Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson laughed and seemed to encourage the notion that millionaires could leave the state of Washington while discussing her support for a progressive tax during an interview earlier this month.

“I think the claims that millionaires are going to leave our state are, like, super overblown. And if — the ones that leave, like, bye,” she said, which prompted cheers and laughter from the audience at the Seattle University event, Seattle University Conversations, which took place on April 14.

Wilson was asked if she believed progressive taxes were an “easy” and “promising” solution to the tax climate in the area. She said she never thought they were easy, but said she was excited about the millionaire tax that passed in the state.

“In general, we still have the very regressive tax system, and my office is doing a lot of work to look at what our options are in terms of progressive taxation,” she said. “We do have more flexibility at the city, at the county, in terms of our taxing authority. And at the same time, I believe what I said before, which is that, it’s not good for Seattle’s business environment, for example, for the cost of doing business in downtown Seattle to be wildly out of step with, for instance, neighboring Bellevue,” she said.

Wilson said that she was looking at progressive tax options that don’t increase the cost of employing people in Seattle.

“We have a large structural budget deficit at the city that we’re going to have to figure out how to deal with in this upcoming budget cycle,” she added. “And my budget office, budget staff are hard at work trying to figure out both how we can use our revenue as effectively and efficiently as possible.”