DORI MONSON

Dori celebrates death of property tax bill

May 26, 2015, 3:21 PM | Updated: 5:05 pm

I'm happy to tell you that a bill we have talked about died last week. (AP)

(AP)

Taken from Tuesday’s edition of KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson Show.

I’m happy to tell you that a bill we have talked about died last week.

There were some people in Olympia who wanted to give counties the possibility of raising property taxes five percent a year. Five percent!

Right now, the limit is one percent a year.

A Republican in Olympia, Larry Haler of Richland, who would not come on the show to talk about this, who would not defend his bill, HB 2255, with me &#8212 he wanted to give counties the power to raise your property taxes up to five percent a year.

There was a Democratic co-sponsor of the bill, Ross Hunter, of Medina. He knew I would disagree, but at least he had the guts to debate his bill with me.

I asked: “Why should we give King County more money through the property tax hike when it’s going to go to things like paid parental leave for their 14,000 paid employees. They don’t need that money.”

“I think you ought to have the fight with your elected people about what they bargain off in benefits,” he said.

No. I don’t want to give them the power to raise taxes because I know they will. I don’t know of a lawmaker alive, at least on the left, who doesn’t raise every taxes as much and as fast as possible.

Just look at the history of every tax. Look at what’s happened to your property taxes over the years. Look at the sales tax, which was about four percent when I was a kid. Now it’s up to 10 percent in parts of the county.

That’s why we have to fight against an income tax, against the capital gains tax &#8212 because they will continue to lower the threshold for who gets hit by it, raise the percentage that they take, and then the lawmakers’ argument about this property tax bill is “Well, then they won’t have to come to us for all of these special levies all the time.”

You’re sponsoring a bill that would allow these property tax hikes …

“We’re allowing the county council to make a decision about what the property tax growth rate ought to be in their county,” Hunter said.

Right, and I don’t trust the King County Council to keep the taxes tamped down. I think they will expand them to that five percent max.

“You’re allowing them these goofy levies,” Hunter said. “They’ve got one every year. They got one for parks. The reason they do that is they can’t fund that stuff out of their regular budget.”

“Do you think those levies are going to stop if your bill passes,” I asked.

“I think there will be a lot few of them, yes,” he said.

“Is it codified in your bill? If this bill passes, will they be prohibited from doing these levies?” I asked.

“It’s Larry Haler’s bill and no it’s not,” Hunter said.

That was my point. Of course they’ll still come to us with their sob stories. They will just spend and spend the money.

And this isn’t about conservative versus liberal. This is about middle class &#8212 people on the left, people on the right &#8212 who have been taxed to death. It’s about the people who are complaining all the time about income disparity and yet they push for every single tax increase that they can. It’s people who say rents have gotten too high in Seattle but they also push for every single tax increase.

The reason rents have gotten so high is, in part, because of how insane property taxes have gotten. Those get passed on to the tenants by the landlords. People can’t afford that anymore.

This isn’t a conservative thing. This is a human thing. People can’t afford more taxes and Olympia, every county, and all the cities are collecting more money in total taxes than ever before. Government’s got plenty. It’s time to start shrinking government. And if our radio show can play some small role in making that happen around here, that is successful.

I’m happy to say the property tax hike has been killed thanks in part to you.

Taken from Tuesday’s edition of KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson Show.

SK

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