As Wash­ing­ton home­own­ers received their most recent prop­er­ty tax bills, dis­graced ini­tia­tive pro­mot­er Tim Eyman couldn’t resist try­ing to exploit their con­cerns by announc­ing his intent to qual­i­fy an ini­tia­tive to the Novem­ber 2017 bal­lot that would cut prop­er­ty tax­es by twen­ty-five per­cent. Like Eyman’s I‑1366, which was struck down as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al last year, its ram­i­fi­ca­tions would be devastating.

Eyman’s Ini­tia­tive 1550 is real­ly a form of reverse Robin Hood­ism – take from poor and mid­dle income fam­i­lies and give to very rich.

Those who own mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar homes would sud­den­ly see their tax oblig­a­tions reduced by tens of thou­sands of dol­lars. How­ev­er, if you own a more mod­est home, say in Kent, you would only save a mere $75 a year.

King Coun­ty Asses­sor John Arthur Wil­son, author of this guest post, speaks at Per­ma­nent Defense’s Fif­teenth Anniver­sary Cel­e­bra­tion on Feb­ru­ary 15th in Kent (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI).

Eyman wants to make our worst in the nation, upside down tax code even more regres­sive by gut­ting the clos­est thing we have to a pro­gres­sive rev­enue source.

But the false allure of Ini­tia­tive 1550 doesn’t stop there. In King Coun­ty, it would slash gen­er­al fund rev­enues by about $116 mil­lion a year.

Although Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine and Deputy Exec­u­tive Fred Jar­rett have done a great job of pro­mot­ing effi­cien­cies and cost sav­ing, tak­ing that much mon­ey out of the county’s bud­get would force hor­rif­ic, dra­con­ian cuts – in pub­lic health, pub­lic safe­ty, trans­porta­tion, best starts for kids, and aid to refugees and the homeless.

And that Kent home­own­er would get whacked twice.

First, that $75 would hard­ly cov­er fam­i­ly din­ner out at Olive Garden.

Sec­ond, vital ser­vices that fam­i­ly might depend upon – for their kids in K‑12 schools, for keep­ing their com­mu­ni­ty and envi­ron­ment safe, and pro­vid­ing trans­porta­tion so peo­ple can get to work, school and recre­ation – would be gutted.

Forced to sud­den­ly cut $116 mil­lion out of the bud­get, that’s the only choice the peo­ple of King Coun­ty would have. Imag­ine if your house­hold bud­get was abrupt­ly by 25%. What would you do? What could you do?

And for oth­er com­mu­ni­ties and coun­ties, it would be even more dire.

Eyman’s I‑1550 would also elim­i­nate the per­son­al prop­er­ty tax that busi­ness­es pay. This would be dev­as­tat­ing to com­mu­ni­ties like the City of SeaT­ac. I‑1550 would deprive city cof­fers of $10.4 mil­lion annu­al­ly – 16% of the city’s budget.

And oth­er cor­po­ra­tions around the state would reap mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar tax cuts, too. Indeed, some of the largest cor­po­ra­tions in King Coun­ty would end up pay­ing no prop­er­ty tax­es. This is tax rev­enue that sup­ports vital pub­lic services.

And for small­er coun­ties across the state, Eyman’s ini­tia­tive could well effec­tive­ly dri­ve them into bank­rupt­cy. More rur­al coun­ties, depen­dent upon forestry, fish­ing and agri­cul­ture, would find them­selves hard pressed to pro­vide basic law enforce­ment and fire pro­tec­tion. Schools would be robbed of the resources need­ed sim­ply to pay teach­ers to edu­cate our chil­dren. Even basic main­te­nance of crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture — sew­er, water roads — would become impossible.

And who would run those bank­rupt coun­ties? Well, not the local­ly elect­ed com­mis­sion­ers. More like­ly fed­er­al bank­rupt­cy judges in Seat­tle or Spokane.

For those in rur­al coun­ties across Wash­ing­ton, it would be a devil’s bar­gain – get an illu­sion­ary prop­er­ty tax cut at the very real risk of being robbed of self gov­er­nance. For the state’s wealth­i­est home­own­ers and cor­po­ra­tions, Ini­tia­tive 1550 would be a wind­fall. But for every­one else, espe­cial­ly tax­pay­ers in cen­tral and east­ern Wash­ing­ton, it would be a lose-lose catastrophe.

I under­stand the raw appeal of an ini­tia­tive that would cut prop­er­ty tax­es to frus­trat­ed home­own­ers try­ing to sur­vive on mod­est or fixed incomes. Our tax code is bro­ken and unsus­tain­able. We have become way too reliant on prop­er­ty tax­es. Com­pound­ing that, King County’s red hot real estate mar­ket, that com­bined with prop­er­ty tax­es, makes hous­ing more and more unaffordable.

I’ve talked to far too many seniors and home­own­ers who are sin­cere­ly wor­ried they are being taxed out of their homes. That’s total­ly unacceptable.

But so is Eyman’s meat axe approach. Eyman’s I‑1550 sales pitch cre­ates a false sense of ben­e­fit with­out any con­sid­er­a­tion of the impacts. Instead of let­ting Eyman monop­o­lize our pub­lic dis­course like he’s been allowed to in the past, we need to restart a statewide dis­cus­sion about mod­ern­iz­ing our anti­quat­ed tax code.

John Arthur Wil­son is the King Coun­ty Asses­sor. In addi­tion to serv­ing the peo­ple of King Coun­ty as Asses­sor and Deputy Asses­sor, he has con­tributed to the well-being of Wash­ing­ton State as a pub­lic affairs con­sul­tant and a journalist. 

POSTSCRIPT: One way to actu­al­ly make prop­er­ty tax­es fair­er would be to imple­ment a home­stead exemp­tion. Last year, an NPI research poll found broad sup­port across Wash­ing­ton for this idea. 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: 31%
  • 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.