Spin Control: Initiative fees in Washington just caught up with 110 years of inflation

For more than a century, Washington’s key tools of citizen control over their government – the initiative and the referendum – were a real bargain.

For $5, a person could file an idea for a new law or an effort to repeal an existing one and try to get enough like-minded voters to sign on.

But like everything else in 2024, inflation has hit the initiative and referendum process.

Earlier this month, the filing fee went up to $156.

While that’s quite a jump, it should be noted that the $5 fee was first instituted for filings at the start of Washington’s statehood, and was applied to initiatives and referendums in 1913 after they were approved by voters through a 1912 constitutional amendment.

Secretary of State Steve Hobbs called the change “long overdue” in a recent news release announcing the increase.

“The expenses generated in multiple state agencies for processing each and every filing of a potential ballot measure are not what they used to be in 1913, and our fee structure must reflect that,” Hobbs said.

After an initiative or referendum proposal is filed, it must be reviewed and edited by the members of his staff, the attorney general’s staff and the code reviser’s office before a sponsor can print petitions and start gathering signatures.

Just how much of a bargain that old filing fee was can be debated, but a glance back at some Spokesman-Reviews from 1913 suggests a five-spot was not chump change in those days.

Lunch at the White’s Hotel in downtown Spokane was a quarter, and a room for a night was 75 cents. Laborers were being offered 25 cents an hour, meat cutters $21 a week and government jobs were advertised at $65 a month.

A pound of Swiss cheese cost a quarter at a downtown market, a dozen eggs were 23 cents and a pound of coffee 28 cents. Women’s shoes could be bought for $5 at the Crescent, where one could also get a hammock for $3 or a pair of oak folding tables for $5. A bottle of Red Star Whiskey was $1.25 down the street at Durkins.

Gasoline was going for 13 cents a gallon.

Initiative sponsors likely would have paid cash for the filing fee in those days – debit cards didn’t exist, and checks weren’t as common. If they put down five silver dollars, that would have been slightly more than four ounces of silver worth about $100 at today’s prices. Or they could have plunked down a $5 gold coin, known as a half eagle, which was a quarter-ounce of gold. In 1913, gold was going for $19 an ounce; Friday it was worth $2,184, so that quarter-ounce would be worth about $546.

After posting notice of the possible change and holding a hearing, Hobbs’ office used the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates to adjust the fee to $156, and will adjust it for inflation in the future to keep it from getting so far out of balance.

The Legislature considered a fee increase in 2011 to $500 – with $450 returned to the sponsor if the initiative was certified – but some initiative proponents balked at even a jump to $50. The proposal never made it out of committee. A later proposal to raise it to $200, with $100 returned if the initiative was certified, met a similar fate.

While the current increase was attributed to inflation, it was driven at least in part by the fact that more than a majority of all initiatives filed since 1913 have been filed since 2000. Some years, more than 100 are filed, and the majority of those are from just a handful of sponsors.

State Rep. Jim Walsh, R-Aberdeen, was the sponsor of the six conservative initiatives to the Legislature that were certified this year. The Legislature passed three, the most ever, and ignored the other three, which will put them on the November ballot.

The success of that coordinated campaign of conservative issues is likely to prompt other conservative initiatives for school choice, election integrity and a repeal of natural gas restrictions, he said.

He agreed that the value of $5 has changed since 1913, but he called the timing of the fee increase “a reaction to our success.”

Last year, Walsh filed 69 different initiatives to the Legislature. In 2022, he filed 30 initiatives to the Legislature and 40 initiatives to the people. He said he files multiple versions of the same ideas, each with slightly different wording.

“The whole idea is to get the best title,” Walsh said. The title is written by a member of the attorney general’s office, and “you never know exactly what kind of title you’re going to get.”

While he acknowledged there are costs associated with the processing of each initiative proposal, Walsh said that is part of the jobs assigned to those particular offices.

With the higher fee, he might reduce his filings to two or three drafts of a particular idea. Multiple drafts give him a chance to hone the proposal and make sure it complies with the constitutional requirement that any legislation stick to a single subject.

Walsh said he can afford the higher fee but worries about “the average Joe or Jane” who comes up with an idea.

While Hobbs had the authority to raise the fee by going through the proper administrative procedure, the Legislature could pass a law to drop it down again, Walsh added.