The NBA took a historic step Wednesday, voting unanimously to explore expansion in Seattle and Las Vegas. After 18 years of waiting, there’s finally real hope that the SuperSonics are coming home. It’s genuinely good news for a city that desperately needs something to cheer about.
But leave it to Washington Democrats to find a way to pick the team’s pockets before it plays a single game.
Seattle has been gutted by years of soft-on-consequences governance. King County’s homelessness authority tallied a revised 16,868 homeless individuals in its most recent completed count, and the agency’s own leadership has already signaled the 2026 survey, completed just weeks ago, will push that number higher still. Open-air drug use has become a defining feature of Seattle’s public spaces, with encampments stretching across parks and neighborhood corridors that once drew shoppers and tourists. Businesses fled. Residents followed. From 2021 to 2022, Washington logged a net migration loss of nearly 19,000 people and a $1.66 billion net loss in adjusted gross income.
This is the economic wreckage that Democrat-run Olympia and Seattle City Hall built through years of consequence-free drug policies and hostility to accountability. So when the NBA Board of Governors voted to formally pursue expansion talks with One Roof Sports and Entertainment, the ice hockey team the Kraken’s umbrella ownership group, fans had every reason to celebrate.
Climate Pledge Arena, a little virtue signal for woke Seattle, is ready. The fanbase never actually left. And for a city that’s been told for years things are improving while watching them deteriorate, the return of the Sonics is a rare piece of unambiguously good news. A possible 2028-29 season start is now squarely on the table.
The unconstitutional income tax that crashed the party
Here’s the catch. Just weeks before the NBA made its move, Democrats rammed through Senate Bill 6346, a 9.9% income tax on households earning more than $1 million annually. It passed the House 51-46 after Republicans waged a historic 25-hour floor fight, then cleared the Senate 27-21. Gov. Bob Ferguson has pledged to sign it.
Republicans called it exactly what it is. A 1933 Washington Supreme Court ruling established that income is property under the state constitution, meaning it must be taxed at a uniform rate. Democrats are betting courts will reverse nearly a century of precedent. That is a bold gamble with other people’s money.
Visiting players are on the hook
Here is what most fans celebrating the expansion news haven’t fully absorbed: SB 6346 doesn’t just hit Seattle residents. The bill codifies duty-day apportionment rules for nonresident athletes, meaning every opposing NBA team that walks into Climate Pledge Arena will owe Washington state a cut of income earned during those games. Tax professionals call this a “jock tax,” and Washington has never had one until now.
The math is ugly. For an NBA player earning $35 million a season, a two-game road trip to Seattle could generate over $800,000 in Washington-sourced income subject to the 9.9% rate, after only a minimal prorated deduction. Add coaches and high-earning staff, and a visiting team’s aggregate tax exposure for a single Seattle road stop could run several hundred thousand dollars.
This also changes the Sonics’ own competitive position in free agency. For years, playing in Washington meant zero state income tax, a genuine edge when players compared contract offers. That advantage evaporates above the million-dollar threshold. Democrats didn’t just tax the team. They taxed every opponent who came to watch them play.
Silver lining: the encampments will disappear (temporarily)
There is one unexpected upside to the NBA expansion push, and Seattle residents near the city’s worst encampments already know what it is. A homeless camp sat for five months in the shadow of the Space Needle, on a vacant private lot at 5th Avenue North and Harrison Street, right across the street from Seattle Center, where Climate Pledge Arena is located. Neighbors and nearby businesses reported open drug use, discarded needles, and assaults.
The city claimed for months that it couldn’t touch it because the land was privately owned. It took a court-appointed receiver, a negotiated agreement, and a police presence to finally clear it last week.
“This is a high-profile spot, a very high-profile corner,” the receiver told KOMO News. “There was an emphasis to get this taken care of.”
Seattleites have seen this movie before. When the city hosted MLB All-Star Week in 2023, Mayor Bruce Harrell’s administration suddenly found the urgency to clear SODO, Pioneer Square, and downtown of the encampments that residents had begged them to address for years. The streets looked almost livable for about a week.
I covered it at the time and was clear about what was actually happening. The city cleaned up for baseball executives, not for the people who live and work there. The same performance is coming for the NBA’s ownership vetting process, when someone has to justify writing a check somewhere between $7 and $10 billion for an expansion franchise. I’ll be honest with you: as a Seattle resident, I’ll take it. Beggars can’t be choosers. Just don’t mistake a pressure-wash before a sales pitch for an actual policy change. And, by the way, it did little to end the stench of urine downtown that is so thick you can taste it.
Democrats broke it. Now they want the trophy.
Progressive leadership spent years presiding over open-air drug markets, soaring homelessness, and a documented business exodus. Now they are racing to be photographed standing next to the NBA expansion announcement.
Democrats didn’t fix Seattle. They just got lucky the NBA still sees enough value in a market they’ve been running into the ground. The Sonics may well be back by 2028. They’ll arrive right as Washington’s unconstitutional income tax kicks in, ready to collect from every player who pulls on the jersey and every opponent who comes to town.
Welcome home, Sonics. Watch your wallets.
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Jason Rantz is a Seattle-based talk show host and author of “What’s Killing America: Inside the Radical Left’s Tragic Destruction of Our Cities.”
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