HorsesAss.Org

I sure had my fun at Kirby Wilbur’s expense yesterday, pointing out the rather amusing flaw in the language of the new tax cutting initiative he’s promoting, which ends up slashing property taxes by an astounding 99.4 percent, rather than the mere 30 percent reduction he promised his KVI audience.

To be fair, Kirby emailed me to explain that the text of the initiative was written by Floyd Brown and Wynn Cannon, adding “I favored a different approach when asked.” If that different approach includes a revenue-neutral property tax homestead exemption or circuit breaker, I’d be happy to join him in a bipartisan crusade for tax fairness. I genuinely like Kirby, and I think we’d make a great team.

That said, I think that the text of Initiative 1030 offers a textbook example of the follies of our initiative process, and of our Republican tax-cutting crusaders in general, for if you don’t understand the difference between, say, an “assessed value” and a “property tax,” then you really have no business rewriting our tax code.

For example, while I-1030’s unfortunate miswording may provide the initiative’s most amusing flaw, it is far from its most fatal, for though virtually eliminating the property tax altogether without offering an alternative revenue source would be a public policy disaster, it is not technically unconstitutional. The means by which I-1030’s authors seek to do so however, is.

Here is I-1030’s pertinent subsection, which would apply to “all taxes levied and collected in tax year 2009 and thereafter.”

The assessed value of property for all privately owned real property must not exceed the property tax on the same property for the tax year ending December 31, 2008, reduced by thirty percent. The reduction provided in this subsection may not shift property taxes. The regular levies of all taxing districts shall be reduced as necessary to prevent the values exempted under this subsection from resulting in a higher tax rate that would have occurred in the absence of the reduction.

Ignore for a moment the comical miswording that sets the “assessed value” to the “property tax” less thirty percent (I assume they mean to set it to the assessed value less thirty percent), and the vague, pseudo-legal mumbling about not shifting taxes. The intent of the initiative is to reduce the assessed value of all parcels of real property to 2008 levels less 30 percent (or, 99.4% as the case might be), and then freeze them at that assessed value “thereafter.” The problem with this approach (other than that it is just plain dumb policy) is that it clearly violates the uniformity of clause of Article VII, Section 1 of the Washington State Constitution: “All taxes shall be uniform upon the same class of property…”

Since the “fair value” of different properties rise (or fall) at different rates, I-1030 would immediately violate the uniformity clause, providing an effectively lower tax rate on fast appreciating properties than on those whose fair value has appreciated at a slower rate, or even declined. This is an issue that has already been well adjudicated by the courts, and any serious tax cutter would never have pursued this approach had he done his homework.

I-1030 also neglects to note that “real property” consists of both the land value and the improvements upon it (you know, like your house or a 50-story office tower) and thus fails to address the thorny issue of how its provisions apply to new construction. Either new construction is assessed at fair market value while all other property remains at 2008-less-30% levels—a clear violation of the uniformity clause—or, assessed value of all parcels remain frozen in time in perpetuity, regardless of the huge disparity in the value of improvements subsequently made upon them, which is also a, um… clear violation of the uniformity clause.

Not to mention, just plain stupid.

This kind of amateurish legislative hackery is actually typical of initiatives of this ilk, which explains why so many of Tim Eyman’s measures have ended up being thrown out by the courts. But I-1030 is worthy of fisking despite its laughable language and its fatal congenital defects, because it is crap like this that routinely manages to distort the public debate on property tax reform in the absence of substantive proposals from the Democrats in Olympia.

Coming up, I-1030’s authors’ ignorance of our tax system and the laws that govern it is illustrated further by a critique of the initiative from a policy perspective.

A quick follow-up to my earlier post about the Wild Sky wilderness area, and why when it comes to environmental issues, the only thing you need be concerned with is the little “R” or “D” next to a candidate’s name.

