Today, the rundown is the city's own paperwork — how to pull a permit, what the Comp Plan actually binds, and who fields an ethics complaint. The rulebooks, no scores. This is Seattle Politics and Urbanism Daily. All week we chased numbers — MHA, the Ballard gap, the transit measure — and they never showed. And the week ends on a permit FAQ and an ethics page. Stick around — we're gonna walk that SDCI process step by step and count what the mayor's 50-percent promise actually touches. Let's start with the good news, such as it is. The June 15 question — whether a public dashboard residents can actually check even exists — that's settled. The SDCI portal and the 'Research a Project' page are real, and they're navigable. Navigable, sure. But the infographic lays out every step before a shovel moves — intake, review, correction, reissue. So which of those steps does a 50-percent cut actually delete? Right, and the portal logs your elapsed time after the fact. It doesn't tell you where you sit in line while you're waiting. So you find out how long you waited once you're done waiting. Great. That's the bank-teller line with no number on the screen. And the city has the tool to measure it — the intake-to-issuance tracking exists. What's missing is published before-and-after cycle times. Until those land in a budget cycle, the dashboard's a filing system. So here's the Step Back. The One Seattle Plan passed in December 2025, and the city is folding HB 1110 into the update right now. And that's the first time we can say it plainly — the state's middle-housing floor has been required for over a year, since June 30 last year, and we still don't have the full zoning follow-through documented. Here's the tension nobody's resolved: HB 1110 requires zero affordability contribution, and MHA is the city's affordability lever. State says build density, city says pay in. Pulling opposite directions. That's exactly why the recalibrated MHA number hasn't appeared. The rules themselves are still settling — you can't pencil a pro forma against rules still being written. And you can mandate middle housing on paper all day. The staff who process those applications? Somebody has to fund them. The Comp Plan doesn't write that check. Last one, and it's the odd one out — the Ethics and Elections Commission. Hasn't come up all week, and given the lobbying around the transit measure and the countywide tax, it's the body that fields any conflict complaint. Its mandate's under Chapter 4.16. So if a developer or a neighbor watches the permit office drag for months — is SEEC the door you knock on? Or is that another office that handles disclosures, not delays? Different door entirely. SEEC handles who-lobbied-whom, not why-your-permit's-stuck. The accountability for cycle time lives back at SDCI, and that's the page with no benchmark on it. So we end the week with four rulebooks and not one published number. The city built every instrument and forgot to fill in the scores. If today's show was useful, follow us wherever you're listening — the next one will be waiting. Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection writes:
The permit process differs for each permit type, and may also vary depending on the complexity of your project. These steps are a general guideline to follow to apply for a permit. You will submit most permit applications through the Seattle Services Portal.
So the big payoff after a week of chasing a permit-bottleneck answer is the city's own how-to page. Step one: research your property. Step two: submit through the Seattle Services Portal. And there's an actual infographic — How to Get a Building Permit, a PDF. Count the boxes on that thing and then tell me which ones the mayor's 50-percent-cut promise actually touches. I mean, the portal exists and it's navigable — Research a Project, fee estimates, permit history, all live. The 'does the tool exist' question is closed. What it doesn't tell you is where you sit in the queue while you wait. It logs elapsed time after the fact. More filing cabinet than status board. Every few years Seattle produces this massive Comprehensive Plan document, and I always wonder — is it actually binding law that shapes where you can build a duplex or open a coffee shop, or is it more of a vision board that politicians point to and then ignore? Honestly, it's both, and that tension is where the action is right now. Seattle just passed the big Comp Plan update — the One Seattle Plan — in December 2025. It's a 20-year framework that, per the City Council's own description, guides where housing and jobs go and where the city invests in transportation and utilities. That matters: zoning code has to be consistent with it, so it's more than a wish list. It sets the ceiling and the floor for every zoning fight that follows. The most immediate change on the ground is HB 1110. Starting in mid-2025, developers could already build up to four homes on lots that used to be locked into single-family use. That's the state law kicking in, and Seattle's permanent HB 1110 legislation, passed alongside the Comp Plan, locked that into city code. But the 'wish list' critique still has some bite: the One Seattle Plan is being carried out through four separate zoning packages. Mayor Wilson released the second one — Centers and Corridors — in late January 2026, covering 30 new Neighborhood Centers, expanded Urban Centers, and transit corridors. Packages three and four still haven't landed, so large chunks of the density the plan envisions are waiting on follow-on legislation. So the four-unit rule is already live — but if developers can build those units right now, why aren't they? Because zoning permission and economic viability aren't the same thing. Per Seattle Times reporting from when the change took effect, high borrowing costs and expensive construction materials are still keeping builders on the sidelines, even where the rules now say go. Watch two things: whether interest rates ease, and whether Seattle's permitting process keeps pace. All the upzones in the world stall out if SDCI can't turn around permits. The remaining two zoning packages, plus the parallel environmental review process authorized by the Council, will tell us whether the One Seattle Plan stays a growth document or quietly becomes a shelf document. Here's Seattle.gov:
Finding information often requires consulting multiple resources. Many data and documents are available to you through online tools available on the SDCI Resources page. To help you better navigate our research options, this page consolidates SDCI property and permit information resources.
So this is the companion piece to the permit how-to we just hit — the public-facing research tool. Address in, and you get a Site Characteristics Report, zoning overlays, links out to the King County Assessor and Shaping Seattle. That settles one question I'd had: the public dashboard exists and it's navigable. You can actually go check a property yourself. That's real. Great. So I can look up the entire permit history of a building. Can I look up where my own application sits in line? That's the gap. The tool tells you what happened. It logs elapsed time after the fact. What it doesn't seem to show is where you are in the queue while you're standing in it. Right — it's a rearview mirror. Pulls from King County Assessor, Shaping Seattle, half a dozen sources, and it'll tell you beautifully what your neighbor built in 1997. Tells you nothing about whether the shovel moves next month. City of Seattle writes:
Seattle's Ethics Code is a statement of our shared values -- integrity, impartiality, independence, transparency. It is our pledge to the people of Seattle that our only allegiance is to them when we conduct City business. The Code provides minimum standards of conduct for all City employees, elected officials, members of boards and commissions, and volunteers.
Last item on the rundown: the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission. Chapter 4.16 — the code that says a city official's only allegiance is to the public when they do city business. It's been sitting here all week while we chewed on MHA recalibration and the transit measure and the countywide tax fight. The SEEC is the body that would actually field a complaint about lobbying disclosures or a council conflict. Nobody's pointed at it once. And it's parked right next to the permit how-to pages and the comp plan explainer. Weird group photo, Sarah. Because here's my honest question — a developer's permit sits in the queue for months, or a neighbor thinks the office is playing favorites. Who do they call? Is SEEC even the right door, or is that another office that handles ethics, not delays? Different complaint, different counter. SEEC handles conflicts and disclosure — not slow turnaround. The slow turnaround is the SDCI dashboard we just walked through, which logs your elapsed time but won't tell you where you stand in line. Right. The accountability tool exists, the ethics code exists, the comp plan exists. Four instruments, zero published numbers. The week ended on a filing cabinet. That's where I land today. The city's built all the machinery — dashboard, portal, ethics code, the Comp Plan update folding in HB 1110. What it hasn't done is publish the benchmark that turns any of it into accountability instead of paperwork. Got a story idea, a correction, or something you think we should be watching in Seattle politics and urbanism? Send us a note at seattledailyfix at lantern podcasts dot com. We really do read them.
You'll find links to all of today's stories in the show notes, so if one caught your ear, you can follow it there and read further.
That's Seattle Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.