Down but Not Out: New Tack for Richard DeBolt

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The game has changed — possibly forever — for House Minority Leader Richard DeBolt, R-Chehalis. 

On Feb. 28, the Washington Supreme Court overturned the voter-enacted two-thirds requirement for tax increases, and suddenly, House Republicans found themselves in an unenviable position.

House Democrats no longer had to play nice. They no longer had to ask permission. They could push through bills all on their own, because a simple majority would be no problem for the Majority Caucus members, who outnumber their Republican counterparts 55 to 43.

For DeBolt, the House's top Republican, it would be defense-only politics until April. The new reality is not ideal, but it is workable, the nine-term legislator said on Friday.

"You can make things last forever, you can not sustain things, you can do parliamentary procedural issues that change the dynamic," DeBolt, 47, told The Chronicle.

And all the usual bargaining strategies still apply. Want nothing and you’ll give the other guys nothing to withhold, DeBolt said he tells his colleagues.

"I'm not a horse trader. The speaker (Rep. Frank Chopp, D-Seattle) likes doing that, but I have a different perspective," he said. "I say: Do what's right."

Doing right in the 20th Legislative District, according to DeBolt, means creating jobs in rural communities, such Lewis County, where an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the population commutes out of county for work and another 13 percent is unemployed.

"Just think what (local jobs) would do for our tax base, our morale," he said.

But two interrelated problems stand in the way.

The first is the Growth Management Act, legislation enacted in 1990 that was intended to preserve rural areas by moving 80 percent of the people to 20 percent of the land mass.



Instead, according to DeBolt, the GMA has moved 80 percent of the jobs to 20 percent of the land mass, thus suffocating growth in rural communities and creating a congestion-producing mass of commuters.

House Democrats’ solution to that congestion — a large scale transportation package — is the second hindrance to local job growth, DeBolt said.

Their package would increase the gas tax by 10 cents, for a total of about  66 cents of tax per gallon of gas, and would increase fees for license tabs. Those price increases could decrease congestion by about 3 percent, according to House Democrats.

But their plan is an expensive Band-Aid, not a solution, DeBolt said.

To solve congestion longterm, citizens must be able to work where they live. And to do that, the GMA must be lifted, or at least loosened.

But that's unlikely to happen this session.

All but one GMA bill has died, and this session's lone survivor — HB 1224, prime-sponsored by Joel Kretz, R-Wauconda — is "dangling," according to Kretz, a 7th District legislator.

"We're not asking for handouts, we just want to go back to work," DeBolt said about his party’s longheld frustration with the GMA. "Why are we abandoning people and then making them pay more?”

House Democrats have pledged to increase the gas and sales taxes and to implement a capital gains tax. And in all likelihood, they will succeed in doing so, DeBolt said.

It’s now up to the Senate Majority Coalition. “Our bills are dead,” DeBolt said, “but our ideas are still alive in the Senate.”

20th District Senator, John Braun, R-Centralia, agrees. “Here’s the bottom line,” Braun said, “without the two-thirds majority, the only thing stopping additional taxes is the Senate Majority Caucus.”