Eyman’s I‑1366 is buried; now the Legislature needs to get back to work on school funding

Yes­ter­day, Wash­ing­ton’s Supreme Court gave Tim Eyman’s I‑1366 a prop­er and fit­ting bur­ial, rul­ing 9–0 that the mea­sure was unconstitutional.

In affirm­ing Judge William Down­ing’s deci­sion strik­ing down Tim Eyman’s I‑1366 in its entire­ty, the high court both did its job and res­cued the Leg­is­la­ture from hav­ing to wor­ry about los­ing $8 bil­lion in fund­ing for schools and oth­er vital pub­lic ser­vices by refus­ing to com­ply with Tim Eyman’s demand for a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment sab­o­tag­ing the major­i­ty vote clause of our Constitution.

($8 bil­lion is how much mon­ey we would have lost through 2021 had Sec­tion 2 of I‑1366 gone into effect last month, slash­ing the sales tax, which pro­vides most of the fund­ing for our state’s K‑12 schools, col­leges, and universities.)

With I‑1366 buried, the Leg­is­la­ture has one less prob­lem to deal with.

It may be out of ses­sion and most of its mem­bers are focused on get­ting reelect­ed, but the 2017 ses­sion is due to begin in just over sev­en months, and there’s plen­ty of advance work to be done to ensure it pro­duces bad­ly need­ed rev­enue reforms and a sound bud­get. As the Supreme Court has not­ed, the Leg­is­la­ture sim­ply has­n’t been deliv­er­ing for Wash­ing­ton’s kids and fam­i­lies, and that needs to change.

Those mem­bers who are assured of return­ing (unop­posed leg­is­la­tors as well as sen­a­tors who aren’t on the bal­lot this year) should all be invest­ing sub­stan­tive time and ener­gy get­ting ready for the forth­com­ing long ses­sion. A top pri­or­i­ty needs to be iden­ti­fy­ing solu­tions for fix­ing Wash­ing­ton’s upside-down tax code.

The Leg­is­la­ture ought to start by levy­ing a cap­i­tal gains tax on high earners.

Con­trary to what right wing think tanks like the Wash­ing­ton Pol­i­cy Cen­ter say, a cap­i­tal gains tax can be thought­ful­ly craft­ed to reli­ably pro­vide a mod­est amount of bad­ly-need­ed rev­enue each bien­ni­um. Reuven Car­lyle and oth­er leg­is­la­tors have been work­ing on this, and they deserve every­one’s full atten­tion and sup­port as they con­tin­ue to work on pro­duc­ing a pol­ished, refined bill for 2017. Ore­gon and Ida­ho levy cap­i­tal gains tax­es, and there’s no rea­son why we can’t as well.

Past NPI research showed a major­i­ty of like­ly 2015 (odd-year!) vot­ers sup­port a cap­i­tal gains tax. What’s more, an impres­sive forty-three per­cent of respon­dents in that sur­vey said they strong­ly sup­port­ed levy­ing a cap­i­tal gains tax.

Next, the Leg­is­la­ture should get rid of tax breaks that are no longer serv­ing the pub­lic inter­est, and pass a new account­abil­i­ty law that forces cor­po­ra­tions like Boe­ing to auto­mat­i­cal­ly pay back sub­si­dies they received if they do not deliv­er on their job cre­ation promis­es, or if they elim­i­nate Wash­ing­ton-based jobs.

The Leg­is­la­ture should also start work­ing on reform­ing prop­er­ty taxes.

Eyman’s I‑747 should be repealed, and a home­stead exemp­tion insti­tut­ed to ensure that mid­dle and low income fam­i­lies’ tax oblig­a­tions are fair.

Ulti­mate­ly, a solu­tion that makes prop­er­ty tax­es based on wealth would be ide­al, though imple­men­ta­tion might require a con­sti­tu­tion­al amendment.

To help school dis­tricts with facil­i­ty con­struc­tion and mod­ern­iza­tion (need­ed to imple­ment low­er class sizes), the Leg­is­la­ture should change the Con­sti­tu­tion to low­er the thresh­old for pas­sage of bonds from three-fifths (60%) to a sim­ple major­i­ty. One pro­pos­al we’ve seen to do this would require school dis­tricts to sub­mit bonds at gen­er­al elec­tions; dis­tricts would not have the option of send­ing bond propo­si­tions to vot­ers at spe­cial elec­tions like they do now.

If that’s some­thing Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans can agree on, then let’s get it approved and placed before voters.