A levy swap isn’t on its own a horrible thing. Poor districts should still be able to educate their children. But in the absence of new money, it’s just taking money from districts that have been doing a better job educating children, if because they can afford it or if they’re more willing to pay. Goldy explained this ad nauseum when Rob McKenna was running and losing on levy swaps.

I’m happy to pay for education in the whole state. Let’s fund significantly more education at the state level. I’m all for it! Ideally with an income tax, but absent that, the most progressive tax we can get through the legislature.

But what we shouldn’t do is take money away from some districts or force the Puget Sound to pay for it while the rest of the state doesn’t. And that’s what a levy swap will do. As long as that’s the GOP position, it’s never going to fly.

“This would be the biggest property tax increase in state history,” said Sen. Kevin Ranker, D-Orcas Island, adding that the latest estimates show residents facing the biggest jump in their property taxes would be in the Puget Sound region, while some getting the biggest break would be in Eastern Washington and other rural parts of the state.

Most property owners in Spokane-area school districts would see a drop in their local property taxes over the four years needed to phase in the changes, although the amounts vary because of significant differences in current school district levies and the complicated laws that govern them.

Property taxes in Spokane School District, for example, would go down most years between 2018 and 2021 – as much as $1.80 per $1,000 of assessed value in 2021 – but up by .01 per $1,000 in 2019.

Ranker and other Senate Democrats have a competing plan designed to address the same problem of a system the state Supreme Court says is unconstitutional: using local tax money to pay for a basic part of public education, the salary of classroom teachers. Their solution is a tax increase, plain and simple: a capital gains tax on any resident who collects more than $250,000 a year on investment earnings. Money raised by that tax would be used to replace the money local districts now contribute to teacher salaries. That amount varies from district to district, but the amount a district receives from the state’s capital gains tax they would lower the amount they could collect from local taxpayers, so everyone would get a property tax reduction and only about 7,500 residents would pay the capital gains tax.

Neither one has everything I would want, but at least one actually has new money for education. If the problem is that there isn’t enough money for education, that seems like the thing at the outset you should deal with. I don’t understand how you can try to take education dollars from Seattle and Bellevue and say you’re supporting education statewide.

– A geyser of money worthy of Old Faithful

– No, William Shatner, you may not have our water. (h/t)

– Kirkland is an interesting, if dispiriting, case study in trying to get residential parking requirements right.

– I liked learning a bit about some of the long-shot candidates to fill in Clark’s seat.

– I would go to the museum of nice players.

Friend of the blog Fake Ted Van Dyk is moving to Bellingham, as is his real counterpart. To celebrate, he tweeted a bunch of tweets. I’ve collected them here.

I'm moving to Bellingham so I can make a run for the border if there's another Clinton as president. http://t.co/qhnGf2Zxod

— Ted Van Dyk (@FakeTedVanDyk) April 16, 2015

The rest below the fold…
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– District 8 has nearly $200,000 — and it’s only April. The at-large race has six candidates running, who have amassed, collectively, $193,710 in donations, according to the Public Disclosure Commission.

– Seriously, business owners, why are you volunteering anti-gay garbage?

– The people in Kayaks meeting the Shell rig are pretty amazing.

– Oh hey, here’s your list of possible people to fill Sally Clark’s spot on the City Council. Oddly, no Goldy this time around.

– Did you pay your taxes? I’m sure this open thread will be all the reminder you need.

– Yesterday I had a post complaining about how much money was in the City Council race. Maybe comparing it to last time isn’t as bad after all.

– Patty Murray is working hard for the Healthy Families Act for paid sick leave.

– Is it possible we’ll have some action on oil trains, or is anything good just going to die in the State Senate?

– The recent push for guns on campus in the name of rape prevention, then, adds just another data point to the long story of the gun lobby’s fight to arm white people, and only white people, for self-defense.

