What’s It Going To Be, The Platform Line Or The Sideline?

As a card-carrying Republican, I have a suggestion for the present GOP leadership in Olympia: Watch last year’s blockbuster movie, “Braveheart.”

Last week, I left Olympia reeling like a drunken sailor after discovering the Republican majority I helped elect is on a kamikaze course back into the minority.

In “Braveheart,” Scottish nobles - elite and wealthy Scots who ruled under the throne of England - stood in the way of freedom for their people. Although they purported freedom, they were forever cutting deals behind the back of commoner and rebellion leader William Wallace. They increased their own lands and power while subverting the will of the people and adding to the tyranny of King Edward.

Such is the case now, on a smaller scale, with Republican leadership in Olympia.

State Budget: When Republicans gained the majority in the House of Representatives just over two years ago, they inherited a budget of $16.2 billion. Before they left Olympia five months later, they had outspent Democrats from the prior biennium by $1.4 billion, for a total of $17.7 billion.

This year, Republicans will be lucky to keep it below $20 billion. Why? Because many lawmakers mistakenly think the spending limits passed by voters in Initiative 601 mean they can spend every dime of revenue generated up to that limit.

Technically, that’s true. But leadership missed the most important part of the message from voters: Cut spending and the size of government.

To increase state spending by more than 20 percent in three years is not “holding the line on spending,” as one legislator characterized it. And it’s even further from cutting government, as so many conservatives in the legislative ranks desire.

Term Limits: While you’ve been getting on with life after voting-in term limits four years ago, many legislators in both parties have been conniving behind closed doors to have the measure overturned. One bill being prepared in the House would change the number of two-year terms a House member can serve from three to four. That’s a total of eight years, the same as in the Senate.

This sounds reasonable. Unfortunately, the folks now hoping to change term limits are the same ones who will be termed-out in 1998, when the limits take effect. So, I say, just make sure the bill doesn’t take effect until 1999, so the original intent of the voters isn’t thwarted.

Rumor has it that any term limits changes are dead on arrival in the Senate anyway. That could be good news, except that a lawsuit being filed against the voters could put the matter into the state Supreme Court’s hands - a court that, unlike the U.S. Supreme Court, is elected by the people.

This puts the justices in a precarious place if they don’t like term limits. Will they risk the wrath of the voters and overturn? Or is the real intent here simply to get the entire matter tangled in a legal web until an injunction is issued against term limits - and we voters get the shaft?

Taxes: The current hallucinogenic talk of property tax cuts is laced with the reality that at the same time some legislators are putting something in our right pocket, they’re picking the left. While current Republican leadership may be trying to lower property taxes - along with Democrats who don’t want to be upstaged on this - another merry band of thieves is trying to raise gasoline taxes.

Sure, we need road repairs and improvements, but this can and should be done with existing revenues.

Last fall, a local road levy in Spokane went down by a two-to-one margin. Yet nobody disputes that we need road improvements. Voters were saying, “Yes, we want our roads improved, but we want you to realign your priorities and find the money within existing revenues instead of always coming back for more.” It’s no different in Olympia.

Seahawks Stadium: The fastest way out of the majority for the GOP is to even consider this issue. But the suicide squad is on the march. You would think leadership would learn from last year’s Mariners debacle. Once again, if the stadium is such a good deal, why did King County voters turn it down? Certainly Paul Allen, prospective buyer of the Seahawks, knows how to make a profit. Why won’t he make the entire investment and keep the profits for himself? Ever notice how whenever there’s a losing proposition to be had, the government is always there, ready to take it on?

There are many bright, principled legislators in the GOP ranks ready and able to dig in and fight. They proved this with their no votes on the last stadium and an overgrown state budget. But many seem disheartened at the inability of their own leadership to come up with anything more than business as usual - and not that much different from - what the people across the aisle did when they ran the show. As a friend of mine recently quipped, “With Republicans like that, who needs Democrats?”

I hope leadership will take an evening and watch “Braveheart.” It’s a movie about character and standing firm for the things you say you believe in. This may help, assuming they really believe in something. Their own party platform, for instance.

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