Sue Lani Madsen: Legislature could open dialogue on initiatives

Superficial talking points are conversation stoppers, and Democratic leaders are stifling substantive political conversation early on the six initiatives headed to the November ballot. It doesn’t have to be this way if the Legislature follows the state Constitution making initiatives take “precedence over all other measures in the legislature.”

In case you’ve missed the backstory, in 2023 a group called Let’s Go Washington crafted six initiatives to the Legislature. Each addresses different areas of concern. Each challenges actions taken by recent Democrat-controlled Legislatures and all six have been certified by the secretary of state as having met the criteria for valid signatures.

Let’s Go Washington has given each initiative a talking-point-style nickname defining the intent. Democratic talking points so far are focused on style, not substance.

Speaker of the House Laurie Jinkins, D-Tacoma, professed in the legislative session preview on Jan. 4 to be “saddened” when she thinks about these six initiatives. Democrat talking points are already being pushed by Jinkins and other legislative leaders, starting with painting Brian Heywood, the primary financial backer of Let’s Go Washington, as just a rich guy buying an election to reduce his taxes.

I-2109 Repeal the Capital Gains Tax is pretty self-explanatory. Heywood said he invested about $6 million into the initiative effort. “I would need to make a hundred million dollars to break even at the current capital gains tax rate. If someone thinks that’s my motivation, they don’t understand economics,” he said during a phone interview.

At a recent political gathering Heywood said that he’s done, and the effort to push the initiatives through November will rely on donations from a broad base of supporters. Heywood, whose net worth is listed as between $10 and $25 million said, “I’m just saying let’s give everyone a vote.”

Heywood isn’t the only one throwing money into the process, and I-2109 isn’t the only initiative raking in big donations. The first committee to fight one of the initiatives is backed by megamillionaire software developer Chris Stolte with a net worth estimated at around $900 million. No on 2117 received Stolte’s donation of $1 million on Jan. 29. Labeled “Stop the Hidden Gas Tax” by supporters, the first donor to No on 2117 was Trudi Inslee with a more modest $1,500 donation.

Past Democrat backed initiatives have been supported by $1 million-plus donations from Nick Hanauer (with a net worth of about $1 billion) and Paul Allen (with a net worth of over $20 billion).

According to Jinkins, the initiative process is there because folks didn’t want “big railroad barons … taking over the state and they wanted the people to be able to legislate.” The people did, and the Let’s Go Washington initiatives might be better understood as a populist push back against the big tech barons taking over the state.

The second talking point comes from Sen. Manka Dhingra, D-Redmond, saying, “We will be taken backward by decades” at a media availability for Democratic leadership on Jan. 30. It’s an oddly overblown claim considering most of the initiatives merely roll back laws that have only taken effect in the past few years.

A prime example is I-2113 Reasonable Police Pursuit, which mostly returns the law to the way it was before it was supposedly fixed. The unintended consequences have been obvious to the Washington Council of Police and Sheriffs, who have endorsed the measure.

In the case of I-2081 Parental Notification and I-2111 No State Income Tax, the initiatives are looking forward, not backward. The Parental Notification proposed legislation is not intended to affect existing laws but clarifies for future lawmakers and bureaucracies that parents have a right to and must be involved in decisions affecting their children’s lives.

And apparently voters thought it was time for yet another No State Income Tax initiative, a message Washington voters have sent to the Legislature 11 times since 1932.

The six petition drives contained about 2.7 million signatures total, although not all were valid, Heywood said. “We scanned the petitions and matched them to voter databases to identify registered voters to make sure we had enough to qualify,” Heywood said. He said the group identified 827,000 unique signatures. Further analysis by a political consulting firm indicated over 50% of those unique voters were Democrats or independents.

It’s a clear example of a broad base of voters using the populist approach exactly as written in the state Constitution.

Regardless of Jinkins ignoring the precedence of the people’s initiatives over other business, voters will have the last say in November. And Democrats in the Legislature still have time to set aside their talking points and refer each initiative to the appropriate committee for a public hearing, in keeping with the populist spirit of the state Constitution. Or they can persist in ignoring the voice of the 827,000 voters who took their time to participate in the legislative process.

Contact Sue Lani Madsen at rulingpen@gmail.com.