– It’s kind of sad that a silly cartoon about Hillary Clinton has more useful info on her policy than most think pieces.

Over at Seattlish, they’re looking at how much money is being raised on the City Council races. And with like half a year left, it’s quite a lot.

So far, the Seattle City Council races have raised a total of $1,007,381.09, according to the most recently reported totals – an average of about $23,000 per candidate out of everyone that has filed at any point, including people who have since dropped out. For contrast, in 2013, 11 filed candidates raised an average of about $87,000 each over the course of the entire race – most notably, Richard Conlin raised (and spent!) $241,986.31 trying to defeat challenger Kshama Sawant.

Sure. But that was also the only competitive race last time. This year we have quite a few. So maybe our too-damn-rich people will hit the limit on more races. Also, it’s possible that seeing Conlin lose has prompted the incumbents who’ve stayed to think they need more money to defeat a possible challenger.

– Generally my questions with any bridge are first if it’s walkable/bikable, and second if it makes sense. My question with this bridge is why isn’t it up and running right now now now? PS, I am 12 years old.

– Our initiative system is sooooo broken in Washington.

– Nice little civil rights you have there. Be a shame if anything happened to them.

– Hillary Clinton is running for president. I supported her last time and almost certainly will again this time, but I wish we had more of a primary. Also, I assume her website will get more fleshed out, but I would kind of like an issues page.

– Congrats to the Seattle Reign FC on a hell of a victory to start the season.

– It looks like the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program in Seattle has been pretty successful and could use some expansion.

– Just because you can still check Facebook while driving, doesn’t mean you should. In fact, please don’t.

– Maybe when Feidin Santana says of Dominicans (like the citizens of so many nations), that “we look for the alternative of the United States, we follow you,” it might motivate better American behavior, if we were afraid other nations had somewhere else to look for moral leadership. As it is, it’s a sad indictment that makes a terrible story even worse.

– More and more abortion restrictions are coming from the states. This time Kansas.

– I don’t have a TV, so my TV news comes via the Internet, so grain of salt. Still, I haven’t noticed KING 5 being worse than other local media outlets on being super car-centric, but Erica C. Barnett makes the case that they’re pretty bad while noting their latest problematic piece.

In yesterday’s Open Thread, I noted that it looked like Jeanne Kohl-Welles was going to run for the King County Council seat that Larry Phillips has decided not to run for. Later in the day, she made it official.

State Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, announced today that she is entering the race to succeed King County Councilmember Larry Phillips who informed the public that he is not running for re-election for King County Council District 4.

She seems to have most of the important endorsements lined up, and as such is probably the frontrunner. (or maybe the causation runs the other way).

Kohl-Welles has been endorsed by King County Councilmember Larry Phillips, who currently represents the 4th Council District, as well as Councilmembers Rod Dembowski, Joe McDermott, and Dave Upthegrove. She also has been endorsed by her 36th Leg. District seatmates, Reps. Reuven Carlyle and Gael Tarleton, as well as all of the Democratic state Senators from King County.

I can’t imagine voting for anyone else, but I still would like a primary. Maybe a neighborhood activist or something like that. I suppose the people most likely to run in one of those races are being sucked up into city council races what with all of them up this year. Or maybe not, since district 7, that has quite a bit of overlap with that County Council seat the only one that isn’t an open seat without a challenger to the incumbent. But maybe someone will move over from one of the other districts or at large now that the County seat is up for grabs.

In any event, and while I don’t want to get too far ahead of things, presuming that she gets elected in November, it would mean an appointment to her seat. The most obvious choice is Reuven Carlyle: He clearly (although inexplicably to me) wants the job, and having won a primary and several general elections in the district, he would probably have the best case. He seems pretty conservative compared to the district, but that hasn’t hurt him yet.

Is there anyone you’d like to see either run against her or to fill her seat if she moves on?

– I can’t even imagine what you’d do for an oil train explosion in the Downtown train tunnel.

