Kevin Nichols

pdc.wa.govRental Housing Association of WA PAC: Alleged violation of RCW 29B.30.050 for failure to provide sponsor identification on political advertising | Washington State Public Disclosure Commission (PDC)

Fun find tonight! State regulators today alleged the Rental Housing Association of WA PAC sent 61,905 texts promoting a push poll against Tacoma Measure 1 with no sponsor ID, which WA law requires. The site behind it is now dark www.pdc.wa.gov/rules-enforc...

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It’s clearly built to borrow Democratic branding. The CSS variable for its blue is literally named “--dnc” ( #0015BC, the party’s blue). And on what the PDC actually alleged: the stylesheet has a box styled for a WA sponsor ID, with a comment summarizing the rule. But, the box isn’t on the page.

Measure 1 would have Tacoma license landlords, keep a public database of them, fine violations itself instead of leaving tenants to sue, and require landlords to bargain with tenant unions. Worth knowing who’s alleged to be sending what.

Twelve days before the Oct 20 texts, the same PAC paid $2,970 to “Politifast” for 54,000 texts opposing Measure 1, per its C-4 filing. Politifast’s site says “Republican-only. Always.” Every other 2026 WA campaign paying Politifast in PDC data, as of tonight, is a Spokane-area Republican candidate.

web.archive.orgProgressives for Responsible Renting: more homes, fair rulesNearly half of America’s renters are cost burdened. Progressives for Responsible Renting works nationally for more homes and renter protections that actually get enforced.

Fortunately, the Wayback Machine caught the site’s homepage once, on Oct 21. “Progressives for Responsible Renting” reads progressive-ish and pro-building, with a soft spot for small landlords. web.archive.org/web/20261021194739/https://progressives4responsiblerenting.org/

Quick definition time: a push poll looks like a survey but is arguably (per the PDC) an ad. The classic form plants a message in the question (“would you still support X if you knew Y?” cue dramatic music).

Tired of scrolling King County’s list of ballot drop box addresses to figure out which one is near you? I put together a map version. Type your address to see the closest one: kcballotbox.org Ballots are out now. Return yours by drop box before 8 pm on Nov 3!

If you build it, they will come. When you give people good bike infrastructure, they use it. Thrilled to see an overflowing bike valet parking lot at Salmon Days today (thank you city staff).

What could be better than Issaquah's Salmon Days? Free valet *bike parking*! Why swim upstream with 200,000 other visitors? For the first time, you can drop your bike at the Bike Valet, have it watched, and ride home. No parking fees, no trek from a distant lot. Sammy the Salmon approves. Map below!

Proud of Issaquah. Every speaker at last night's public hearing opposed I-1 (kids' counseling records) and I-638 (girls' sports sex checks). Council voted 7-0 in opposition. One said: "I don't want to have to prove to anyone that I'm a woman because it's none of their business." Vote no on both.

Another Issaquah resident, on what these initiatives won't do: "These measures won't lower gas prices or keep communities safe from wildfires or historic floods." This is a distraction from the real things we should be fixing, and only divides us. Thank you to everyone who spoke up. #NoHateWAState

12 Aug

Enough ballots are in that we can predict not only the winners of the primaries, but also the success rates of the big endorsers. I was curious and looked at Seattle Times, Progressive Voters Guide, The Urbanist, The Stranger, and KC Dems. www.wagraphs.com/Endorsement_...

12 Aug

And apologies in advance for some of the AI slop in the text; I just care about the numbers, so I'm not going to bother editing or writing this all out, but tell me if you see errors in the data.

1 Aug

“What’s a Streatery,” asked my 9 y/o. “It means we can have fun in our streets and not get hit by cars,” answered my 12 y/o. 💯

22 July

Claude, fix this NY Times headline:

21 July

Big night at Issaquah City Council! 🏠 We passed the first ADU self-certification ordinance in Washington state! 📸 We put an indefinite moratorium on ALPR cameras! 🧾 And we added a rental fee transparency ordinance to our 2027 work plan. A quick thread:

🧾 Rental fees: I was proud to introduce this as a new business item. The price a renter sees should be the price a renter pays, every fee disclosed upfront and itemized at signing. Council voted to add it to the work plan; staff will bring back a draft ordinance in 2027.

21 July

40% of Issaquah residents are renters. They deserve to know the real cost of housing before signing a lease. If you're a renter who's dealt with surprise fees, we want to hear your story as we draft this.

