Why isn’t Stuart Elway asking about revenue fairness when he polls on funding education?

Yes­ter­day, just in time for the 2017 leg­isla­tive ses­sion, poll­ster Stu­art Elway released new results from a recent sur­vey in which his firm asked Wash­ing­ton vot­ers about how and whether we should invest in Wash­ing­ton’s K‑12 schools, which have been bad­ly under­fund­ed for years in defi­ance of the Wash­ing­ton State Constitution.

The Supreme Court has repeat­ed­ly ordered the Leg­is­la­ture to dis­charge its para­mount duty and amply pro­vide for the edu­ca­tion of all young peo­ple resid­ing with­in the state. The Leg­is­la­ture has increased edu­ca­tion fund­ing, but not by enough to com­ply with the require­ments of the Constitution.

Edu­ca­tion fund­ing is thus the most impor­tant issue fac­ing the new Leg­is­la­ture, again. Vot­ers told Elway they also see it as the top issue.

Over­all, 45% of respon­dents ranked edu­ca­tion first, fol­lowed by “the econ­o­my”, “tax­es”, and trans­porta­tion. Respon­dents iden­ti­fy­ing as Democ­rats and respon­dents iden­ti­fy­ing as inde­pen­dents both pin­point­ed edu­ca­tion as their top issue; for the Repub­li­can respon­dents, it was “tax­es”.

Elway then asked about the fol­low­ing “strate­gies” for fund­ing education:

1. Fund pub­lic edu­ca­tion first with the mon­ey avail­able, then fund the rest of state gov­ern­ment with the mon­ey remain­ing — even if that means cut­ting oth­er pro­grams and services.
2. Increase tax­es on busi­ness­es to fund pub­lic edu­ca­tion with­out mak­ing deep cuts to oth­er state pro­grams and ser­vices. This option was mod­i­fied this year to spec­i­fy “tax­es on busi­ness­es,” since that is most of the Governor’s pro­pos­al. The change made no sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in the response.
3. Do as much as pos­si­ble to fund edu­ca­tion with­out rais­ing tax­es and with­out deep cuts to oth­er pro­grams — even if that means we do not ful­ly fund education.

I put the word strate­gies in quotes above because in our view, #1 and #3 aren’t actu­al­ly strate­gies at all, and should not be char­ac­ter­ized as such.

#1 is just not pos­si­ble and sug­gests a com­plete igno­rance of how state bud­get­ing works. “Fund edu­ca­tion first” is a worth­less catch­phrase — it’s sim­ply not a strat­e­gy. We have many major oblig­a­tions as a state, more than one of which are con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly man­dat­ed. We’ve made addi­tion­al oblig­a­tions in order to accept fed­er­al tax dol­lars. We can’t neglect those. Rob­bing Peter to pay Paul won’t work.

#3, mean­while, is not con­sti­tu­tion­al and won’t lead to a res­o­lu­tion of the McCleary court case. #3 is what the Leg­is­la­ture has already been doing for years, which is why our pub­lic schools remain unac­cept­ably underfunded.

And as for #2, the phras­ing Elway chose to use is vague and does­n’t ade­quate­ly explain what Gov­er­nor Inslee is propos­ing. The gov­er­nor’s bud­get plan includes a cap­i­tal gains tax on the wealthy, a pol­lu­tion tax, and an increase in the busi­ness & occu­pa­tion tax that small busi­ness­es would be exempt­ed from.

The words “increase tax­es on busi­ness­es” lack speci­fici­ty and leave much to the imag­i­na­tion, so it’s not sur­pris­ing that 47% respond­ed favor­ably while 46% respond­ed unfa­vor­ably to this question.

Many Wash­ing­to­ni­ans are busi­ness own­ers; only a frac­tion of them are wealthy busi­ness own­ers. It must be not­ed that it is the wealthy that Gov­er­nor Inslee is propos­ing pay more in dues to ensure that our schools are ful­ly funded.

We believe the way to resolve McCleary is through pro­gres­sive rev­enue reform. Wash­ing­ton has the most upside down tax code in the nation — a tax code that oblig­es low and mid­dle income fam­i­lies to pay a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of their income in tax­es to sup­port our pub­lic ser­vices, while the wealthy are asked to pay very lit­tle. To make mat­ters worse, we don’t fair­ly tax busi­ness­es, either.

Per­haps our favorite adage here at NPI is the answers you get depend on the ques­tions you ask. I usu­al­ly include it along with every polling-relat­ed post I author because it is so impor­tant. It either did­n’t occur to Stu­art Elway and his firm to ask specif­i­cal­ly about pro­gres­sive rev­enue reform, or it did and he chose not to.We wish he would have, though, because we’d have been inter­est­ed in the answers.

Last June, we asked about pro­gres­sive rev­enue reform in our statewide poll, and we found very strong sup­port for a cap­i­tal gains tax on the wealthy, repeal of tax breaks that have failed to cre­ate new jobs, and mak­ing prop­er­ty tax­es fairer.

63% of the like­ly vot­ers who respond­ed to our sur­vey agreed that Washington’s schools need more fund­ing. Impres­sive­ly, 65% sup­port a cap­i­tal gains tax on the wealthy to make this hap­pen, with 46% say­ing they “strong­ly sup­port the idea”.

