Offering frequent news and analysis from the majestic Evergreen State and beyond, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's unconventional perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

I-747 reinstatement rolls through Senate

The Senate has just approved HB 2416 by a vote of 39 to 9. The roll call:
Voting Yea: Senators Benton, Berkey, Brandland, Brown, Carrell, Delvin, Eide, Franklin, Fraser, Hargrove, Hatfield, Haugen, Hewitt, Hobbs, Holmquist, Honeyford, Kastama, Kauffman, Keiser, Kilmer, King, Marr, McAuliffe, McCaslin, Morton, Oemig, Parlette, Pflug, Prentice, Rasmussen, Roach, Rockefeller, Schoesler, Sheldon, Shin, Stevens, Swecker, Tom, and Zarelli

Voting Nay: Senators Fairley, Jacobsen, Kline, Kohl-Welles, McDermott, Murray, Pridemore, Spanel, and Weinstein
It should be noted that two of the Democratic senators who voted yes did everything they could to attach a sunset clause to the legislation (Oemig and Kastama) repeatedly offering a sensible amendment first in committee and then on the floor of the state Senate (PDF).

So that's that. The Legislature is giving the governor what she foolishly asked for and many progressive Democrats have happily voted to preserve a regressive, draconian right wing property tax limit that hurts our communities.
Democratic values? Forget 'em.

Comments:

Anonymous Sarajane46th said...

It is truly disturbing that our legislators did not do the principled thing and add the sunset amendment. I could understand just buying some breathing time, but this is cynical politics. Even the Speaker could not call it good policy with a straight face, when he was asked about it on KUOW.

Why is it bad policy? Some of our smallest counties are flat broke and don't have the tax base to provide even minimal safety and criminal justice services. Counties must have the ability to increase taxes in response to increases in inflation, population and special issues (e.g., the viaduct and the 520 bridge). Any and all of these are valid reasons to increase property taxes beyond Tim Eyman's arbitrary 1% limit.

We'll be looking for legislation that will begin to shift the tax burden back to commercial real estate, which is greatly undervalued for tax purposes, and has been increasingly so for the past two decades. This is one of the major reasons our home property taxes have gone up so much.

Thanks to our legislators who did the right thing by voting against it or by trying to amend it. Progressives will remember.

December 1, 2007 1:23 AM  

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