While Washington state lawmakers will hold joint hearings next week on several initiatives to the Legislature, Democratic leaders have determined two “are so devastating to the people of Washington state that they don’t have a chance to pass the Legislature.”
“We’re not going to have a hearing on the capital gains tax repeal or the Climate Commitment Act repeal,” Senate Majority leader Andy Billig, D-Spokane, said last Thursday. “Both of those will take our state dramatically in the wrong direction.”
Billig made the comments during a Legislative Media Day at the state Capitol on Feb. 15, which offered journalists an update on the ongoing legislative session. The briefing was held two days after the deadline for most bills to pass out of their chamber of origin.
Still, the topic that received the most discussion from the majority and minority leaders in the Senate are proposals that legislators are unlikely to act on.
The Legislature will hold joint hearings next Wednesday on three proposals — the prohibition of a state income tax, a parental bill of rights and reforming police pursuit requirements. Fiscal notes for each of the proposals show the initiatives would have minimal to no impact on the state’s budget.
Ahead of the hearings, supporters of the initiatives will again rally on the steps of the state Capitol on Friday at noon.
According to Billig, repealing either the state’s capital gains tax or the Climate Commitment Act (CCA) “would be such a big step back.”
The CCA, Billig said, “is now embedded. For better or for worse, it is embedded in the transportation budget.” If the legislation is repealed, either by legislators during the session or by voters this fall, a majority of the state’s transportation budget would need to be put on hold as lawmakers look to account for the reduction in funding.
“(I) continue to be concerned about Initiative 2117 concerning the Climate Commitment Act and its deep and devastating potential impacts for our transportation budget,” Sen. Marko Liias, D-Edmonds, said, adding a third of the projects in the Move Ahead Washington transportation plan are funded through the CCA.
Likewise, a fiscal note prepared by the Office of Fiscal Management estimated a repeal of the capital gains tax would result in a $5.66 billion reduction in education funding through 2029.
“And we just can’t sustain that as a state,” Billig said. “We have to go the other direction. We need to move forward on child care and K-12 education.”
According to Billig, legislators knew the funding from the state’s capital gains program would be volatile, and designed it with protections in place.
“We built in a shock absorber on the capital gains so that there’s a certain base amount that goes to the operating budget … and then everything else above that goes to school construction, which is one-time funding, which is really appropriate,” he said.
For Senate Minority Leader John Braun, R-Centralia, though, Jeff Bezos’s move from Washington to Miami, which could save him around $600 million in capital gains taxes from the sale of Amazon stock, is a sign that the state can’t accurately project the revenue from the new tax.
“The idea that it’s not going to happen more is just baseless,” Braun said. “It’s going to happen more. It’s a volatile tax.”
The 7% tax, passed by the Legislature in 2021, applies to earnings on bonds and stocks over $250,000 a year. While the state estimates about 3,300 Washingtonians will directly pay, Braun argued the costs will ultimately be passed on.
“So I just think that we need to find better, more innovative ways to solve these problems that don’t weigh so heavily on individual taxpayers and their budgets,” Braun said.
An update on the current session
With a little more than two weeks left in the session, lawmakers highlighted several bills that are moving forward. Speaker of the House Laurie Jinkins, D-Tacoma, noted the bipartisan support for many of the bills that advanced out of the house. Of the 270 bills that advanced, 80% received wide bipartisan support, with half unanimously passing the House of Representatives.
“We’re very optimistic and positive in terms of where Washington is moving, how we’re moving,” Jinkins said. “And I think lots of national data points that rank us as the best place to work, the best economy in the nation, this place with the safest schools in the nation. All kinds of stuff like that is really great for Washington. We know we’ve got work to do, so I’m working on that.”
The last bill the House of Representatives passed before cutoff — which caps yearly rent increases to 7% — is “very important to our caucus,” Jinkins said.
“For those of us who own homes, we have predictability for 30 years, how much we will be paying to stay in our homes, and we can plan for that, hopefully,” Jinkins said. “Renters do not have that luxury, and over 35% of Washingtonians are renters.”
As the proposal moves to the Senate, Braun said the move could stifle new construction as the state looks to develop new housing units.
“When you add rent control, we’re going to have a harder time getting folks to invest in our great state.”
The Senate has also passed a pair of bills aimed at addressing the state’s opioid epidemic. Senate Bill 5906 would launch a public awareness campaign on the dangers of methamphetamine and opioids, which would also provide information on addiction, treatment programs and state laws that offer immunity to those who seek assistance in overdose cases.
“The tribes in Washington state have been more severely affected by the fentanyl crisis, and they have really led the way in designing approaches in all of these areas,” Jinkins said. “And so what we’re trying to do is kind of build on some of the lessons we’ve learned from tribes in the bills that we have passed.”
Senate Bill 6099 would establish a Tribal Opioid Prevention and Treatment Account, which would be funded through money from a national opioid settlement.
“I think we have work to do in messaging, education and treatment. I wholeheartedly agree that our Tribal friends and neighbors are leading the way in many parts of our state with building out treatment facilities,” Braun said. “So we’ve passed a bill that provides additional funding for them that allows them to build out and run those facilities.”
Billig said public safety continues to be a priority, and referenced the state’s new regional law enforcement training centers, which aim to address a shortage of police officers by allowing training closer to an applicant’s community, reducing a barrier to the profession.
“So we’ve opened a training facility in Vancouver and Pasco and are also looking for one in the North Sound area,” Billig said. “And that makes a difference.”
Election safety
Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said in the past couple of years, the state has “changed the way we’ve informed people about the election.”
“We were really good at telling you all ‘don’t forget to vote,’” Hobbs said. “What we did a very bad job of is telling you what happens to your ballot.”
Now, Hobbs said, the state is focused on informing voters on the process that takes place after a ballot is submitted, including the security measures that seek to insure the votes of legal, registered voters are counted.
“We’ve taken elections for granted,” Hobbs said. “I believe that had more people known about the election process, maybe perhaps Jan. 6 wouldn’t have happened. Because if you get all of this misinformation, you have nothing to base it off of, you tend to believe this information that’s coming at you.”
Following the November election, at least six counties — King, Pierce, Skagit, Thurston and Snohomish — received envelopes with suspicious powders.
“Each county is going to do something different,” Hobbs said. “But if you have your security person kind of off to the side, where maybe they can be easily called in … The problem is the intimidation level has really gone up.”
Hobbs said other counties will have increased security presence.
“I believe that if we can tell people about the voting process, it is helpful,” Hobbs said, “and even be honest with the fact that we have caught situations where a ballot shows up, and this person is deceased.”
While the situation is rare, Hobbs said it most frequently occurs with spouses voting for a loved one who has passed away. In another instance, a college student from Whatcom County voted both in Colorado and in Washington.
“The defense was — ‘I voted for the federal races in Colorado, but I voted for the local races in Whatcom County,’” Hobbs said. “You can’t do that. Don’t do that. But that was caught.”