🏠 ADUs: Homeowners can now have a Washington-licensed architect certify their detached ADU plans and skip building plan review entirely. First city in the state to use this new tool. Less permitting time, lower cost, more backyard homes.

21 July

📸 ALPR: After months of petitions and public comment, council voted unanimously to postpone all further work on license plate reader cameras indefinitely. No city funds can be spent on this technology without a future ordinance and vote of the council.

At Monday's Issaquah City Council meeting (7/20, 7pm) the administration presents its proposed license plate camera policy. Three options are on the table, but not the one most of the community asked for: locally stored, closed loop data under city control.

The options presented are state law baseline, a cloud-based system with somewhat stricter safeguards, or full prohibition. The administration recommends the second. I'll be raising the local control option Monday, along with questions about enforcement. Public comment is open, in person or online.

issaquah.civicweb.netissaquah.civicweb.net

The price a renter sees should be the price a renter pays. Monday I'm bringing a proposal to Issaquah City Council: every rental fee disclosed in the listing, mandatory vs optional clearly marked, and rent + fees in one honest monthly total before you sign. issaquah.civicweb.net/FileStorage/...

If upfront rental pricing matters to you, a short email helps more than you'd think. Two sentences is plenty. Write the council: citycouncil@issaquahwa.gov Or comment live Monday 7/20, in person or virtually. Renters rarely show up in these conversations. Change that.

9 July

Claude, fix this headline…

7 July

Grid scale battery storage is urgently needed. Cities can either stand in the way, or help make the future better. Across the Eastside, the trend is standing in the way. I’m proud of Issaquah for these amendments to our climate action plan to support the future. Not passed yet but 🤞

youtube.comIssaquah City Council Meeting June 29, 2026YouTube video by City of Issaquah

30 June

Progress is when the only two votes against our new rules reducing stepback requirements for multifamily housing are because they don't reduce housing barriers enough. Glad to see Issaquah adopt this policy improvement (even if I was a no...): www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIb6...

14 June

A recent Economist article on America's aging suburbs got me thinking about how demographics is housing policy, and housing policy is demographics. I pulled the age profiles for Issaquah and a few neighbors and grouped them by how similar they are. They've made very different housing choices.

14 June

Take Sammamish, right next door to us: a big Gen X bulge and very few young adults, a product of low-density zoning and little new housing. Of all these cities it's the furthest from Issaquah. Our nearest demographic neighbor is Bothell, the path we're starting to copy more and more.

economist.comAmerica’s quintessential places are getting old, fastWelcome to the greying suburbs

14 June

The Economist argues this is self-reinforcing: older owners block new housing, young families can't move in, schools shrink, suburbs age. Adding apartments and missing-middle housing is a self-reinforcing path that puts on a path toward Bothell, not Sammamish. www.economist.com/interactive/...

cascadianabundance.substack.comDoing Nothing Is A ChoiceIndecision is not neutral.

4 June

Excellent thoughts from my fellow CM @kellyjiang.bsky.social on how doing nothing is as deliberate a choice, with frequently harmful consequences, as actually building things. We should analyze inaction with the same intensity we analyze action, or perhaps just rightsize all our processes…

Kelly Jiang@kellyjiang.bsky.social

Doing nothing is a choice. Inaction means choosing to continue down a path of certain environmental harms - more tailpipe emissions, more tire particulates, more deforestation. Let's make better choices. cascadianabundance.substack.com/p/doing-noth...

3 June

Sound Transit and WSF are proud to announce a new intermodal pilot at Mount Baker Station. The 1 Line now offers direct cross-Sound service. This vessel has already logged more on-time sailings this year than the Walla Walla.

3 June

“One More Lane Will Fix It” - Mixed Media, Anonymous Mercer Island Artist, 2026.

Ryan Packer@typewriteralley.bsky.social

Holy shit. (From Reddit)

3 June

Glad to see Pride celebrated in Issaquah today, with all our councilmembers joining as always. Pride is worth living all year long, but a lot of what backs it up locally isn't a flag, it's the everyday work: housing, youth support, transit, services for seniors. That's what I'll keep showing up for.

liveableissaquah.orgliveableissaquah.org

Two stories are going around about Sound Transit and fare gates. One: gates barely matter for revenue. Two: shame on ST for being $10B+ in the hole and still not having them. The reality is more nuanced, and ST actually did its own study on exactly this: www.liveableissaquah.org/archive/Soun... 1/6🧵