Our sur­vey of 679 like­ly Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from June 14th-15th, 2016; all respon­dents par­tic­i­pat­ed via land­line. The poll had a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.8% at the 95% con­fi­dence level.

We asked:

Do you strong­ly sup­port, some­what sup­port, some­what oppose or strong­ly oppose tax­ing the cap­i­tal gains of wealthy indi­vid­u­als to help pay for pub­lic schools, col­leges and universities?”

These were the answers:

• Sup­port: 65%
  • 46% “strong­ly sup­port” a cap­i­tal gains tax
  • 19% “some­what sup­port” a cap­i­tal gains tax
• Oppose: 33%
  • 9% “some­what oppose” a cap­i­tal gains tax
  • 24% “strong­ly oppose” a cap­i­tal gains tax
• 2% answered “not sure” 

We then asked about recov­er­ing rev­enue for the state by requir­ing cor­po­ra­tions to pay back tax breaks if they did not deliv­er on promis­es to cre­ate jobs, or they moved jobs out of our state after hav­ing received sub­si­dies from fel­low taxpayers.

As we sus­pect­ed, this hap­pens to be a wild­ly pop­u­lar idea with broad sup­port from across the polit­i­cal spec­trum. Here’s our question:

Do you strong­ly sup­port, some­what sup­port, some­what oppose or strong­ly oppose leg­is­la­tion requir­ing cor­po­ra­tions to for­feit tax breaks and repay sub­si­dies they pre­vi­ous­ly received if they fail to deliv­er on their job cre­ation promis­es, or they move jobs out of Wash­ing­ton State?

These were the answers:

• Sup­port: 79%
  • 59% “strong­ly sup­port” cor­po­rate tax accountability
  • 20% “some­what sup­port” cor­po­rate tax accountability
• Oppose: 15%
  • 9% “some­what oppose” cor­po­rate tax accountability
  • 6% “strong­ly oppose” cor­po­rate tax accountability
• 6% answered “not sure” 

And here’s our ques­tion on prop­er­ty tax reform:

Do you strong­ly sup­port, some­what sup­port, some­what oppose or strong­ly oppose leg­is­la­tion that would reduce prop­er­ty tax­es for mid­dle and low­er income house­holds, while slight­ly increas­ing them for wealthy fam­i­lies, with no loss of rev­enue to pub­lic services?

These were the answers:

• Sup­port: 67%
  • 42% “strong­ly sup­port” prop­er­ty tax fairness
  • 25% “some­what sup­port” prop­er­ty tax fairness
• Oppose: 31%
  • 14% “some­what oppose” prop­er­ty tax fairness
  • 17% “strong­ly oppose” prop­er­ty tax fairness
• 2% answered “not sure”
  

We also believe, based on our research, that a major­i­ty of Wash­ing­to­ni­ans sup­port tax­ing pol­luters to fund vital pub­lic ser­vices like our schools.

Again and again, our research has found that the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton are hun­gry for pro­gres­sive rev­enue reform. Even Repub­li­can vot­ers are enthu­si­as­tic about some of the ideas we’ve asked about. Too bad their par­ty’s chiefs aren’t.

There are many, many approach­es we could take to mak­ing our upside down tax code fair­er, while also bring­ing in more rev­enue to fund our schools at the same time. We wish Elway would have asked about some of these approach­es, instead of wast­ing time try­ing to ascer­tain if peo­ple would be com­fort­able per­pet­u­at­ing the sta­tus quo, which would be total­ly irresponsible.

We fur­ther wish the media would reg­u­lar­ly explore the top­ic of pro­gres­sive rev­enue reform instead of just focus­ing on the con­flict in the Leg­is­la­ture. It is news to no one who fol­lows Wash­ing­ton pol­i­tics that our bicam­er­al Leg­is­la­ture’s four major par­ty cau­cus­es don’t agree on how to address the Supreme Court’s McCleary decision.

Stop writ­ing that sto­ry over and over, please, and go talk to ordi­nary Wash­ing­ton fam­i­lies about our school fund­ing cri­sis. Get their views. Let’s hear more from teach­ers, par­ents, stu­dents, and activists, and less from law­mak­ers and lob­by­ists whose job it is to be in the state­house dur­ing session.

We think it’s vital, when ask­ing peo­ple what solu­tions they sup­port, to be spe­cif­ic. Most Wash­ing­to­ni­ans aren’t rich and there­fore already pay a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of their income in tax­es, because our tax code is the nation’s most regressive.

Hard­work­ing mid­dle and low­er income Wash­ing­to­ni­ans right­ly feel it’s time for the wealthy in our state to step up and pay their fair share.

Gov­er­nor Inslee has showed real lead­er­ship with his bud­get pro­pos­al, and we imag­ine his ideas will get a seri­ous recep­tion in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic-led House.

But Sen­ate Repub­li­cans are going to try their darnedest to steer our pub­lic dis­course away from these wor­thy ideas and dis­tract us from the real task at hand.

We must be pre­pared to con­stant­ly reframe so we can stay focused on what mat­ters: ensur­ing our kids get the edu­ca­tion they deserve.