Daily Archives: November 1, 2024

Direct democracy returns to Washington state

John Spellman vacated the Washington governor’s mansion, a Georgian-style structure on state Capitol grounds in Olympia, in early 1985. Since then, no Republican has gone to the residence of the Evergreen State’s chief executive except to visit. GOP legislators occasionally grouse about the stinginess of invitations.Democrats have owned the chief executive office for going on 40 years, the longest GOP shutout of any state. Even Massachusetts, Illinois, Rhode Island, and Hawaii have had Republican governors in that time. Former elected King County Sheriff Dave Reichert, also a former congressman, has only an outside chance of upsetting state Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s bid to move up.And yet, if voters pass a quartet of referendums, it almost won’t matter who controls the governor’s mansion. Gov. Jay Inslee (D-WA) has ruled the state for three terms. These initiatives threaten to undercut his legacy and pull the rug out from under Democratic state House Speaker Laurie Jinkins while they’re at it.The initiatives are I-2066, which would head off a de facto natural gas ban in new construction; I-2117, which would eliminate the cap-and-trade carbon tax on fuel and undercut a series of green infrastructure projects; I-2019, which would eliminate the state’s new capital gains tax; and I-2124, which would let workers opt out of a payroll tax for the state’s actuarily questionable long-term care insurance plan that Jinkins spearheaded.Inslee is the most concerned about the carbon tax, his signature achievement, though he has also been outspoken in his opposition to natural gas. “This defective, deceptive, dangerous initiative only guarantees one thing, and that’s more pollution,” Inslee warned of I-2117 at a July press conference.The retiring governor has proposed tax credits of about $200 annually for middle-class and poor Washingtonians to take some of the sting out of the law. It currently costs drivers about 43 cents per gallon at the pump, with higher prices coming next year, on top of the state’s 52 cents per gallon gas tax.Inslee launched a “No on 2017 Road Trip” in October. He has been holding rallies around the state and knocking on doors to try to get Washingtonians to vote against it.Ben Tindall, executive director of the Washington advocacy group Save Family Farming, argues that voters should not buy that sales pitch.“The Climate Commitment Act has cost Washingtonians over $2.2 billion in the past year alone,” he told the Washington Examiner via email. The estimated cost to the farming community was in the “hundreds of millions of dollars since the carbon pricing scheme went into effect in 2023.”Tindall described the current climate regime as a “state-orchestrated cash grab.” He complained that the state Department of Ecology “continues to ignore the farm-fuel exemption that agriculture was granted in the statute.”Ferndale resident Gary Dyck isn’t so pointed in his criticism and said he thinks some of the things that the government is pursuing might be at least well intentioned. At the same time, he’s likely to vote for I-2117.Dyck complained about the lack of containment of Washington wildfires, for instance, despite increased funds to reduce such threats. He is all for salmon restoration efforts that make sense but is watching legally mandated culverts being installed in places “that weren’t fish-friendly in the first place.”He also said he doesn’t think that some of the more high-tech infrastructure improvements have been made truly inclusive.“As a person who owns a pickup, I see all these EV charging stations going in, but no infrastructure has been put in place for someone who tows,” he said.Machine politics vs. direct democracyThat climate regime might fall in November, or it might not, and the same is true for all of the other initiatives. Early polling had Washington voters favoring the measures. Then the state’s well-oiled Democratic machine went to work.Inslee, Ferguson, and other elected Democrats and officially nonpartisan progressives in government and media have been tearing the initiatives down using a two-part strategy. The first part is warnings of the great harm that repeal would do to various government programs, the environment, and your elderly grandma.To that end, legislators rejiggered the law on initiatives to get what supporters charge is prejudicial ballot language added. For instance, in the matter of the long-term care tax, voters have this warning to climb over: “This measure would decrease funding for Washington’s public insurance program providing long-term care benefits and services. Should this measure be enacted into law?”The second part might be called the deplorablization of Washington politics by smearing those people who support the initiatives. Yakima Mayor Janice Deccio field-tested this strategy when she called the police last Labor Day to report “some far-right-wing petitioners” at the local Walmart.