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OLYMPIA — Initiative 1098, which would place an income tax on individuals who make more than $200,000 a year, and couples who make more than $400,000, has enough valid signatures to make the ballot.
This despite having about 350 signatures pulled out because the person who gathered them is suspected of fraud.
The state Elections Office said it checked 11,876 signatures and 10,090 were good. The rest were people who weren’t registered, or the signature on the sheet didn’t match the one on file, or they were duplicates. That’s a validation rate that’s fairly normal for petition drives.
The campaign turned in about 385,000 signatures, and needed less than 242,000 good ones.
So I-1098 becomes the third of six initiatives that to go from almost certain to for sure. I-1100, the first of two proposals to get the state out of the liquor business, qualified first. I-1082, which would add private insurance to the mix for workers compensation coverage in Washington, qualified on Tuesday.
Jim Camden is a veteran political reporter for The Spokesman-Review.
Jonathan Brunt covers Spokane City Hall for The Spokesman-Review.
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jvaughn50 on July 16 at 10:43 a.m.
I wrote three tongue and cheek initiatives that in spite of the initial humor have a serious message. My most popular was Initiative 1069 to change the state seal to a tapeworm dressed in a three piece suit attached the rectum of the tax payer. Around the vignette the words, “ Committed to Sucking the Life Blood Out of Each and Every Tax Payer.”
My second initiative is a rebuttal to Bill Gates Sr. Initiative 1098. Ask yourself the following questions before you vote yes for Initiative 1098.
1. Why would Bill Gates Sr. sponsor an initiative that would tax the rich?
2. Does it have anything to do with the fact the legislature is preparing to give Microsoft a $100 million tax break and amnesty for $1 BILLION in tax evasion?
3. After two years do you believe that the legislature would change the law to tax everyone?
4. After reading section 1. below, do you believe our state is any different than Connecticut?
Panhandling and Pick Pocket Tax For State Legislatures In Lieu of a State Income Tax
Sec. 1. Whereas Initiative 960 was approved by the voters to prevent the following:
In 1991, Connecticut was facing a revenue shortfall of about $2.7 Billion. Using that crisis, Connecticut’s governor pushed hard for a state income tax. The bill eventually passed. At the signing ceremony, Governor Lowell Weicker sounded optimistic. “When I sign this budget, Connecticut will be closing the book on its past and it’ll be facing toward the future.”
17 years later, we have a good idea of what that future looks like: The income tax that was passed to close a $2.7 Billion deficit has been raised several times and now brings in over $7.5 billion a year. Add in the $350 million a year that the state currently receives from Indian Casinos, and Connecticut now collects nearly $8 billion more in revenue than it did in 1991.
Despite all of those extra billions, Connecticut is still facing massive deficits $1.2 Billion this year and another $6 to $8 Billion over the next two years. How could this happen? In Connecticut’s case, out-of-control spending was the culprit. The point is that government knows how to get bigger. Try as they might to slim down, the natural order of things will always take over and ensure they grow larger than anyone thought possible. The only way to stop that, or at least slow it down, is by taking away their source of food: money and power. For this very reason the voters of Washington State passed Initiative 960 in an attempt to remove the tapeworm that is attached to the lower intestine of the taxpayers.