Rural Republicans: Tim Eyman’s I‑747 is choking the life out of our cities and counties

Yes­ter­day, the Sen­ate Com­mit­tee on State Gov­ern­ment held a hear­ing on leg­is­la­tion that would replace Tim Eyman’s arbi­trary cap on prop­er­ty tax­es with more rea­son­able lim­its tied to dri­vers of local gov­ern­ments’ costs. The leg­is­la­tion, Sen­ate Bill 5772, is prime spon­sored by Sen­a­tor Jamie Ped­er­sen and cospon­sored by Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Mau­reen Walsh, among others.

As David Kro­man recount­ed for Cross­cut, a num­ber of rur­al Repub­li­can elect­ed offi­cials showed up at the bil­l’s hear­ing (watch on TVW) to tes­ti­fy in sup­port of it, includ­ing many who admit to hav­ing vot­ed in favor of Tim Eyman’s I‑747 when it appeared on the bal­lot just over fif­teen years ago. For example:

Kit­ti­tas Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er Paul Jew­ell remarked to the com­mit­tee, “How dif­fi­cult it is to appear in sup­port of this bill. We don’t want much of gov­ern­ment ser­vices and we cer­tain­ly don’t like talk­ing about tax increas­es as a rule.” He vot­ed for the cap in 2001.

“I was wrong,” he said.

It’s very refresh­ing to hear that Repub­li­cans like Paul Jew­ell now under­stand the destruc­tive ram­i­fi­ca­tions of I‑747. For most of the last fif­teen years, NPI’s Per­ma­nent Defense has main­tained a pro­file of I‑747 on its web­site, under our Dan­ger­ous Ini­tia­tives sec­tion, which dis­cuss­es the impacts of I‑747.

The I‑747 oppo­si­tion cam­paign warned vot­ers that pas­sage of the ini­tia­tive would lead to cut­backs in pub­lic ser­vices. From the voter’s pam­phlet statement:

“King and Sno­homish Coun­ty res­i­dents are sick of grid­lock. I‑747 means inter­sec­tion and coun­ty high­way improve­ments won’t get made,” says Sno­homish Coun­ty road crew work­er Roger Moller. Klick­i­tat Coun­ty Fire Com­mis­sion­er Miland Walling is con­cerned that “we will be unable to pur­chase safe­ty equip­ment for rur­al firefighters.”

Pierce Coun­ty library employ­ee Pat­ti Cox says a three- year loss of $1.5 mil­lion means “we will have to short­en library hours and cut ser­vices like children’s read­ing hours.”

Yaki­ma Coun­ty Pros­e­cu­tor Jeff Sul­li­van invites “any­one to come look over the bud­get and sug­gest which felony crimes I shouldn’t prosecute.”

Sure enough, in the wake of I‑747’s pas­sage, cities and espe­cial­ly coun­ties were forced to cut back, to the detri­ment of all Wash­ing­to­ni­ans’ well-being.

And in the years since, demand for pub­lic ser­vices has con­tin­ued to grow, but cities and coun­ties — par­tic­u­lar­ly in rur­al Wash­ing­ton — have not been able to keep up because I‑747 is slow­ly chok­ing them to death.

Tim Eyman sneers that any local gov­ern­ment that wants to raise prop­er­ty tax­es can sim­ply put a propo­si­tion on the bal­lot and get vot­ers to sign off on an increase. But that costs mon­ey… mon­ey rur­al coun­ties and cities often do not have.

David Kro­man explains:

The city of Ros­alia, about 40 miles south of Spokane, brings in $660 dol­lars a year in prop­er­ty tax­es. A good chunk goes to pay­ing the rough­ly $200 phone bill of city man­ag­er Jen­na McDon­ald. They’d like to ask vot­ers for mon­ey to help fund roads, but it costs $1,200 just to get a mea­sure on the ballot.

Empha­sis is mine.

You won’t hear Tim Eyman admit it, but elec­tions are a pub­lic ser­vice, too. Elec­tions cost mon­ey. It’s not pos­si­ble to hold an elec­tion for free. There are sig­nif­i­cant costs asso­ci­at­ed with design­ing, prepar­ing, print­ing, and mail­ing bal­lots, and then tab­u­lat­ing those bal­lots when they come back.

How are the lead­ers of a city like Ros­alia sup­posed to pay for an elec­tion to ask its vot­ers for a rev­enue boost when they can’t afford the costs?

Tim Eyman’s I‑747 has been hurt­ing Wash­ing­ton’s com­mu­ni­ties for a very long time. It needs to be repealed. It ought to have been repealed back in 2007, when Democ­rats held super­ma­jori­ties in both hous­es of the Legislature.

The Supreme Court had just struck down the ini­tia­tive as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and gift­ed then-Gov­er­nor Chris Gre­goire, then-Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Lisa Brown, and Speak­er Frank Chopp an oppor­tu­ni­ty to strike a blow for pro­gres­sive tax reform.

But instead of replac­ing I‑747 with more pro­gres­sive prop­er­ty tax pol­i­cy and imple­ment­ing a home­stead exemp­tion or cir­cuit break­er to make the tax code fair­er for mid­dle and low income fam­i­lies, the trio rushed to rein­state I‑747 in a one-day Novem­ber spe­cial ses­sion… to the great joy and delight of Tim Eyman.

We lob­bied fierce­ly against the move, but our admo­ni­tions were ignored. Numer­ous Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­is­la­tors promised that they would work on com­ing up with a viable replace­ment for I‑747 down the road. Those promis­es were not kept. I‑747 has remained in place and has con­tin­ued to slow­ly inflict harm, year after year.

Death by a thou­sand cuts is very painful, and local elect­ed lead­ers are find­ing it increas­ing­ly hard to deliv­er pub­lic services.

That’s espe­cial­ly true east of the Cascades.

The cospon­sors of SB 5772 are an inter­est­ing group. All but one of them (Rebec­ca Sal­daña) were serv­ing in the Leg­is­la­ture when I‑747 was rein­stat­ed ten years ago.

Of the oth­er cospon­sors, only one vot­ed against rein­state­ment — Sen­a­tor Jamie Ped­er­sen, who at the time was serv­ing in the House. The oth­er four cospon­sors — Sen­a­tors Keis­er, Hobbs, Takko, and Walsh — vot­ed for reinstatement.

It is reas­sur­ing to see their names on this bill. But the list of cospon­sors ought to have been much, much longer. Hope­ful­ly that will be the case will be dur­ing the next go-around. Heavy lifts such as this often require sus­tained mul­ti­year organizing.

In addi­tion to get­ting rid of I‑747, the Leg­is­la­ture should work on mak­ing prop­er­ty tax­es fair­er. One way to do this would be through a home­stead exemp­tion, which would slight­ly lift tax oblig­a­tions on mid­dle and low income fam­i­lies while slight­ly rais­ing them on wealthy fam­i­lies. NPI research finds broad sup­port for this idea.

In June of 2016, in a statewide poll of Wash­ing­ton vot­ers, we asked:

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: 21%
  • 14% “some­what oppose” prop­er­ty tax fairness
  • 17% “strong­ly oppose” prop­er­ty tax fairness
• 2% answered “not sure”

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.