Right-wing think tanks plotting Eymanesque campaign against our cities and counties

Last week, reporters for The Guardian pulled the cur­tain back on a net­work of well-fund­ed, well-orga­nized right-wing think tanks and their extreme agenda.

Doc­u­ments obtained by The Guardian show the bland­ly-named State Pol­i­cy Net­work is work­ing to under­mine edu­ca­tion, health­care, and rev­enue col­lec­tion in near­ly every state in the coun­try. Their spe­cif­ic pro­pos­als are extreme­ly rad­i­cal, from pri­va­tiz­ing schools to gut­ting pub­lic healthcare.

The Guardian’s report also shows how this network’s Wash­ing­ton affil­i­ates plan to launch the next phase of their attack on our eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty and our democracy.

The State Pol­i­cy Net­work is a cre­ation of the noto­ri­ous Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil (ALEC), and is fund­ed by right-wing donors includ­ing the Koch Broth­ers to impose extrem­ist poli­cies at the state lev­el, bypass­ing a fed­er­al gov­ern­ment where Democ­rats remain pow­er­ful enough to block this rad­i­cal agenda.

Here in Wash­ing­ton, the State Pol­i­cy Net­work has two affil­i­ates: the Free­dom Foun­da­tion and the Wash­ing­ton Pol­i­cy Center.

Both of these groups are well known for their right-wing pol­i­cy agen­da and their desire to dis­man­tle and destroy Washington’s pro­gres­sive achievements.

The Guardian’s report­ing details two new lines of attack we can expect from these think tanks, based on grant requests they sub­mit­ted to the State Pol­i­cy Net­work. The Free­dom Foun­da­tion wants to launch a new cam­paign claim­ing that cities and coun­ties are some­how “bor­row­ing beyond their means” — try­ing to bring the log­ic of aus­ter­i­ty to local gov­ern­ment, demand­ing we cut back on spend­ing to address some sup­posed bor­row­ing prob­lem that does not actu­al­ly exist.

The Wash­ing­ton Pol­i­cy Cen­ter is plan­ning a cam­paign to take Tim Eyman’s uncon­sti­tu­tion­al ²⁄₃ rule for tax increas­es to the local lev­el, hop­ing to get more local gov­ern­ments to enact a super­ma­jor­i­ty require­ment to raise revenue.

We don’t know whether the State Pol­i­cy Net­work agreed to fund these cam­paigns, but they have fund­ed oth­er cam­paigns for these think tanks in the past.

Thanks to The Guardian, we know what they’re up to, and have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to antic­i­pate these attacks and stop them before they succeed.

The Free­dom Foundation’s attempt to smear the fis­cal health of local gov­ern­ments is eas­i­ly debunked. Local gov­ern­ments in Wash­ing­ton State have been bor­row­ing mon­ey appro­pri­ate­ly and their cred­it rat­ings remain strong.

Seat­tle and King Coun­ty, for exam­ple, both have AAA ratings.

The Free­dom Foun­da­tion seeks to destroy local pub­lic ser­vices through cuts to vital pub­lic ser­vices, but knows that Wash­ing­to­ni­ans like these ser­vices and do not want to see them under­mined. In order to over­come that resis­tance, the Free­dom Foun­da­tion knows they must por­tray cities and coun­ties as in bad finan­cial shape, which is why they want mon­ey to launch a cam­paign to con­coct an entire­ly fic­tion­al sto­ry of local gov­ern­ments bor­row­ing beyond their means.

Ear­li­er this year the Supreme Court declared the two-thirds super­ma­jor­i­ty require­ment at the heart of Tim Eyman’s I‑601 clones to be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. But it looks like the Wash­ing­ton Pol­i­cy Cen­ter is undaunt­ed by the LEV deci­sion, as they are now seek­ing to impose the same unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic scheme on cities and counties.

We don’t have to look far to see how cre­at­ing an unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic thresh­old for rais­ing rev­enue can cause big problems.

Many cities in Cal­i­for­nia are in dire straits because nei­ther local elect­ed offi­cials nor vot­ers can raise rev­enue with­out a two-thirds vote. Get­ting to 66.67% in any elec­tion is a tough hur­dle, and in any oth­er sit­u­a­tion, any­thing that gets more than 60% of vot­er sup­port is con­sid­ered to have won in a landslide.

Yet just last year, a pro­pos­al to fund a major expan­sion of mass tran­sit in Los Ange­les “failed” because it got 66.11% of the vote, just short of the two-thirds thresh­old. If levies or rev­enue pro­pos­als in Wash­ing­ton required a two-thirds vote, deci­sions about fund­ing vital pub­lic schools like schools or police, fire, and emer­gency med­ical response would end up in the hands of the few, not the many.

These pro­posed cam­paigns also show how Washington’s right-wing think tanks exist to advance the agen­da of wealthy nation­al donors, rather than the inter­ests of the peo­ple of the Ever­green State. These think tanks have had a lot of suc­cess shap­ing the agen­da in oth­er states, and in places like Wis­con­sin and Michi­gan are key to the Tea Party’s war on eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty. They haven’t had as much suc­cess in the Pacif­ic North­west… yet. But they are com­ing for us.

We need to be ready to stop them.