Harger: Déjà vu in Olympia — another short session, another last-minute tax push

If you feel like you’ve seen this movie before, you’re not crazy.

Rewind to this time last year. Governor Ferguson spent months saying he was opposed to raising taxes. He talked about belt-tightening. He talked about program cuts. Then, in the final moments of the session, the legislature passed the largest tax increase in state history.

Fast forward to today. We’re in Week 2 of a short 60-day session. And we’re right back in the same spot.

I spoke with Jerry Cornfield from the Washington State Standard yesterday. He told us the income tax proposal is “hogging all the oxygen” in Olympia. He obtained a copy of rough draft number four of the budget. It’s 47 pages long. It’s complicated. And if last year is any guide, we won’t see the final version until the clock is running out.

But the income tax is just one item on the menu.

There’s a lot cooking in Olympia right now

The governor wants to close corporate tax exemptions worth about $145 million. That includes ending a sales tax break for data center equipment and moving prescription drug wholesalers to a higher tax rate. There’s talk of a “millionaires’ tax” that would impose a 9.9% rate on income of more than $1 million. That could generate $3.5-4 billion a year, but the money wouldn’t start flowing until 2029, so it does nothing for the current shortfall. There’s even a provision in one draft to tax visiting professional athletes. A jock tax.

Some of these ideas might be reasonable. Some might not. That’s not really my point.

My point is that you and I have almost no ability to weigh in on any of it.

The 60-day session is a pressure cooker by design. Lawmakers are juggling dozens of proposals. Drafts are circulating among lobbyists and insiders. But the public? We’re on the outside looking in. And when the final package drops in the last two weeks, there’s no time to read it, no time to call your representative, no time to organize any kind of response. It just happens.

I’ve said this before. State spending has more than doubled in just over a decade. That’s not inflation. That’s not population growth. It’s new programs stacked on top of old programs with no realistic plan to pay for them. We passed a $9 billion tax increase last year, and we’re already coming up short again.

If the majority party wants to pass an income tax, they have the votes. That’s how elections work. But this process, where billion-dollar decisions get made in the final hours of a compressed session, is a transparency problem baked into the system itself.

We deserve to see the menu before we get stuck with the check.

Maybe it’s time to ask whether the 60-day session still makes sense. Or whether we need new rules that require major tax legislation to be public for a minimum period before a vote.

Because somewhere in Olympia right now, there’s a 47-page draft that’s going to cost us billions. But don’t worry. We’ll get to read about it the day after it passes.

Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here. 

Follow @https://twitter.com/kirocharlie