Winds of Change in Olympia
For over a decade, Tim Eyman has offered the same disingenuous answer to critics who complain that he has wrought havoc with the state budget and not offered any policy prescriptions or priorites of his own. Tim will tell you that the state budget and policies aren’t his concern; all he’s doing is offering taxpayers a choice where greedy, tax-happy politicians wish to deny us one. It’s disingenuous because Eyman’s yes-or-no initiatives pose an incomplete choice: tax or less tax. They don’t discuss the vital programs that the cut taxes would have paid for.
That’s what makes this statement in an e-mail from Eyman this week on the legislature’s response to Olympia’s latest revenue shortfall so interesting:
We feel it is particularly important for us to take the lead in opposing the two [proposed] tax increases… We don’t want them increased in Olympia and we don’t want them put on the ballot.
Got that? Eyman doesn’t want voters to have a choice on a tax increase. He wants legislators to reject Gregoire’s proposals out of hand – meaning passing a devastating all-cuts budget instead – and he doesn’t want to give voters a chance to weigh in.
Eyman’s missive came only a few days after the Washington State Supreme Court handed down a ruling that the state was failing in its constitutional mandate to provide adequate K-12 education. That failure, of course, is tied directly to the successive budget cuts legislators have imposed rather than consider tax increases – including cutting education monies even when expanded education spending was mandated by voter initiative. Justice Debra Stephens, in the majority opinion, wrote: “The court cannot idly stand by as the legislature makes unfulfilled promises for [education] reform.”
Instead, the court will retain jurisdiction over the case until 2018, forcing the state and the legislature to make adequate progress. The ongoing court jurisdiction was compared by some observers to the feds taking over a corrupt union or government agency, and, indeed, there are similarities: the promises, made there to union members or citizens, made here to state taxpayers that our taxes will be used above all to educate our children. Those promises aren’t being kept. Now, they will be, or else.
Also that week, Governor Christine Gregoire, who has not exactly been a profile in courage with her refusal to entertain tax rate increases (or even cutting corporate tax loopholes) over the past two years, had a sudden eruption of spine. After seven years, Gregoire announced that she would finally lend her name and backing to the marriage equality bill Democratic Sen. Ed Murray has faithfully – and fruitlessly – introduced each year. In the past, Murray’s majority party colleagues could hide behind their governor’s lack of support for a bill that now enjoys majority support in statewide polls.
No more. And while Gregoire’s unexpected burst of leadership came late in her lame-duck career as governor, it extended also to revenue. She announced she would bypass the politically inevitable positive opinion of Republican Attorney General (and gubernatorial candidate) Rob McKenna and pose a question on the constitutionality of Eyman’s I-1053 directly to the Supreme Court. I-1053, remember, is the 2010 initiative that requires a two-third legislative supermajority for any tax or revenue increase. Gregoire should have done this a year ago. But she’s doing it now.
These seemingly unrelated items bring us back to Eyman. He’s a sharp guy, and so while you could just chalk his “don’t let voters decide” riff up to ideological convenience and/or hypocrisy, there’s a bit more to it than that. Chances are good both he and Gregoire have private polls showing that tax increases on the ballot have a good chance of passing this year. In the case of the larger November package in particular, Obama is likely to easily win Washington state, Maria Cantwell should coast to re-election, and a marijuana decriminalization bill will also likely be on the ballot, all boosting Democratic and especially young voter turnout.
More fundamentally, enough voters now know that the state budget simply can’t be cut much further without Washington becoming Mississippi with more rain. And our supreme court has just cut off the one area – education – where lawmakers usually look first to make cuts. What’s left are choices nobody wants: public safety, courts, prisons, regulatory enforcement, the bits that remain of our social safety net.
Circumstances are conspiring this year to force state leaders to make the choice they least like to make: raising revenues. So they’ll do the next best thing, which is to pass the buck to us. But they’ll even do that only if they’re somewhat confident that we’ll accede rather than blaming them. In this case – after years of draconian cuts and with the Washington Supreme Court riding herd – the case is so compelling that even Tim Eyman is worried that we’ll agree to tax hikes.
These budget crises are going to keep on happening until the state reforms its antiquated (and stunningly regressive) tax structure. But relax, Boeing and Microsoft: Gregoire and the state legislature aren’t that courageous.
Yet. –Geov Parrish