With his final legislative session as governor in the rearview mirror, Gov. Jay Inslee said Thursday he is “adamantly opposed” to initiatives that would repeal the capital gains tax, portions of the Climate Commitment Act and allow more people to opt out of the state’s long-term care program.
All three of those measures will come before voters in November.
Inslee’s comments came during media availability Thursday evening, where Inslee and the majority leaders in the House and Senate praised increased funding for school construction, special education and treatment for opioid addiction as among the successes of the session.
“I got up every single morning the last, almost 12 years, trying to figure out that day what I could do to help people, Washingtonians, to reach their aspirations and their dreams,” said Inslee, who is serving out his final term. “I left it all on the field, and I gave it my all, every single day.”
According to Inslee, if someone reflects on his time in office in 50 years, “they’ll say the thing that’s the most important thing we did was to really fight climate change, to save the basic heritage of the state of Washington.”
Protecting the Climate Commitment Act (CCA), wide-ranging legislation that requires a 95% reduction in emissions by 2050, will remain a high priority for Inslee after an initiative to the legislature to repeal portions of the bill stalled.
“Part of the story of this session is what (legislators) did not do, and what they did not do is they didn’t go backward,” Inslee said. “They didn’t collapse in the face of people who wanted to gut our ability to have more funding for schools, to have more assistance for electric school buses, to have the way to help in our behavioral health crisis. There are folks who urged them to gut the Capital Gains tax and the Climate Commitment Act.”
Inslee said “over time” Washingtonians will learn the benefits of the bills, which include free bus rides on public transportation, additional funding for education and a push for electric ferries.
“Maybe, at least in my book, one of the things that makes this most a banner year, is our continuing progress in Washington’s ‘leading the nation’ fight against climate change,” Inslee said, highlighting bills to potentially link Washington’s carbon reduction program with California and the Canadian province of Quebec, and a bill that prohibits future natural gas service.
The three initiatives — I-2109 to repeal the capital gains tax, I-2117 to repeal the Climate Commitment Act, and I-2124 to allow more people to opt out of the state’s long-term care program — now head to the November ballot.
“Those initiatives, jointly, would gut, would gut, would kneecap, would blow a hole in all of those benefits that Washingtonians are now enjoying,” Inslee said of the three initiatives the legislature did not act on. “And I do not believe that Washingtonians want to gut our funding for schools, I don’t think they want to gut our funding for transportation, I don’t think they want to gut our assistance for lower-income people to get better transportation choices.”
While legislators did not propose an alternative to the three initiatives, Inslee said a bill that allows Washingtonians to access their benefits through the long term care program if they move out of state will be a “significant improvement of the plan.”
As the session drew to a close, the Washington state Legislature passed a trio of initiatives to loosen vehicle pursuit restrictions, establish a parental “bill of rights” and prevent the state from implementing an income tax in the future.
The three initiatives — I-2113, I-2111 and I-2081 — were delivered to the Secretary of State and will take effect 90 days after the session ends. Unlike a typical piece of legislation, initiatives are exempt from potential veto by the governor.
