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Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell is threading the needle with Amazon.

In an interview with GeekWire this week, Harrell explained how he’s navigating a delicate balance faced by many city leaders — ensuring that the local corporate giant continues to bolster the economy and tax base, while addressing the ripple effects on housing, transportation, and communities.

“I’ve tried to have a very supportive relationship, but also one on mutual accountability,” Harrell said. “And I think it’s working out well.”

It wasn’t always that way. But it helps that the interests of Amazon and its original hometown are suddenly more aligned on a key issue for both.

Amazon, the city’s largest employer, announced in September that it was shifting from a 3-days-per-week policy to a 5-day mandate — a rarity in the new world of hybrid work. The company’s latest policy went into effect last week, and the real impact started to become visible this week, as corporate workers came back from the holidays.

As the city aims to revitalize its urban core in the aftermath of the pandemic, Harrell has encouraged larger employers to bring their workers back to the office.

He praised Amazon’s move in the interview this week, describing it as a boost for the city’s ecosystem of businesses and innovation.

“I applaud Amazon for showing leadership in this respect,” he said.

While bringing 50,000 workers back to the office daily will help small businesses around Amazon’s HQ and potentially ease safety concerns around downtown Seattle, more people also means more congestion. Complaints on Reddit about the impact on traffic from Amazon’s new RTO policy were already flowing in this week.

Harrell said he’s in contact with Amazon CEO Andy Jassy several times a year, and his office is in regular communication with Amazon’s government affairs team. However, he acknowledged there was no coordinated effort with the company in regard to the recent 5-day policy change.

The mayor said there are discussions between “employer groups” such as Seattle’s Chamber of Commerce and related organizations about return-to-office. The city worked with employers and other jurisdictions when it moved its own RTO policy to 3-days-per-week.

Harrell said technology could help ease traffic issues, noting ideas such as a social carpooling app, or AI that could improve traffic flow.

“I think the problems of congestion with people coming back to work four or five days are somewhat exaggerated,” Harrell said.

He said he’d love to get help from local tech companies for civic projects and services.

“I’ve said to Amazon, and I’ve said this to Microsoft and other tech companies: let us be your pilot case, let us be part of your deployment when you’re looking at how cities across this country can optimize the use of AI and technology,” said Harrell, a member of a key U.S. panel overseeing AI safety and security.

Harrell said the city and Amazon could do more to partner with each other — “but that is not to minimize the great work we have done together,” he noted.

Many in the Seattle region have argued over the years that Amazon wasn’t doing enough to offset the impacts caused by its growing ranks of high-paid workers.

The company, which reported revenue of $574.8 billion in 2023, is active in addressing local issues.

• Amazon has committed $780 million to fund various affordable housing projects in the Seattle area, and last year it added $1.4 billion to its Housing Equity Fund.
• It was among the supporters of the 2023 Seattle Housing Levy, donating $25,000 to the “yes” campaign.
• The company in 2020 opened an 8-floor family homeless shelter at its headquarters, and is supporting an art school the base of one of its towers.
• It provided $7 million to help revitalize Seattle’s Waterfront Park; gave $250,000 to help bring back the annual Night Market in Seattle’s historic Chinatown-International District; and funds computer science education.

The dynamic between Amazon and lawmakers began to strain in the years leading up to the pandemic, more than two decades after Jeff Bezos founded the company as an online bookseller in Seattle.

The issue came to a head in 2018 when the city council approved a per-employee payroll “head tax” that targeted large local companies, in an effort to help the city raise tens of millions of dollars to pay for the effects of explosive growth driven by the tech boom.

Amazon, which strongly opposed the tax, followed up by pouring money into city council elections and relocating thousands of employees from Seattle to nearby Bellevue, which it now considers part of its “Puget Sound” headquarters.

The city council ended up repealing the original payroll “head tax” in 2018, and two years later it passed a “Payroll Expense Tax,” which impacts large companies such as Amazon that meet a threshold for annual payroll expense.

The controversial tax, also known as JumpStart, was designed to pay for affordable housing and homeless services, equitable economic development projects, and Green New Deal investments to help the city meet its environmental goals.

JumpStart has brought in more revenue than expected and is being used to plug the city’s budget deficit.

Harrell voted for the tax when he sat on the council. He said he didn’t agree with the “Tax Amazon” messaging during the head tax debate.

“You don’t target one entity and single that one out, particularly when they’re providing jobs in the city,” he said.

The city recently voted against a potential capital gains tax, modeled after similar legislation passed by the state in 2021.

Harrell did not support the tax but was open to discussion about progressive revenue options.

Harrell told GeekWire he wants the city to be business friendly for both large and small businesses. He also wants to ensure companies put money back into the community.

“What I’ve tried to do as mayor is to say, without ambiguity, that we value their jobs,” he said of Amazon. “We also believe in a culture of accountability.”