heck yeah,” Colker wrote. “But the breathless narrative that Seattle is one bill from collapse is not serious analysis.”
While Wilson’s physical goodbye wave ignited some backlash, a comment on DeVore’s LinkedIn post from Seattle entrepreneur and investor Diego Oppenheimer summed up some of the frustration with a single, wordless emoji comment — the facepalm.
