Unless the state House can find some more money, the Senate’s (unpopular with voters) sales tax proposal may carry the day as the two chambers try to reconcile their budgets in the next 24 hours and, more likely, in a special session.
The Senate plan is more credible. First of all, the House passed a Read more…
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Spokane’s liberal rep, Rep. Timm Ormsby (D-3) was voted “Legislator of the Year” on a ballot of Democratic House legislative aides.
Seattle Rep. Sharon Nelson (D-34) won the honors last year. And indeed, she had a big session getting payday lending regulations passed.
Rep. Ormsby’s big bill this session? The hazardous substance tax we’ve been obsessing over.
1. Remember the uproar over the surveillance cameras when former Mayor Greg Nickels proposed installing them in four Seattle parks?
Update: City council staff say the cameras—which cost the city just over $400,000 to install—have actually been inactive, the result of budget shortfalls that caused the council to allocate camera funding to other programs.
In theory, police staff in the West Precinct could still use the cameras in Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill (the rest are inoperational), but no one has watched or monitored the cameras for over a year and a half, sources say.
2. During a public forum at Seattle University last night, proponents and opponents of City Council member Tim Burgess’ proposal to crack down on aggressive panhandling made the case for and against the measure. (The legislation—which the Defend Association Racial Disparity Project, says doesn’t address the most common complaints people have made about aggressive panhandlers, and that most of the complaints would be addressed by existing law—would prohibit soliciting from people using ATMs and parking meters; using abusive language while asking for money; pursuing a person who has refused to give money; and offering or providing unsolicited services without consent.)
Jon Scholes, policy director at the Downtown Seattle Association, and Burgess argued that the legislation is needed to make downtown feel safe again for residents and visitors. “Our members and residents have had encounters with people who will follow them, people who will get in their face … people who are soliciting for organizations as well as people who are soliciting for their own benefit. So it’s a wide area of concern,” Scholes said.
Tim Harris, executive director of the homeless newspaper Real Change, argued that the people Scholes and Burgess wanted to protect were primarily rich condo owners. “These [panhandlers] are people who are interfering visibly with our cathedral of consumption downtown,” Harris said. “This isn’t about balancing order versus liberty. This is about [protecting] the comfort zones of the affluent up against the dirt poor in a time of radical inequality. … If you’re rich living downtown, no matter how many moats you have, [being asked for money] is going to be unsettling.”
He said-She saids aren’t my favorite, but I’m pretty mesmerized by this one.
As we reported over the weekend, environmental advocates in Olympia are at odds with the Senate over the fate of the renewable energy tax incentive—one that’s worth about $7.8 million to the state.
The Senate rolled back the incentive so alternative energy projects only get the deal (a sales tax exemption) for power sold in Washington state. (The House, as we noted in today’s Morning Fizz, included the full exemption for all renewable projects in its budget.)
Senate Democrats spokesman Jeff Reading explained the Senate Democrats’ seemingly anti-Green position:
“The policy question would be ‘Why should Washington taxpayers be making up the difference on tax receipts lost to project developers who will be selling their power to Californians?’ And the policy answer is ‘Washington tax breaks should help Washingtonians, not Californians.’
The intent of [our vote] is to limit the tax break to projects produced by Washington utilities or under contract to sell the power to Washington utilities—in other words, provide the tax incentives only for power sold to Washington rate payers.”
Jessica Finn Coven, policy specialist with environmental non-profit Climate Solutions doesn’t buy it:
At last night’s drawn-out meeting of the Bellevue City Council, at which the council voted 4-3 to support the southern portion of freshman council member Kevin Wallace’s so-called “Vision Line”: The three council members in the minority accused the four-member majority of violating the state’s Open Public Meetings Act by negotiating the language of the council’s letter to Sound Transit in private meetings by phone and email. (The majority supports running the southern segment of Bellevue light rail to the east of Sound Transit’s preferred alignment, bypassing a popular park-and-ride and avoiding the residential and job center of downtown Bellevue; the minority supports Sound Transit’s alignment through the park-and-ride and downtown).
The discussions got pretty complicated (and heated), but essentially, the accusations boiled down to this: By drafting a letter to Sound Transit over phone and emails without input from the other three council members, the four-member majority, which constitutes a quorum of the city council, was essentially doing city business in private, which the public records act forbids.
Council member Claudia Balducci, who represents Bellevue on the Sound Transit board, said she felt “ambushed” by her colleagues’ decision to bring the letter expressing the council’s preferred alignment, which she hadn’t seen before last night, to an immediate vote. “We can change our minds as a council … but we need to start being more transparent about what we’re doing,” Balducci said. “We owe that to the people that we represent and I just don’t think we’re living up to that right now … with five letters [expressing a preferred alignment] in two days. And the last one’s being developed at 5:30 pm,” just prior to the council meeting. Read more…
The NationalJournal.com interviews National Republican Senate Committee Chair Sen. John Cornyn today (and Dino Rossi … and with Susan Hutchison) about GOP plans to take on Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA).
