Tax Exemptions Run Amok in Olympia

Over the last three years Washington State legislators has passed 61 measures to extend or create new tax exemptions. These exemptions have removed almost a half billion dollars from the 2007 - 2008 biennial budget.

The Economic Opportunity Institute has documented what has happened in a detailed report they issued last year, entitled "Adding up: New Tax Breaks in Washington 2004-2006"

These exemptions are really expenditures and represent a loss from potential revenue available for use by the Legislature in preparing the current budget for the state. Yet the exemptions do not appear as expenditures or potential revenue anywhere in the current budget process.

Once every 4 years a separate report is issued, independent of the budget documents, as if these exemptions do not exist as potential revenue for consideration in determining budget priorities.

Last year when I asked former House Finance Committee Chair Jim McIntire if he knew of any tax exemption that the Washington State Legislature had repealed in the last legislative session he sheepishly said no. Unfortunately most legislators don't view these special interest tax exemptions as expenditures and potential sources of revenue that the Legislature should consider when preparing a new budget.

Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos is proposing to change that. She is the prime sponsor of HB 1827. The bill is very simple. It says that, as part of the budget process, a report of the current tax exemptions and their costs must be included along with the state budget.

It is an important step to hold the legislators accountable for their decisions regarding giving tax exemptions and their impact on the state budget. Passing HB 1827 would represent an important step in opening up the budget process to more public scrutiny and would give taxpayers a better understanding of where expenditures are being made, especially as regards special interest tax exemptions which remove revenue from other needs like health care for children or education.

Senator Pridemore has introduced the same legislation in the Washington State Senate as SB 6054.

The Washington State Tax Fairness Coalition has made this legislation one of their top priorities in this legislative session. They have set up a web page where you can easily contact your legislators to let them know this is something you also think needs to be passed. Click here to go to their page now.

It's Initiative 953, No its Initiative 954, No its Initiative 960

For a whopping total of $15 this year, Initiative 953 became Initiative 954 which then became Initiative 960. Tim Eyman wastes taxpayer dollars and resources filing 3 identical initiatives (at $5 a piece) so he can get a ballot number he likes. He laughs at the Washington State Legislature and recently emphatically told them in a public hearing that all of his initiatives are different. That is a lie.

The Washington Secretary of State's website lists 36 initiatives Eyman filed last year. Most of these initiatives were multiple filings of the same initiatives. The same "tax and fee increase" initiative was filed as I-913, I-930, I-944, I-368, I-370, I-372, I-373, I-374, I-376, I-377, I-378, and again as I-953, I-954, and I-960 this January.

Eyman refiles basically the same initiative multiple times for 2 reasons. The first reason is to get a ballot number he likes. The second reason is to changes words, phrases and sentences to try to change the ballot title he is assigned by the Attorney General's Office. If he doesn't like the ballot title he gets, he will change a word or two and refile. All of this is done at taxpayers' expense. He only pays $5 per initiative filing. It costs taxpayers a lot more than this. Maybe its time for a performance audit of the state initiative filing process.

The Secretary of State's Office pays staff to process each initiative and send it to the code revisers office which devotes staff time to review it for conformity to state law. They draft up a letter to give to the initiative sponsor suggesting needed changes. When the initiative is transported back to the Secretary of State's Office more staff time is used to process it again, assign it a ballot number and send it to the Attorney General's Office. Time is also spent entering the initiative text on the Secretary of State's website.

The Attorney General's Office devotes staff time and resources to come up with the ballot title and summary, reviewing their proposed ballot title and summary language with any interested parties and then defending it in Thurston County Superior Court if their language is challenged. This can be very time consuming and lawyer intensive - again all at taxpayer expense.

Of the 36 initiatives Eyman filed last year, 20 were filed as initiatives to the legislature through Dec 2006. Eyman had no intent of collecting signatures on these. The deadline for turning in signatures on initiatives to the Legislature is the end of December. Eyman has had over 5 months to get signatures on his recent initiatives and still failed. So he's going to be successful starting with only 1 0r 2 months left to get signatures?

He also wouldn't want to give the Legislature a chance to propose an alternative. His initiatives are refiled frequently to try to get what he thinks is a better ballot title and summary. Most people who might challenge these ballot titles as inaccurate are not watching the initiative process very closely in November and December. This gives Eyman a chance to get a quick start in January when he refiles one or two of these as initiatives to the people, already having a ballot title waiting.

Eyman's current "Minority Rules" Initiative 960 was filed and refiled 11 times last year as such an initiative to the Legislature. He refiled it three times this year as an initiative to the people to change the initiative number from I-953 to I-954 to I-960.

Some in the Legislature have filed a bill to raise the filing fee to $100 to at least recoup some of the cost of this process. In California the filing fee for city initiatives like San Francisco and Sacramento is $200. Maine charges no fee.

