Legislative Commentary: Dec. 20, 2018

Dear Friends,

State law requires the governor to submit a budget proposal to the Legislature ahead of each of our sessions. This week Governor Inslee submitted the seventh budget of his time in office, and he’s now 7-for-7 on wanting new taxes. Keep reading for details, including how he is continuing the crusade against the Snake River dams.

I was west of the mountains early this week for a meeting of the Select Committee on Pension Policy, and also the meeting where the Senate Republican Caucus divided up our seats on the various Senate committees. I’ll be continuing on the Ways and Means committee, which addresses taxes and spending, and the Rules committee, which looks at the legislation passed at the committee level and decides which bills move to the full Senate’s voting calendar.

Back home, I was in Pasco for the Joint Columbia Basin College and Walla Walla Community College Legislative Breakfast, in Moses Lake at the Farm Bureau legislative lunch, and in Spokane for a pre-session panel discussion with Greater Spokane Incorporated.

Today brought a quick trip to Seattle for a meeting with business leaders on the Washington Roundtable, followed by a very pleasant visit with Japan’s Consul General in Seattle. You may recall Yoichiro Yamada and his son came to see my wheat farm and local points of interest during this year’s harvest; today was the first time I’d had the honor of visiting Consul General Yamada and Mrs. Yamada at their home.

When it comes to taxes and spending, is Inslee insatiable?

Governor Inslee had included tax increases in all six budgets he’d submitted to the Legislature during his time in office. I figured he was a lock to keep that streak going, in the proposal he’d be putting on the table for 2019.

Even so, I was amazed by what the governor unveiled yesterday. He’d spend $54 billion over the next two years – up $10 billion, or 22 percent, from the current budget cycle. He wants to tax personal income for the first time, plus a 67 percent tax hike on more than 175,000 employers, who provide services, from health-care to janitorial. He’d also set property owners up for more than double the local-education taxes they’re paying now.

The governor’s budget is so over the top that words like “staggering” still can’t capture its magnitude. Inslee has outdone himself this time, to the point of seeming downright insatiable when it comes to taxes and spending.

State government is expecting to collect $50 billion in revenue over the next two years. That’s $4 billion-plus over the current budget cycle. We have more billions in reserve than ever. Yet somehow, it’s still not enough. Besides all the naturally occurring revenue plus revenue from the huge tax increases, the governor wants to tap the reserves for another $1 billion.

I don’t know why Inslee thinks a state income tax would be constitutional. And speaking of the constitution, the Legislature just got through bringing the state’s K-12 funding system back into constitutional compliance. Why does Inslee want to undo that progress by going back to the local-education levy rate that encouraged the growth of educational inequities across Washington, and helped lead to the McCleary lawsuit in the first place?

On top of that, the K-12 reforms we adopted in 2017 are still kicking in, and they’ll lower the majority of 2019 property-tax bills across the state. If Inslee wants to discard the bipartisan levy cap we’d put on school districts, he’d better be ready to accept credit for the huge property-tax increases that are sure to follow.

It’s been more a month since Republican senators stepped forward with ideas about affordable housing/homelessness, and even longer since we shared an agenda about improving mental-health treatment. I appreciate that the governor’s budget also addresses those topics, although this is a case of having common ground on the “what” but not on the “how.”

The Legislature is free to ignore Inslee’s budget. But with Democrats controlling both the state Senate and House for only the second time during his years in the mansion, and with larger majorities than 2018, look for it to serve as a cue card instead.

Inslee budget includes money for more action toward dam breaching

The record spending proposed by the governor yesterday includes $1.1 billion for what he calls a “herculean effort” to help the southern resident orcas over in Puget Sound. Within that amount is $750,000 to get a group of stakeholders together to look at the costs and consequences associated with breaching or removing the four federal dams on the lower Snake River, all of which are in the 9th District.

Ths latest move against the hydropower dams has its roots in the orca task force that started meeting in the summer and submitted a long list of recommendations to Inslee a month ago.

I’ve always understood the interest in increasing the supply of salmon that are the primary food of the orcas, but to me it makes far more sense to boost hatchery production and habitat work and go after the predators that do far more to hurt salmon populations.

To that end I appreciate the hatchery and habitat funding in Inslee’s budget. I was also glad that earlier this this week, the U.S. House of Representatives joined the Senate in approving changes to federal law that should make it easier to take out the sea lions that are decimating Snake River salmon when they reach the lower Columbia River.

The recommendations to Inslee from his task force were just that -- he wasn’t required to fund any further action related to dam breaching, so that’s another one of the many disappointing parts about his budget proposal. One of my priorities in 2019 will be to oppose any such spending in the new 2019-21 budget as approved by the Legislature.

Applications for Senate Pages go completely online

The Senate Page Program recently made it possible to not only download application forms but to complete and submit them online (visit https://app.leg.wa.gov/PageApplication/).

The page program is open to students who are 14-16 years old, and those who participate get a week-long civics lesson they won’t find anywhere else (plus a week’s pay and time away from their regular school). With the 2019 session starting in less than a month, I encourage interested students to get their applications in as soon as possible!