Legislative Commentary

A newspaper in Tacoma recently suggested several ways that lawmakers are supposedly “killing time behind the scenes” of this overtime session. Some of the examples were absurd enough (“performing car-tab burning rituals”) that I’ll assume the whole editorial was meant in jest.

Either way, here’s the truth: maybe 10 percent of the 147 legislators are even present at the Capitol at any given time.

None of them need to kill time – eight are regularly locked in negotiations about education funding and policy, and the rest are leaders like me, and committee chairs, who are keeping other policy and budget conversations going. We all want to wrap things up and go home to stay.

Sen. John Braun of Centralia, chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, is one of our negotiators on the education part of the budget. The fact that he’s engaged in talks day after day is enough by itself to undermine the false claims that we have refused to negotiate pieces of the budget with House Democrats.

Like me, Senator Braun would prefer to be back home running the family business – his makes emergency-response vehicles – but he also takes the job of “citizen legislator” seriously.

Last week a couple of Democrat activists picketed in front of his Lewis County shop, accusing him of blocking a budget agreement and causing the Legislature to go into overtime.

The hometown newspaper reported on the protest, then weighed in several days later with a more thoughtful editorial than the Tacoma newspaper’s attempt at humor. It included this assessment – and I couldn’t have put it better myself:

“No one should be pleased with the routine special sessions required in recent years as lawmakers on each side of the aisle have been slow to find budgetary compromises, but consider the alternative: Democrats repeatedly increasing your taxes because it’s easier than finding reasonable solutions.

“A pair of protesters demonstrated at Braun’s business in Chehalis last week. It was a stunt meant to oversimplify the current situation in Olympia, and it was conducted at the expense of facts or reason.

“Democrats are reluctant to compromise because for years they never had to. Republicans are now insisting they do so, and the process of reaching a bipartisan solution has therefore been time-consuming…The special sessions do indeed cost taxpayers money, but it’s a pittance when compared to the costs of a Democrat-controlled government left unchecked by a conservative chamber of the Legislature.”

Inslee’s own ‘business experts’ 
promote lack of state tax on income

The federal Internal Revenue Service defines capital gains as the difference between the amount you paid for a “capital asset” (a home, household furnishings, stocks and bonds held in a personal account) and the amount you sold it for.

The feds collect tax on income from capital gains, but our state never has. Governor Inslee wants to change that, and so do the Democrats who control the House, even though their legislation (House Bill 2186) refers to it as an “excise” tax. Just as a rose by any other name is still a rose, a tax on income is still an income tax.

When he announced the start of this year’s second overtime on May 23, Governor Inslee said he continues to believe our state should begin taxing income from capital gains. He again called it a tax on “a small segment of the wealthiest Washingtonians.”

But he also acknowledged there isn’t enough support in the Legislature for such a tax. Our Senate majority has said that all along, although House Democrats have yet to admit it publicly.

It’s always seemed inconsistent that the governor wants to begin taxing personal income, while the self-proclaimed “business experts” at the state Department of Commerce – an agency headed by Inslee’s former Washington, D.C., chief of staff – continue to promote the fact that Washington doesn’t tax personal income.

The “Pro-Business Climate” page on the Commerce website features these words:

“We offer businesses some competitive advantages found in few other states. This includes no personal or corporate income tax. We also offer industry-specific tax breaks to spur innovation and growth whenever possible.”

I also see that the Business Insider news website is carrying a report (from Moneyrates.com) that Washington is again rated the best state in which to make a living.

The lack of a state income tax is described as a “particular advantage” because Washington’s median wage is the nation’s fourth highest, and that means “more money in checking accounts.”

Our state has been first or second in all seven years of the study, and it’s safe to assume that having no state income tax is a factor.

The Evergreen State College grabs
wrong kind of attention from lawmakers

Our state’s youngest four-year institution, The Evergreen State College, is a short drive from the Capitol and downtown Olympia. Les Purce, a former WSU vice president who became Evergreen’s president from 2000 to 2015, is a personal friend, so I may have some extra insight about the school’s unique approach.

Still, I don’t remember anything happening during his tenure that comes close to recent news reports about the uncivil behavior of certain Evergreen students. When an Evergreen biology professor says he feels safer teaching in a public park than in his own classroom, there’s a problem.

It’s hard to imagine that at the two schools I know best, WSU and EWU, students would yell and curse at a professor and demand that he resign, especially for reasons that have nothing to do with his ability to teach.

One of my Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives, who teaches constitutional law at Central Washington University, has responded to the situation at Evergreen by introducing legislation to make it a private institution.

However, there is no guarantee that this proposal (House Bill 2221) will receive a public hearing and further committee attention before 2018.

As Evergreen and our other public colleges and universities are part of the executive branch of government, and the governor went to extra lengths earlier this year to reaffirm our state’s “commitment to tolerance, diversity and inclusiveness,” I suggested in a blog post last week that he could consider intervening.

The campus has been closed for two days since due to security concerns, and the school’s graduation ceremony has been moved to Tacoma for the same reason. I don’t think the summer break can come soon enough.

Retirement planning assistance
for state workers available in Pasco, online

As a longtime member of the Select Committee on Pension Policy, I work with other legislators to maintain (and improve, as needed) the financial condition of the state-run pension systems.

There are also things that public employees can do to prepare for that day when they start drawing a pension, and that’s where the state Department of Retirement Systems and its free retirement-planning seminars come in – for public employees who are within five years of retirement.

The June seminars are west of the Cascades, but there will be one in Pasco on Saturday, July 22 (along with a Wenatchee seminar in July and a Spokane seminar in September). Seminars require registration.

If attending a Saturday seminar isn’t convenient, DRS offers prerecorded seminars online. All are designed to provide a broad range of information for public employees nearing retirement – including details about how health insurance, deferred compensation and your pension work.

There are also live “webinars” about a variety of retirement-related topics. There is no need to register for these webinars: Internet access and sound are all that’s needed to take part. Most webinars feature a 30-40 minute presentation followed by a 15-minute question-and-answer session.

For pension-plan members within two years of retirement, DRS offers a retirement planning checklist.

A written estimate of benefits is also available by request; contact DRS to perform a detailed review to verify the accuracy of service credit, compensation and contributions before creating the written estimate.