The most curious line in the story, Rossi (who Cornyn hypes as a possibility against Murray) floats the idea of running for Governor again.
Yesterday, we wrote about a “deal” on the proposed hazardous substance tax, a plan environmental lobbyists are pushing to increase the existing voter-approved tax on toxic materials, like petroleum, that contribute to water pollution.
Initially, environmentalists pitched tripling the tax—it hadn’t been raised since 1988—from .7 to 2 percent for $225 million. Their current proposal (after the oil industry knocked down tripling the tax) is to increase the tax by .85 percent to 1.5 for $100 million as laid out in an amendment proposed by Rep. Timm Ormsby (D-3) and supported Rep. Larry Springer (D-45), the Finance Committee member who initially gutted the proposal. The Finance Committee sent the bill to the floor.
The Senate Ways & Means Committee is reportedly looking at the issue today and Sen. Ed Murray (D-43), caucus chair and ways & means member, says simply: “I support whatever level I can get votes for to keep it moving.”
Here’s the follow-up. Oil industry spokesperson Dave Fisher tells PubliCola there is no deal. Fisher says his coalition “strongly opposes the measure.”
Fisher sticks by the speaking points he’s been repeating all session, arguing that the measure will drive up prices at the pump. (Eric De Place at the green think tank Sightline says that doesn’t jibe with data showing everyday gas price fluctuations of .6 to .9 cents outweighing the .2 cents impact of the tax.)
Fisher also argues that the industry will have to lay off workers to deal with the tax, a point that contradicts his concern about passing the tax off to customers at the pump. Sorry for the editorializing, but, right?
The B segment of East Link. The B7 alignment is off to the east.
At what one observer described as a “circus” of a meeting last night, the Bellevue City Council moved one step closer to endorsing a light-rail line through Bellevue that is opposed by transit advocates because it avoids a heavily used park-and-ride and the city’s major job and residential centers.
After considering five separate letters to Sound Transit, the council voted 4-3 in favor of a South Bellevue light-rail alignment that avoids the South Bellevue park-and-ride, losing thousands of riders a day, according to Sound Transit’s estimate.
The alignment, known as “B7,” is part of freshman Bellevue council member Kevin Wallace’s so-called “Vision Line,” which also avoids downtown Bellevue, giving it the lowest overall ridership, by Sound Transit’s estimates, of any Bellevue rail alternative. Read more…
At the beginning of this year’s legislative session, environmental advocacy groups like the Washington Environmental Council and Washington Conservation Voters had high hopes for an idea: Triple the hazardous substance tax (passed by voters in 1988 to tax gunk like petroleum to pay for stormwater cleanup) and entice legislators—facing a $2.8 billion shortfall—by saying the money could go to the general fund for a few years before getting earmarked back to stormwater clean up.
Environmentalists also pointed out that the tax—at .7 percent—hadn’t been raised since voters approved it 22 years ago.
The idea got off to a good start: House Speaker Frank Chopp (D-43) said he was all for it and Gov. Chris Gregoire put it in her budget.
However, by February, the idea wasn’t included in the Senate or House budget, and a separate watered-down version passed out of the House Ways and Means Committee. (The original version—a 2 percent tax—raised $225 million a year. The revised version—a .4 percent increase over four years—would raise about $45 million.)
Additionally, thanks pressure from the oil industry, petroleum exports would not be taxed. The oil industry argued that exports do not pollute stormwater here in Washington State.
However, environmental lobbyists struck back this week, they say. “We let legislators know we weren’t happy with what they had done,” WCV lobbyist Cliff Traisman says. “At some point legislators have to look the oil industry in the eye and say they are going to tax the number one contributor to the number one water pollution problem in our state.”
This morning in King County Council chambers, county executive Dow Constantine proposed what he described as the county’s first-ever strategic plan, which would require the county to go to voters for any increase in annual spending beyond the rate of inflation, including in good economic times, when extra revenues would go into a rainy-day fund. Because the county’s cost of doing business increases between 5 and 6 percent a year, Constantine said, merely maintaining county services will require voters to approve tax increases.
Greg Nickels isn’t the only politician sporting a beard these days. State Sen. Ed Murray has a new look this session too…
… Or an old look.
Says Murray: “I just grew mine back. I can show you pictures of me in my 20s with my red beard.”
Onto more significant matters. Murray—one of the Senate Democratic leaders who’s pushing the “millionaires’ tax” (a plan to ask voters to approve a 4.5 percent income tax on high-income earners)—says this year’s legislative session in Olympia, slated to end this Thursday, will have to go into special session for the plan (also being pushed by Senate Majority Leader Sen. Lisa Brown) to go forward.
