Editorial: Fiscal notes serve voters with needed information

Washington’s courts have not smiled this year on Tim Eyman’s ongoing efforts to assure every tax increase imposed by the state is supported by a two-thirds majority of state legislators and fee hikes by a majority.

In May, a King County Superior Court judge ruled that Initiative 1053, passed by voters in 2010, violated a state constitution standard that a simple majority is enough to enact tax legislation. He has appealed that decision. Eyman was back in court last week, this time in Thurston County, acting as his own attorney and challenging a fiscal note appended to Initiative 1185, which would extend the provisions of I-1053 for at least two years. The note prepared by the Office of Financial Management estimates the new initiative will cost the state between $22 million and $33 million in lost toll revenues and other fees.

If the note attached to I-1053 found no fiscal impact, he argued, how could a measure much the same have such a price tag two years later?

A legitimate question with a legitimate answer based on rulings from the Attorney General’s Office regarding the imposition of fees such as tolls. And Eyman, said Superior Court Judge James Dixon, can – and has – challenged a ballot title but does not have the ability under Washington law to question a fiscal note.

Dixon’s decision, if not appealed, gives OFM a rather free hand that will merit future scrutiny.

But Eyman may be missing a bet here if he persists on this point. He could turn fiscal note findings on their head and argue that tax and fee revenues the state might lose are instead the degree of injury taxpayers and others will suffer if an initiative like I-1185 does not pass.

If he were truly conservative, he would embrace the argument that users, not taxpayers, should pay for projects like the Tacoma Narrows bridges and the Highway 520 bridge replacement under way across Lake Washington. The state is already trying to make user pay work in the case of state parks, so far without success. Fees from sales of the Discover Pass are not generating the revenues to maintain park operations at their former levels.

The Spokane Parks and Recreation Department has taken the same route in recent years, imposing a charge for youth access to city pools and upping fees for the use of city softball and baseball fields to augment its slice of city general revenues.

We support fiscal notes because voters with the best of intentions have supported proposals – notably initiatives passed in 2000 that increased teacher pay and reduced class sizes – with no information regarding the potential costs. Lawmakers have those notes before them when they vote on legislation. The same kind of information should be available to voters.

Eyman’s resistance to that kind of transparency is misguided.