Rantz: Council members should pay for futile income tax fight

The Seattle Council, in the coming days, will push forward their legislation imposing an income tax on Seattle residents. The legislation is unconstitutional, but they’re pushing it anyway. Fine. It’s the council’s decision to make, but they should pay for it personally.

It’s really easy to waste money when it’s not your money you’re wasting. Give me a thousand bucks, I’ll spend it on things I want but don’t necessarily need. But purchase that new Kasala leather couch with my own money? Nope. I’ll stick with the old one I currently have and buy it when I actually need to.

The council, led by ideologues like Mike O’Brien and Lorena González, know an income tax is against the law, and has failed each time it’s been previously challenged. But they think, this time, the Washington State Supreme Court is so ideological that they’ll push aside the law and allow legislation because they simply like the idea. The council has a low opinion of the justices, apparently, so they’re giving this a shot.

Cool. Good for them. Then they should reach into their mostly-deep pockets and pay for it themselves, rather than wasting taxpayer dollars on what, if the Supreme Court decides to follow the law, is a futile effort that serves solely as a really expensive media campaign of virtue signaling. This is going to be expensive to fight in court; you’re wasting time and resources on this. You can’t, in one breath, complain about a lack of funding to tackle homelessness, drug addiction, and housing while, in the very next breath, waste our money on ideological pipe dreams.

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