Jim Camden

OLYMPIA – Senate Democrats may offer voters a choice: a higher sales tax or an income tax on people making more than $200,000 a year. With very short notice, the Senate Ways and Means Committee held a hearing Thursday on a voter-approved income tax, the latest plan from Democrats to close a projected $2.8 billion budget gap with a balance of program cuts and higher taxes.

Senate Democrats may offer voters a choice of which tax they like better: a higher sales tax or an income tax on people making more than $200,000 a year.

OLYMPIA – The Legislature came closer to stepping between two feuding hospital organizations in Spokane by changing laws that govern what happens when the board of a nonprofit corporation deadlocks. House Bill 3046 gives a Superior Court judge more latitude in solving an impasse on any nonprofit board. Under current law, the judge essentially is limited to dissolving the corporation.

OLYMPIA – A new tax proposal would place unfair burdens on a wide range of residents, from janitors to plastic surgeons and cigar sellers to candy makers, opponents of the plan said Tuesday. It would also raise money for schools, colleges, the poor and the sick, supporters of the proposal said.

OLYMPIA – Before Dennis O’Shea took his own life, he placed a box on the seat of his car with a note asking whoever found his body to deliver the documents inside to his friend and former colleague Steve Tucker. About two weeks earlier, the petition-signing phase for Initiative 985 had concluded and nearly 300,000 signatures were turned in for the proposal to open carpool lanes and synchronize traffic. O’Shea – a former Spokane County deputy prosecutor-turned-professional signature-gatherer – already had flagged about 40 names among those gathered to qualify I-985 for the 2008 ballot that he suspected were phony. State and local elections officials had been alerted and were investigating possible forgeries.

OLYMPIA – With the bare minimum votes needed and debate over taxes yet to come, Senate Democrats passed a general fund budget Saturday designed to close the state’s $2.8 billion budget gap. Even without a firm decision on which taxes to add or alter to raise more than $900 million in extra revenue, the combination of programs cut, reserves tapped and federal funds corralled gave almost everyone in the chamber something to dislike.

OLYMPIA – Three weeks of debate over suspending Initiative 960 can be distilled to this: If you change an initiative, you are crushing the will of the people. Not if it’s something that really needs doing, in which case you are exercising the leadership the people elected you to show. No it’s not. Yes it is. No. Enough already, let’s vote because we all know this sucker’s going to pass, and the people can express their will in the fall elections. Yeah, just you wait. No, you wait.

OLYMPIA – Before Dennis O’Shea took his own life, he placed a box on the seat of his car with a note asking whoever found his body to deliver the documents inside to his friend and former colleague, Steve Tucker. About two weeks earlier, the petition-signing phase for Initiative 985 had concluded and nearly 300,000 signatures were turned in for the proposal to open carpool lanes and synchronize traffic. O’Shea – a former Spokane County deputy prosecutor-turned-professional signature-gatherer – already had flagged about 40 names among those gathered to qualify I-985 for the 2008 ballot that he suspected were phony. State and local elections officials had been alerted and were investigating possible forgeries.

OLYMPIA – There was no drama, but plenty of theatrics, as Gov. Chris Gregoire signed a bill Wednesday making it easier for the Legislature to raise taxes. Gregoire signed a 16-month suspension of some provisions of Initiative 960 as its prime sponsor Tim Eyman looked on, at one point holding his nose and pointing one thumb down.

Washington's Legislature must reconcile differing proposals regarding cuts and taxes. Note: Amounts may not add exactly because of smaller additions and subtractions.

OLYMPIA – With just over two weeks remaining in the session, Democrats in both houses of the Washington Legislature released plans Tuesday to cut programs and raise taxes to fill a $2.8 billion hole in the state budget. While both expect some federal help on things like rising health care costs, and call for a “balanced approach” to the state’s budget woes, they strike that balance differently. They also differ significantly with Gov. Chris Gregoire’s latest budget, released last week.

Senate Democrats unveiled a budget proposal that calls for a three-tenths of 1 cent sales tax hike for the next three years, an extra $1 per pack for cigarettes and the elimination of a string of tax exemptions.

OLYMPIA – For the third time in three weeks, the state Senate voted to suspend a state law that requires a two-thirds majority for any tax increase. The arguments from Republicans were the same: Amending a law passed by voters thwarts the will of the people and feeds into the public’s cynicism that Olympia doesn’t listen to them.

OLYMPIA – Leaders of the Senate Transportation Committee added their voices Monday to the chorus opposing a tax increase that could add 3 cents to a gallon of gasoline. A proposal called the “Clean Water Act of 2010,” which would nearly triple the Model Toxics Control Act first imposed by voters in 1988, is being requested by Gov. Chris Gregoire and co-sponsored by 23 Senate Democrats. But instead of dedicating all the money collected to pollution control, two-thirds would be sent to the general fund for the next year in an attempt to help fill a projected $2.8 billion gap between expected revenues and expenses. The amount shifted to the general fund would gradually decline to zero by 2015.

OLYMPIA — The Washington state Senate voted for the third time to suspend some requirements of Initative 960, including the two-thirds supermajority needed to raise taxes.

OLYMPIA – The Legislature is moving toward a fight over taxes that will ultimately come down to which ones to raise. Although Republicans and some Democrats will say “none,” odds are the debate will be between bumping one big tax, like the sales tax, or finding small increases or new taxes on a bunch of things.

OLYMPIA – The fund that covers state workers’ health care is strapped for cash because the state cut its premium payments by hundreds of millions of dollars, using that money for other things while the insurance fund spent down a large surplus. But the Health Care Authority’s surplus disappeared faster than state officials expected. At the end of 2009, the balance sheet of the authority’s Public Employees Benefit Board fund showed “stunning declines in assets, capital and surplus, net income and cash provided by operations,” Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler warned in a letter to Gov. Chris Gregoire.

OLYMPIA – The fund that covers state workers’ health care is strapped for cash because the state cut its premium payments by hundreds of millions of dollars, using that money for other things while the insurance fund spent down a large surplus.

OLYMPIA – Washington state should not use federal stimulus money to fill its budget gap, a Republican congresswoman said this week. Instead, it should make tough choices to cut or restructure government programs. Using stimulus money for ongoing programs is “kicking the ball down the road,” U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers said. “The federal government is broke. … Don’t continue to borrow money we don’t have.”

OLYMPIA – Debate over the need for supermajorities to raise taxes stretched into its second night Wednesday in the House of Representatives and invoked everything from the Gospel to the law of the jungle. There were warnings about taking away the voice of the people, who passed the initiative by a 51 percent majority in 2007, and warnings about gutting programs that people need to educate their children or build their roads.