Letter from the President

Chris Dugovich
Council 2 President/Executive Director

Before the final ballots were counted, before the real impacts of Initiative 747 were apparent to citizens across Washington, Tim Eyman had filed his next initiative.

Eyman, the watch salesman turned initiative professional, is apparently not concerned with the quality and efficiency of government. If he were interested in finding balance in taxation and services, he wouldn't file new initiatives before measuring the impacts of his previous offering.

Take the new initiative, I-776. How does he know that license fees for yachts need to be lowered before we know if I-747 has successfully reduced the property tax burden on yacht owners?

So why the rush to keep his name in the paper and a new initiative on file? It's simple: he's making money off the process. His own campaign disclosure reports show a $90,000 income from I-747.

While the populist appeal of tax cutting initiatives is impossible to deny, the burden should be on the sponsor of the initiative to propose sound policy, not sound bites. The goal should be initiatives motivated by improving our state, not turning a profit.

Washington experienced unparalleled growth in the 1990s not because we had the lowest taxes (we rank 17th in the nation, according to the 2000 U.S. Census), but because we offered businesses and residents excellent services like good libraries, safe roadways and first-class police and fire protection.

Those services are integral to our quality of life — and the strength of our economy. Boeing, which fought I-695 and I-747, noted that their decision to leave Washington wasn't taxes, but traffic. I-695 devastated the state transportation budget. I-747 will have the same impacts on local road funds. Eyman's new initiative aims to strip even more from transportation.

Cities and counties are already announcing I-747 related cuts: jail and court cutbacks in Pierce County; library shutdowns in Seattle; millions in road funds lost in Snohomish County. It is quickly becoming clear that I-747 will have an immediate negative impact on our state.

As one of the leaders of the business, labor, environmental, and citizen coalition that set out to defeat I-747, I am proud of the firefighters, librarians, nurses and public employees across the state who led the volunteer effort to defeat I-747.

Among our strongest supporters — and the people Eyman conveniently forgets when railing against "big government" — are the hundreds of volunteer public servants in our communities.

Parks, library, hospital and fire commissioners, small town city council members and part-time mayors are not only our neighbors, but they understand the challenges of providing services on a shoestring budget.

Unlike Tim Eyman, our local leaders have the courage to be held accountable. The tough job is making service cuts and explaining them to voters. Eyman can simply offer feel-good tax cuts and laugh all the way to the bank.

While we were not surprised to see I-747 pass, we do believe that initiatives such as 747 will lose favor once the trade-offs between services and tax revenues become apparent — almost certain to happen now that the state lacks the funds to bail out cash-strapped local governments. The $23 an average homeowner will save next year under I-747 would go a long way to keeping libraries open and roads maintained.

Having worked with local governments from King County to the city of Omak for over 20 years, through good times and bad, I know that elected leaders and public employees across the state will continue to do the best job possible to serve our communities.

We cannot, however, sit back and watch our quality of life threatened by irresistible, yet shortsighted initiatives like I-747. We cannot let the initiative process become simply a money making tool to undermine our transportation system, libraries and emergency response.

There have been a series of suggested reforms that would lead to objective review of an initiative before it is placed in the ballot. Certainly, voters deserve more analysis than is currently offered by legalistic ballot titles and voter guide statements written by advocates, not experts.

We wouldn't accept a medical diagnosis from a used car dealer, so why continue buying tax policy from a watch salesman?

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