The Math Behind Measure 1:
7 Reasons the $10 Million Claim Falls Apart
In recent days, the corporate landlord lobby groups are reviving the baseless claim that Measure 1 will cost $10 million. Fueled by $500,000 in outside campaign cash flooding Tacoma, their ads, mailers, and push-polls falsely claim these costs will force cuts to fire, police, and libraries—completely ignoring the self-funding mechanisms built directly into the initiative.
Originally, the landlord lobbies pointed to comments by the City Manager as the basis of their claim. Yet despite repeated public and media inquiries, the City has avoided standing by this $10 million claim or providing any documentation of where it came from. In fact, when pressed by The News Tribune in early August, a City spokesperson walked back the City Manager’s previous comments, confirming they had not done a real cost study or impact analysis and acknowledging cuts may not be required.
Recently, however, the landlord lobby group MFHA (Multi-Family Housing Association) began circulating an internal City spreadsheet to the media, acquired through a public disclosure request, claiming it confirms the $10 million price tag. But a closer look at the spreadsheet numbers and how it was compiled underscores just how ludicrous this claim is.
Handing the opposition a convenient, inflated talking point—while refusing to publicly defend it—fits a troubling pattern in the City Manager’s office. Bureaucratic maneuvers have been repeatedly used to undemocratically undermine citizens' initiatives and other policies the manager opposes. These kinds of dishonest abuses of power are exactly why there have been widespread calls in Tacoma–including from the 2025 Charter Review Commission–to decrease the unelected power of the City Manager's office and strengthen the role for our democratically elected leaders.
This whole episode begs the question: if the City Manager was prepared to stand by these outlandish cost claims suggested in the unpublished spreadsheet, why has the City refused to provide the spreadsheet themselves despite repeated media inquiries? Clearly, because they are not prepared to defend the numbers within it.
Here are 7 reasons the landlord lobby’s cost claims fall apart:
The unpublished spreadsheet wasn't a real study—and the City has avoided any public defense of the numbers.
1.
The internal spreadsheet MFHA is circulating is not a formal economic analysis. The emails accompanying the public records request show it was, if we are charitable and assume good-faith, a rushed internal request for department heads to suggest rough cost estimates without any transparent methodology.
But we should be real: These department heads are hired by and accountable to the City Manager, making the process prone to politicization. As the City spokesperson later admitted to The News Tribune, “the city has not published any studies or impact analyses on the measure and won’t do so until after Election Day.”
The City actually did publish a formal study—and it estimated a fraction of the cost.
2.
While the $10 million claim–mentioned once by the City Manager in July–appears to be a politicized intervention in the election, City staff did conduct a formal study in September for a very similar code enforcement expansion program. This was done at the request of council members exploring an ordinance designed to achieve the same goals as Measure 1.
That formal presentation to the City Council estimated that a "balanced modernization" of city code enforcement would require adding just three new inspectors and two administrative staff, costing just $1.3 million a year.
We desperately need that investment. Right now, as the study outlined, Tacoma is dangerously understaffed, with only 2 code enforcement inspectors for 94,000 housing units (1 per 47,000). Spokane has 9 inspectors for a similar number of units. Because our City Council refuses to invest in enforcement, Tacoma residents currently face a massive backlog of over 2,100 unaddressed complaints.
The $10 million math assumes an impossible army of 43 staff (larger than Seattle's!).
3.
The unpublished city spreadsheet being circulated suggested Measure 1 would require hiring 43 new full-time staff members. But it does not spell out why anyone thinks Measure 1 might require that number.
To put that in perspective: Seattle’s entire code compliance division only has 35 staff members handling roughly 426,000 housing units. MFHA is claiming Measure 1 requires more staff than Seattle to manage a city with 4.5 times fewer housing units (Tacoma has roughly 94,000)—an equivalent number of officers for Tacoma based on Seattle would be just 8 staff members.
Similar programs exist across Washington—and cost just a fraction of opposition claims.
4.
Similar inspection and enforcement programs operate all across Washington State—in Lakewood, Olympia, Vancouver, Spokane, Seattle, Bellingham, and beyond. These programs are largely funded by modest per-unit annual fees on landlords ranging between $15 and $35, depending on the city.
While each city inspection and enforcement program is unique, and Measure 1 includes some distinct provisions, fundamentally Measure 1 is catching Tacoma up to basic norms that many WA cities already practice.
Measure 1 is a lean, complaint-based system—not expensive universal inspection programs like in other cities.
5.
The landlord lobby claims Tacoma's program would be vastly more expensive than other Washington cities, but the reality is those other cities fund universal inspection programs, where every property is periodically inspected—alongside responding to complaints.
Measure 1 proposes a much leaner complaint-based model, where inspections only happen when a tenant is unable to resolve an issue directly with their landlord and files a formal complaint. Timely inspection of code compliance complaints would be the most labor-intensive requirement of Measure 1, but it is safe to assume it will require less staffing than universal inspection programs in other cities.
Notably, neither the City nor the opposition even attempts to spell out why they believe 43 staff would be required if Measure 1 passed. Furthermore, Measure 1 builds on the City's existing Landlord-Tenant education and enforcement office, which already has several dedicated staff, and existing inspection infrastructure.
The $10 million claim is padded with $4 million in legal costs—assuming self-inflicted costs for refusal to implement the law.
6.
If you look at the internal spreadsheet, you'll see the City Attorney projects a massive $4 million in additional legal costs if Measure 1 passes.
The city attorney has said this huge projection is a response to the "Private Attorney General" provision in Measure 1. This is an increasingly standard element of many citizen protection laws—identical to the provision in Washington's Fair Campaign Practices Act, for example. As outlined in our FAQ Addendum on Private Enforcement, the City only incurs legal fees if it actively refuses to implement the voter-approved law, forcing citizens to sue them to do their jobs.
We added this safeguard specifically to prevent the kind of Council nullification we saw attempted in Burien, where their former Mayor Kevin Schilling (now the spokesperson for the Rental Housing Association and an aggressive online opponent of Measure 1) refused to implement a voter-approved minimum wage, forcing citizens to sue them (successfully).
The City Manager is trying to have it both ways: double-counting the cost of fully implementing the program and the legal penalties for defying voters and refusing to implement it. For any city-paid attorney fees to be awarded, a judge must rule that the City illegally defied the voters. If the City does its job, the legal cost to taxpayers is negligible.
Measure 1 is largely self-funding, protecting taxpayers and essential city services.
7.
The claim fueled by $500,000 in outside campaign cash flooding Tacoma's screens and mailboxes is that Measure 1 will force cuts to fire, police, and libraries. This simply ignores the actual funding mechanisms built into the initiative.
Measure 1 is designed to be largely self-funded by annual landlord licensing fees and cost-recovery penalties levied on corporate repeat offenders. When pressed by The News Tribune about these threatened cuts, the City spokesperson had to backtrack and acknowledge this reality, confirming the city would “’not necessarily’ make cuts in the general fund” because of Measure 1’s built-in funding mechanisms. Measure 1 ensures that corporate slumlords and repeat violators pay for the cost of enforcement—not Tacoma taxpayers.