So where are we really? ST board data puts broad fare payment around 63% (up from 56% in 2022), while ~85% of riders who actually get checked have valid fare. Neither's a clean evasion number, but both point well below the pandemic-peak 45%. Source: seattletransitblog.com/2026/05/21/t... 5/6 🧵

seattletransitblog.comThe Status of Fare Evasion in Washington StateSince Metro resumed fare enforcement in 2025, buses have displayed “Fares Required” as part of the headsign rotation. (Michael Smith) During the pandemic, fares were suspended on a numb…

Bottom line: gates are probably worth doing, especially at the busiest stations, and could recapture real revenue ($700M is real $). But do they build Ballard or close ST3's multi-billion capital gap? No, that's a separate problem. 'They don't matter' and 'just install them' are both wrong. 6/6 🧵

liveableissaquah.orgliveableissaquah.org

The whoa, way big-deal case: if ~45% of Link riders are skipping fares, gating all Link stations could net up to ~$750M over 20 years. That's real money. But that 45% evasion number comes from the peak of the pandemic, when compliance cratered. 3/6 🧵

The who care, barely-worth-it case: if evasion is actually ~15% (85% paying), the math flips. Gating every Link station takes ~18 years just to break even, and gating the whole system stops penciling out at all. Same gates, opposite verdict. 4/6 🧵

liveableissaquah.orgliveableissaquah.org

ST commissioned the study from Cambridge Systematics, weighing the cost of gating each station against the new fare revenue gates would capture. The headline: whether gates pay off hinges almost entirely on how many riders are skipping fares today. 2/6 🧵

Kevin Nichols reposted

Kirk Hovenkotter

@kirkhovenkotter.com

The past 8 months showed this region wants light rail more than ever. That was obvious from our townhalls, the marches, & the region wide advocacy we haven’t seen since the vote in 2016. The last thing this region wants is for us to stop building.

seattletimes.comMaybe the light rail system we’ve got is good enoughLight rail is finally cooking in the Seattle area. It coincides with an existential crisis over building expansion lines for the future. At what point do we say "it's good," and stop?

30 May

Westneat calls ST “good, arguably great,” cites 73% ridership growth, then concludes we should stop. You don’t quit a project at the exact moment it proves it works. He wrote the case FOR building and reached the opposite verdict. #BuildTheDamnTrains www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

20 May

On a train ride from Seattle to San Francisco for Christmas break a year and a half ago, I remade all the Wikipedia maps for the #WAleg legislative districts, because the old ones kinda sucked, and I’m a maps nerd that is good at python. It’s always fun seeing them pop up in random places.

19 May

Proud to be a part of a city government that is pushing towards lower costs system wide, so we can #buildthedamntrains from Ballard to Issaquah, and all points spine wide.

Ryan Packer@typewriteralley.bsky.social

The Issaquah City Council just unanimously approved a resolution expressing a commitment to "supporting and streamlining permitting" for the future Sound Transit 4 Line. The resolution includes specific language around potential self-permitting in Issaquah for Sound Transit.

seattletimes.comThe need for heard (not a typo) immunity | OpinionConfidence in vaccine effectiveness is slipping, in part because the stories that once served to build public trust are no longer being heard.

11 May

"Vaccines protect the body. Stories protect the mind." Proud to see my mom Janice's story shared widely, including in the Seattle Times today. She survived polio in 1953. Her twin brother didn't. We forget these diseases only because of the successes of vaccines. www.seattletimes.com/opinion/the-...

komonews.comSound Transit plans to close $34.5B shortfall over 2 decades, reshaping light rail futureSound Transit officials on Thursday outlined how they plan to address a projected $34.5 billion funding shortfall over the next two decades.The funding gap coul

10 May

“Ballard extension was struck by a budget. The project remains in critical condition.” We should call out transit reporting for using passive voice to describe cuts. People have agency. Advocates push. Electeds vote. How we talk about it shapes how we think about it. komonews.com/news/local/s...

8 May

Light rail forecast: If we do a good job in Issaquah as elected leaders, the next generation of Ballard lacrosse players playing in Issaquah will be taking light rail all the way from Ballard, after we’ve helped figure out how to cut costs, speed permitting, and #buildthedamntrians everywhere

3 May

Thank you to King County Executive Girmay Zahilay for joining the 5th LD Dems Fundraiser last night. My favorite quote, "I am committed to advancing the line out to Issaquah," followed shortly by " #buildthedamntrains " Go Issaquah Light Rail!