Case in point, Rep. Dave Reichert, who managed to generate paragraphs of positive press for himself through his sponsorship of a bill to expand the Alpine Lakes Wilderness area within his home district. The Seattle P-I’s Joel Connelly and I have a friendly disagreement on this subject. Joel thinks Reichert deserves credit and support for his Alpine Lakes initiative, whereas I think he’s just an insincere poseur, seeking to puff up his environmental credentials in a very green district. But all that’s really beside the point, because when it comes to environmental protection, intentions are much less important than ability.

Reichert sure talks up his environmental credentials, but since introducing his bill back on November 8, 2007, he has managed to secure exactly zero co-sponsors in the House. Zilch. Nada. Bupkis. He hasn’t even persuaded a single Republican colleague to sign on, and it’s not at all clear that he’s even tried. I’d say that speaks volumes both about the seriousness of his efforts to push this bill forward, and his ability to actually do so.

Compare that to Rep. Jay Inslee’s bill to protect roadless areas of our national forests, on which he has managed to garner 149 co-sponsors, including a number of Republicans (not one of which happens to be self-proclaimed environmentalist, Dave Reichert).

Of the 33 bills Reichert has proposed since being elected to the House in 2004, the two-term congressman has managed to pass exactly none; not exactly a record of legislative accomplishment. And as for his supposedly “moderate” voting record on environmental and other issues, Daniel Kirkdorffer at On the Road to 2008 has ably chronicled Reichert’s pattern of joining Republican caucus efforts to block, castrate and scuttle legislation, only to flip his vote once the battle is lost and the local media is paying attention to final passage. (You know, except for ANWR, where Reichert very publicly opposed drilling in numerous procedural votes, and then voted for drilling when it finally mattered.)

But if our local media isn’t reading between the lines of Reichert’s voting record, corporations and special interest PACs are, with oil companies contributing $60,000 to Reichert’s coffers since 2004, and the timber industry giving almost $14,000 this cycle alone. I’m one of those who believe that political money usually follows voting records, not the other way around, but either way it tells you where oil and timber interests think Reichert stands on the environment.

I suppose the best you could say about Reichert’s impact on environmental legislation, serving within a Democratic controlled House, is that he at least appears to be harmless. But if you’re an 8th CD voter who supports a more progressive environmental agenda, you may want to consider electing a representative who is capable of making actual progress.

The dead tree editions of both of Seattle’s dailies feature stories on yesterday’s passage of legislation creating the Wild Sky Wilderness Area, here, here and a rare front page column by Joel Connelly here. Nine years in the making, the bill protecting 106,000 acres in the North Cascades was repeatedly blocked by Republicans until, well, the Republicans finally lost their ability to block the bill, along with their control of Congress.

Creation of the wilderness had been blocked in the House for years by Congressman Richard Pombo, a powerful California Republican who said some of the land wasn’t pristine enough to warrant wilderness protection. But Pombo was unseated in 2006 as Democrats regained a majority in the House, and Wild Sky was revived.

For me, this raises an important point on which Joel and I agree to disagree: that in the current political environment, the most important thing environmentalists need to know about any candidate is the little “R” or “D” next to their name.

Peter Jackson, a Seattle writer, mused over the fact that 117 Republicans in the House voted against the Wild Sky legislation. He is the son of Sen. Henry Jackson, a Democrat who crafted landmark environmental legislation in negotiation with a Republican-run White House.

“We have to convince members of the party of George Bush that they’re also members of the party of Theodore Roosevelt,” Jackson said. “To borrow from a relative of mine, in matters of wilderness, the best politics is no politics.”

Perhaps Dave Reichert really does support Wild Sky—it would have been political suicide for him to oppose it—but he sure as hell didn’t do anything to move it forward when his own party was in control of the process. That’s because the GOP is institutionally opposed to government mandated conservation even on government lands, as evidenced by the majority of House Republicans who still voted against this popular bill despite the obvious futility of their opposition.

Joel is an encyclopedia of Washington state political lore and wisdom, and I don’t doubt his tales of bipartisan cooperation on environmental issues. But that was a different era, and as Peter Jackson points out, a different Republican Party.