My apologies for forgetting this yesterday. Had a meeting w/Frau Doktor and was harried in my postings.
Anyway…
Last November, a majority of Washington State Citizens voted for a Citizen’s Initiative to make it so that it would take a supermajority of State House and Senate votes in order to pass a tax increase.
The Summer of 2007 saw pro-tax groups and the SEIU filed an emergency motion with the state Supreme Court to try and keep the Citizen’s Initiative, I-960, off the November ballot.
Luckily for the Citizenry, the court refused to put a wall in front of democracy, and let the voters make their choice.
And choose we did. But that wasn’t good enough for the Democrats in the Senate. They’re filing a lawsuit to get it struck down.
Senate Democrats have laid the groundwork for a lawsuit against a tax-limiting initiative, with the majority leader considering the unusual step of filing her own lawsuit in hopes of making it easier for lawmakers to raise taxes.
Friday’s legal maneuver, coming in the 2008 session’s waning days, is an unusually strong sign that lawmakers have grown tired of initiative promoter Tim Eyman’s forays into limiting the Legislature’s power.
The groundwork was laid when the Senate began debate on a proposed $10 million liquor increase that would pay for drunken driving enforcement and substance abuse treatment.
The bill would have required approval from two-thirds of the Senate, because of last year’s Initiative 960, an Eyman-sponsored measure that reaffirmed higher vote thresholds for tax hikes.
Eyman opponents, including legislators, believe I-960 is illegal because it conflicts with the state constitution’s provision that the Legislature can pass bills with a simple majority. The initiative shouldn’t be allowed to alter that requirement, the argument goes, because it wasn’t a constitutional amendment.
Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, asked Lt. Gov. Brad Owen, the Senate’s presiding officer, to rule I-960 unconstitutional for the purposes of the pending tax vote.
“A two-thirds requirement to pass certain types of bills, in my opinion, is antidemocratic and violates the Washington constitution,” Brown said. “The constitution is difficult to change, and it should be. It should remain superior to the statutes we pass.”
Owen, himself a Democrat and former state senator, returned after a huddle with lawyers and said it was up to the courts to decide the constitutionality of I-960. He also ruled that the proposed tax increase did meet the thresholds in I-960, and would require a two-thirds vote.
The tax increase then got a simple majority vote of 25-21, but was defeated because supporters couldn’t get the 33 votes needed to pass it under I-960.
First of all, I’d like to point out that Tim Eyman is a self-aggrandizing ass. Always one to take up the spotlight, he once held a press conference dressed as Darth Vader.
However, unlike the statement made by Rachel LaCorte of the AP, the lawmakers have not “grown tired of initiative promoter Tim Eyman’s forays into limiting the Legislature’s power”, the lawmakers have grown tired of the citizenry telling them to back off.
Eyman may be responsible for the writing and promotion of I-960, but the voters signed onto it so as to get it put on the ballot and then said yes to make it law because the majority feel that they are already paying enough taxes.
Washington State Citizens have been fighting to hold back the tax pen of the government since 1993, when the citizenry passed a similar bill called I-601. These same lawmakers have either suspended it by tacking “Emergency Clauses” onto non-emergency bills or just simply ignored its writ in entirety and dealt with the fallout later.
The suit will again go all the way to the state Supreme Court. And sadly, I believe it will be struck down. Our court is packed with pro-taxing power judges who party-hearty with the legislators on the left side of the Legislature.
I am hoping that Eyman and his backers will be able to publicize the hell out of it though, to show the citizens that their current elected officials holding a Democrat-majority in both houses of the state Legislature do not care what the citizen’s opinion is, they’re going to tax them more, and more, and more.
