April 25, 2005 in Opinion

I-601 has no role in the real world

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Initiative 601 is dead, for now. Gov. Chris Gregoire signed a bill on Monday that allowed for taxes to be raised by a majority vote for the next two years. It also changed the formula that dictated how much state spending could be increased.

The changes have sparked an outcry, but the truth is that budget writers from both parties never did live up to the spirit of the measure, which was adopted 12 years ago by voters. Instead, they used accounting tricks each year to skirt its limitations.

Critics say the Legislature ignored the will of the people by changing the initiative. But many of those same critics were not troubled when the Legislature failed to fund two voter-approved school measures – Initiatives 728 and 732. In those instances, it was OK to be pragmatic.

Pragmatism should be the guiding principle of budgeting, and I-601 wasn’t realistic. It pegged spending increases to population gains and inflation. But the state’s biggest costs are related to health care and education, which have risen much faster than the general inflation rate.

Plus, I-601 couldn’t predict federal budget cuts and new mandates, some of which are not fully funded (e.g., school accountability). The new barometer for state spending increases will be personal income growth, which averaged 5 percent a year over the past decade.

I-601 was also biased against tax increases, because it required a two-thirds majority to pass them. Meanwhile, tax cuts only had to pass by one vote. This shifted inordinate power to legislative minorities.

The upshot was that while budget writers could tap expert opinions to formulate a thoughtful budget based on the state’s priorities, their efforts were ultimately squeezed by the indiscriminate I-601 straitjacket.

Initiatives are said to reflect citizens’ wishes, but how can expensive initiatives to raise teacher pay and shrink class sizes be squared with a desire to harness taxing and spending? The fact is, citizens have contradictory desires, and most of them are not as well-informed as their representatives.

In a recent CBS News poll, 68 percent of respondents could not name a single thing Congress had done this year (Terri Schiavo, anyone?). Numbers wouldn’t likely be any more encouraging on the state level.

Politicians receive a lot of criticism, much of it deserved, but they are better informed and better positioned to make public policy decisions.

Tax hikes and spending increases are not always the best answer, and if lawmakers go too far, citizens still have recourse at the ballot box to remove them.

I-601 was just another way of saying we don’t trust our form of government, so we’ll put it on permanent probation. The measure never worked, because it was a simplistic response to a complicated process.

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