Bill to add fiscal impact disclosures to state-level initiatives passes Washington’s Senate

A much-need­ed, long over­due ini­tia­tive reform bill cleared the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate this evening and is head­ed back to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion, in a huge vic­to­ry for bal­lot sense and bal­lot transparency.

By a vote of 26 to 22, the Sen­ate approved House Bill 1876, which requires fis­cal impact dis­clo­sures to be append­ed to bal­lot titles that would alter the state’s finances. The dis­clo­sures would noti­fy vot­ers if a mea­sure would increase or decrease fund­ing for pub­lic ser­vices and then name the affect­ed services.

If a pro­posed mea­sure would impact the gen­er­al fund, the state­ment would list the top three cat­e­gories of state ser­vices sup­port­ed by the gen­er­al fund in the cur­rent bien­ni­al state budget.

Research pub­licly unveiled by NPI this evening dur­ing the floor debate on the bill shows that a whop­ping 82% of like­ly 2022 Wash­ing­ton vot­ers favor adding fis­cal impact dis­clo­sures to ini­tia­tives. Enthu­si­as­tic sup­port among the vot­ing pub­lic tran­scends par­ty lines, ide­o­log­i­cal lines, and region­al divisions.

As with the House vote sev­er­al weeks ago, Democ­rats sup­plied all of the votes to pass HB 1876, with every Repub­li­can vot­ing no. The roll call was as follows:

Roll Call
HB 1876
Bal­lot measures/impact discl
3rd Read­ing & Final Pas­sage as Amend­ed by the Senate
3/2/2022

Yeas: 26; Nays: 22; Excused: 1

Vot­ing Yea: Sen­a­tors Bil­lig, Car­lyle, Cleve­land, Con­way, Das, Dhin­gra, Frockt, Hasegawa, Hunt, Keis­er, Kud­er­er, Liias, Lovelett, Lovick, Nguyen, Nobles, Ped­er­sen, Ran­dall, Rolfes, Sal­daña, Salomon, Stan­ford, Trudeau, Van De Wege, Well­man, Wil­son (Claire)

Vot­ing Nay: Sen­a­tors Braun, Brown, Dozi­er, For­tu­na­to, Gildon, Hawkins, Holy, Hon­ey­ford, King, McCune, Mul­let, Muz­za­ll, Pad­den, Rivers, Schoesler, Sefzik, Shel­don, Short, Wag­oner, War­nick, Wil­son (Jeff) Wil­son (Lyn­da)

Excused: Sen­a­tor Robinson

Sen­a­tor June Robin­son, who recent­ly lost her moth­er, was excused from the vote. (Our heart­felt con­do­lences to Sen­a­tor Robinson.)

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Mark Mul­let (D‑5th Dis­trict: Issaquah, Maple Val­ley, Sno­qulamie) was the only Demo­c­rat to vote no on the bill. The remain­ing twen­ty-six Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors all vot­ed yea, led by Sen­a­tors Sam Hunt and Pat­ty Kud­er­er, the Chair and Vice Chair of the Sen­ate State Gov­ern­ment Committee.

Both Hunt and Kud­er­er deliv­ered excel­lent floor speech­es in sup­port of the bill and in oppo­si­tion to numer­ous Repub­li­can amend­ments to weak­en it.

The Sen­ate agreed to adopt one Repub­li­can amend­ment that removes lan­guage stat­ing that the con­tent of the fis­cal impact dis­clo­sures isn’t sub­ject to judi­cial review, and one Demo­c­ra­t­ic amend­ment from Sen­a­tor Hunt adjust­ing some dates, but oth­er­wise, the bill was left unchanged.

Even after get­ting the bill amend­ed to address one of their con­cerns, a pletho­ra of Sen­ate Repub­li­cans still rose to denounce the bill, includ­ing Phil For­tu­na­to and top Sen­ate Repub­li­can John Braun.

“This bill is an exam­ple of the Leg­is­la­ture not trust­ing the peo­ple,” grum­bled Braun. “This bill is designed to pro­vide only the infor­ma­tion they need to reach the ‘right’ deci­sion. This is not good gov­ern­ment. We need trust the people.”

Actu­al­ly, cur­rent statute (RCW 29A.72.050) is what has been designed to yield bal­lot titles that don’t ful­ly and prop­er­ly sum­ma­rize the effects of the ini­tia­tives they’re sup­posed to impar­tial­ly rep­re­sent. Statewide ini­tia­tives are lim­it­ed to thir­ty word con­cise descrip­tions, no mat­ter how com­plex the mea­sure might be, and absurd­ly, there is no require­ment that fis­cal impacts be men­tioned at all.

As a con­se­quence, it’s pos­si­ble for bad actors like Tim Eyman to go bal­lot title shop­ping and obtain manip­u­la­tive, slant­ed, and prej­u­di­cial offi­cial descrip­tions of pro­posed ini­tia­tives with huge ram­i­fi­ca­tions for the state’s finances.

By oppos­ing this bill, it’s Repub­li­cans who are not trust­ing the peo­ple. They don’t want vot­ers to be put on alert that a mea­sure would have a fis­cal impact, even though such noti­fi­ca­tions have long been a stan­dard prac­tice in the Leg­is­la­ture and are a stan­dard aspect of local propo­si­tions like levies.

We want to be able to con­tin­ue to run statewide tax-slash­ing mea­sures while hid­ing the con­se­quences from the offi­cial descrip­tions that appear on the bal­lot would not have made a very good argu­ment for vot­ing no on HB 1876, so Repub­li­cans resort­ed to their favorite defense mech­a­nism of pro­jec­tion, accus­ing Democ­rats of hold­ing the posi­tion that they them­selves hold.

Pri­or to the debate on HB 1876, and dur­ing it, Tim Eyman was furi­ous­ly ral­ly­ing his fol­low­ers to send emails to sen­a­tors telling them that HB 1876 is bad. Eyman has pre­vi­ous­ly called the bill a “five alarm fire.” In recent days, he has tak­en to call­ing it an “eight alarm fire,” ramp­ing up his hyperbole.

Eyman’s fail­ure to defeat this bill is a huge vic­to­ry for Wash­ing­ton vot­ers. Although HB 1876 isn’t out of the Leg­is­la­ture yet, it is the first sig­nif­i­cant ini­tia­tive reform bill in mod­ern times to get a floor vote in both cham­bers of the Leg­is­la­ture. NPI thanks the House and Sen­ate for their work so far on this pro-trans­paren­cy, pro-vot­er leg­is­la­tion. Wash­ing­to­ni­ans will be very appreciative!