Rejection of I-1366 shifts focus to K-12 funding
The Washington state Supreme Court left little doubt last week that Tim Eyman’s misguided tax-crusade misused the initiative process. The court found unanimously that Initiative 1366 was unconstitutional in the way it addressed multiple subjects.
The measure would have cut the state sales tax by more than $8 billion through 2021 if legislators did not meet Eyman’s demand that they put a constitutional amendment on the ballot to make tax increases even harder to pass.
I-1366 was at its core a coercion or blackmail scheme. It sought a two-thirds supermajority vote for passage of tax increases by the Legislature. The threatened tax cut was the vengeance Eyman sought to take out of the state’s hide if the Legislature didn’t do his bidding.
The court’s decision, which had no dissenters, upheld a lower court’s ruling that I-1366 was not legal. Chief Justice Barbara Madsen wrote the majority opinion signed by five other justices, and Justice Stephen Gonzalez wrote a concurring opinion joined by two others that rejected I-1366 on grounds it was not a permissible way to amend the state Constitution.
Madsen quoted the trial court judge’s finding about the problem caused by having multiple subjects in a measure, a trick known as logrolling: " ‘It is impossible to determine how many people voted for this initiative because they desired adoption of the constitutional amendment at its heart and how many voted for it because they desired the short-term relief of the immediate reduction in the sales tax.’ "
Gonzalez wrote: “The initiative ignores the constitutionally required first step — the proposal of a constitutional amendment in either house … Initiatives are not the proper vehicle to amend the constitution.”
The ruling won’t quiet Eyman’s supporters in the Legislature who want the constitutional amendment; many cite the half-dozen votes by the electorate in favor of the two-thirds supermajority. Unfortunately, such a proposal is wrong-headed in the way it ties the Legislature’s hands, though it’s understandable that some people find it appealing.
The fact is that the tax burden in our state has fallen from two decades ago when measured against state personal income, and Washington is now in the bottom third of states for tax burden.
What are more legitimate and pressing issues are how K-12 schools are funded, how taxes are collected and who pays the taxes.
Genuine reforms that provided the state with enough revenue to meet the Supreme Court’s orders on K-12 funding in the McCleary case are what’s needed. And so are reforms that provides better balance in the tax burden.
Eyman’s proposal would oddly enough make it harder to make the system fairer, because it would let a super-minority of 17 senators or 33 representatives veto any tax system changes.
Now that our campaign season is under way, we look forward to hearing what candidates for legislative seats and governor think is a smart way to fix these problems.
This story was originally published May 28, 2016 at 5:25 PM with the headline "Rejection of I-1366 shifts focus to K-12 funding."