Eyman's abuse of the process to benefit his initiative mill business is what makes people angry. One bad apple can spoil it for the rest of us. I've filed and worked on many initiative campaigns over the years. I think we need to continue to keep the process open to the people so they can petition for change when the Legislature doesn't act. But Eyman's behavior and disrespect for the process is like a little boy in the cookie jar. He doesn't eat just one or two cookies. He eats the whole jar.

His initiative 960 of course is another example of a spoiled boy's behavior. Eyman doesn't like the fact that the Washington State Constitution says that the Legislature shall vote by majority rule. So he's trying to fool the voters into believing that he can ignore the state Constitution and require that any vote to increase revenue to pay for services either requires a 2/3 vote by the Legislature or a majority vote by the Legislature and a majority vote of the people.

Under I-960 if the Legislature wanted to just increase the filing fee to an outrageous $10, they would have to have a 2/3 vote of the Legislature or put it on the ballot for all of us to vote on. Yes under Eyman's Initiative 960 all fee increases as well as tax increases would require a vote. I can just see the ballot now, ten or twenty pages long as we all get to decide what fees are charged water users, boat launches, grazing fees, business licenses, game licenses and on and on. Like we just must vote on all of these?

Eyman continues to abuse the public trust. He rails against a wasteful government but feels no remorse about using taxpayer dollars and resources to further his own business. In that sense he is no different than all the other businesses lobbyists down in Olympia looking for handouts and exemptions from expenses and taxes that the rest of us have to pay.

Molly Ivins Warned Us About Shrub Part II

Back in 1999 Molly Ivins co-authored with Dou Dubose a book entitled Shrub The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush. What she said then still rings true today.
Take for example the following:

"...he owes his political life to big corporate money; he's a CEO's wet dream. He carries their water, he's stumpbroke - however you put it, George W. Bush is a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America. ...We can find no evidence that it has ever occurred to him to question whether it is wise to do what big business wants. He is perfectly comfortable, perfectly at home, doing the bidding of big business. These are his friends, and he takes care of his friends ..."

As well as this:

"Where Bush is weak is on the governance side of politics. From the record, it appears that he doesn't know much, and doesn't care much about governing.... In fact, given his record, its kind of hard to figure out why he wants a job where he's expected to govern. It's not just that
he has no ideas about what to do with government- if you think his daddy had trouble with "the vision thing," wait till you meet this one. For a Republican, not wanting to do much with government is practically a vision in itself. Trouble is , when you aren't particularly interested in the nuts and bolts of governing, you end up with staff-driven policy."

Or policy written by your Vice-President and corporate America.

Molly Ivins Warned Us About Shrub

If only more in the media were as hard hitting and insightful as Molly Ivins was, we probably would not be in Iraq today. Molly Ivins, who died this week, warned us repeatedly but not enough people listened and acted on her insights. She held Bush up to the light for all to see.

In her column entitled, "Call me a Bush-Hater" written in November of 2003, the clarity and directness of her style of writing tells us some of what we've lost with her death.

"Then suddenly, in the greatest bait-and-switch of all time, Osama bin doesn't matter at all, and we have to go after Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with 9/11. But he does have horrible weapons of mass destruction, and our president "without doubt," without question, knows all about them, even unto the amounts--tons of sarin, pounds of anthrax. So we take out Saddam Hussein, and there are no weapons of mass destruction. Furthermore, the Iraqis are not overjoyed to see us.

By now, quite a few people who aren't even liberal are starting to say, "Wha the hey?" We got no Osama, we got no Saddam, we got no weapons of mass destruction, the road map to peace in the Middle East is blown to hell, we're stuck in this country for $87 billion just for one year and no one knows how long we'll be there"

"... what we need is the Big Picture. Well, the Big Picture is that after September 11, we had the sympathy of every nation on Earth. They all signed up, all our old allies volunteered, everybody was with us, and Bush just booted all of that away. Sneering, jeering, bad manners, hideous diplomacy, threats, demands, arrogance, bluster.

"In Afghanistan, Bush rode a popular tide; Iraq, however, was a singular act of presidential will," says Krauthammer.

You bet your ass it was. We attacked a country that had done nothing to us, had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, and turns out not to have weapons of mass destruction.

It is not necessary to hate George W. Bush to think he's a bad president. Grownups can do that, you know. You can decide someone's policies are a miserable failure without lying awake at night consumed with hatred.

Poor Bush is in way over his head, and the country is in bad shape because of his stupid economic policies. If that makes me a Bush-hater, then sign me up."

The complete column was also reprinted in Molly Ivins book , Who Let the Dogs in? Incredible Political Animals I have Known, which was published in 2004. The words carry as much bite today as they did over 2 years ago.Thank you Molly for speaking truth to power.