– I don’t know Oregon enough to know about if running a primary against Schrader would be worth while, but in general I’m pro-primary elections.

– Liberals Aren’t Hypocrites for Opposing Indiana’s Religious Freedom Law

– It’ll be tough to lose Jeanne Kohl-Welles from the legislature if she runs for Phillips’ seat, but I can’t blame her for not wanting to deal with that garbage when King County can actually get shit done.

– He’s well enough to rot in our prisons.

– For the press, reporting on policy and actual legislating is homework. Reporting on the horse race and invented campaign narratives are a session of Nintendo or a pint of ice cream.

– I know you can’t judge a group solely on its worst members, but holy shit, some of the worst members of the Minute Men.

– Forgot to mention this in a previous open thread so it’s a bit old, but the NPI fundraising gala is looking pretty impressive.

– I will have to play around with Seattle In Progress a bit.

– Sullivan To Readers: You Are All Mindless, Soulless Subhumans

– Oh Sally Clark and Larry Phillipszzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

– No, the religious right is not dead. They were just resting.

– Oh hey, Seattle has some brand-new *historic landmarks.

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I think I covered the important stuff about the Expedia move yesterday. But one other thing that’s maybe less relevant is are we still going to call the foot bridge the Amgen Bridge? I feel like we should. It’s shaped like a double helix and it was built by Amgen. So I’m going to keep calling it that.

But I’m the guy who still calls the Bus Tunnel the Bus Tunnel even though I don’t want it to have buses in it any more.

Hey, remember how Rodney Tom (among a bunch of other Republicans) said that Seattle’s minimum wage and sick leave/safe leave laws were going to destroy the jobs in Seattle and send them to the suburbs. Well, maybe in the future, who can really tell? But when people cite this or that example: a store closing, a firm going out of business, or other things that happen to businesses everywhere, well, tell them Expedia thought it would be better to come to Seattle.

The campus, which is on Smith Cove in the Interbay neighborhood, measures 750,000 square feet. Expedia, which employs around 3,000 people in the region and nearly 15,000 worldwide, reportedly is looking for a new 700,000-square-foot headquarters. Real estate brokers said the company wanted a Seattle address and is looking to buy a facility. Amgen (Nasdaq: AMGN) is winding down operations in the Puget Sound region, and could sell the Seattle campus.

Earlier this year, Expedia CFO Mark Okerstrom said the company was considering relocating its corporate headquarters. He said the company was “not constraining ourselves to the downtown Bellevue area in terms of our search.”

Of course, there are plenty of reasons that a company moves to Seattle, and obviously just having a $15 minimum wage wasn’t why. But it also wasn’t a hindrance here. And to be clear: I hope the Bellevue finds a good replacement for Expedia. Losing that will be a hit. But there is a bit of schadenfreude seeing these things happening and thinking of the people saying these sorts of laws would destroy jobs in Seattle.

Maybe if Bellevue wants better jobs, they can do the types of things Seattle has done. Or they could do it because it’s the right thing for people working there.

– I don’t mean to alarm you, but today is known as Spy Wednesday

– In a previous open thread, I mentioned that Cathy McMorris Rodgers put a call out to her Facebook followers that they tell her about Obamacare, and most had nice things to say. Well, apparently that’s the haters hating.

– Welcome to the City Council race, James Keblas

– This is the tragic irony of the culture wars: The casualties tend to be the very people Jesus went out of his way to serve: the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the outcasts, the people ostracized and deemed “sinners” by the religious elite. And when the world sees Christians hurting rather than helping such people, in the name of political gain, our testimony is profoundly diminished

– The men behind of these efforts — one based in Arkansas, one in Florida — claim to be forming armed squads of militiamen to fly into ISIS hotspots in Iraq and Syria and combat the enemy on the ground. Neither, however, appear to be anything more than a fundraising operation built around pure fantasies.

– A Baseball Story