The following editorial appeared Sunday in the Tacoma News-Tribune.

Initiative 747 has saved Washington taxpayers $1.6 billion since it was enacted in 2001. At least on the front end.

The Tim Eyman-sponsored intiative has held increases in property tax collections to 1 percent a year in most jurisdictions, bringing genuine relief to homeowners.

But citizens have also paid dearly on the back end. Many local governments are heavily dependent on property taxes. The 1 percent limitation, well below the rate of inflation, has hit most of them hard.

They still have to give raises and pay higher prices because I-747 didn’t make inflation go away. The purchasing power of their property taxes has eroded – with a compounding effect – over the years. And these are precisely the governments that deliver such essentials as police and fire protection. The initiative has forced many governments to aggressively pare excess expenses – and that’s good. But some of the $1.6 billion in “savings” has come at the expense of basic public services.

I-747 was struck down in court last year, and that ruling is being appealed to the state Supreme Court. In the meantime, state lawmakers are contemplating whether to let the appeal run its course or re-enact the initiative on their own.

The Legislature ought to re-enact it – minus the provision that pretends inflation doesn’t exist. Hold the increases to the Implicit Price Deflator, a conservative inflation index, not that arbitary and damaging 1 percent.

Some would howl that legislators are ignoring the will of the voters, who passed I-747 by a 58 percent margin. But the public was never offered a measure strictly limiting tax collections to the inflation rate. (An older law supposedly did, but it allowed councils and commissions to override the cap.)

Eyman apparently didn’t think a higher cap was a bad idea. Just a year before he came up with I-747, he championed Initiative 722, which also succeeded overwhelmingly at the polls but was struck down in court.

I-722 capped collections at 2 percent – which is about what the Implicit Price Deflator is expected to run in coming years. So even if we want to make Eyman the arbiter of how much public safety we are allowed, a conservative inflation index is in the ballpark. It also has the advantage of acknowledging economic reality – and the need for local services healthy communities depend on.