Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown issues first veto, striking parts of city’s new labor law, but with sponsor’s support

Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown has issued her first veto since taking office in 2024 – and the primary sponsor of the ordinance she vetoed believes it was the right move.

On Friday, Brown issued a partial veto of “Public Dollars for Public Benefit,” which passed 4-3 on Aug. 26 and mandates that contractors who bid on city public infrastructure projects of at least $5 million will need to show that a quarter of the labor comes from underrepresented or impoverished communities in the city, among other requirements.

She also called on the city council to revisit the law for further modifications that she could not accomplish with the veto pen, primarily to add incentives to benefit contractors who comply.

Brown specifically vetoed two sections of the ordinance, including the penalties provision and a section requiring specific labor agreements for applicable projects, both of which the administration argued were unnecessary at least in part because they were redundant.

The ordinance, as approved by the city council, included sections for creating a model workforce agreement and other agreements, both of which contained largely redundant provisions. The mayor’s veto left in place the requirement for a model workforce agreement.

The mayor also vetoed the ordinance’s penalties, which she argued already largely existed in pre-existing city laws.

“The penalties prescribed by this section are nearly identical to the penalties for contractors who violate the City’s apprenticeship utilization requirements,” Brown wrote in a letter to the city council. “The adopted ordinance, however, does not include incentives for achieving the priority hire goals. … I believe the complexity and regional uniqueness of this new program require an incentive and penalty structure …”

The decision is unlikely to satisfy opponents of the new law, including the Associated General Contractors, who had called for a full veto. In an interview, Brown expressed support for the law’s goals.

“We definitely want to get more people from nontraditional backgrounds into these good jobs, and want the city to be a good player in that,” Brown said in an interview.

She added that there was time to further modify the law without limiting the projects it would affect, given that there were currently no pending projects that would cost more than $5 million.

While Councilman Paul Dillon expressed some minor frustration that the council and mayor’s office hadn’t been able to work through these changes ahead of the vote, he argued they ultimately made the law “stronger and easier to implement.”

“Of course, one always wishes that this would have been addressed sooner, but it’s OK,” he said. “I do like the idea of creating something that is more incentive-based, and doing a follow-up ordinance that makes both this and the apprenticeship utilization ordinance more holistic and tied more closely together.”