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Heck’s record: A bill in ’83, but no vote for income tax

By Kathie Durbin
Published: October 23, 2010, 12:00am

Republican state Rep. Jaime Herrera’s congressional campaign has accused Herrera’s Democratic opponent, Denny Heck, of “selective amnesia” for his Tuesday statement to The Columbian that he never supported an income tax while he served in the Legislature from 1977 until 1985.

Heck denied — and his campaign continues to deny — voting for an income tax in response to a flood of TV ads and fliers funded by Republican Party organizations that declare he was a big spender and, among other things, “even fought for an income tax” during his legislative career.

Herrera’s spokesman, Casey Bowman, said the record is clear.

“The amnesia appears to have erased (Heck’s) memory of voting for taxing and spending increases that includes his support of a state income tax, a vote for the largest tax increase since Washington’s statehood, taxes on businesses, a gas tax, and others,” Bowman said in a statement.

As evidence that Heck supported an income tax, he provided a clip from the Nov. 23, 1982, edition of the (Spokane) Spokesman-Review that quotes Heck saying that a citizen committee’s proposal to add personal and corporate income taxes to the state’s tax system “represents a highly responsible effort by a group of very civic-minded people” to reform the state tax code. Heck served on the bipartisan Washington Tax Advisory Council that year and cast a vote on the council to recommend the flat-rate tax.

Heck told the Spokesman-Review he planned to sponsor legislation the following year to submit the proposed constitutional amendment to voters. He co-sponsored such a bill in the 1983 session, but it never emerged from committee in either the House or the Senate.

Both Democrats and some Republicans favored referral of the income tax measure to voters, but the Republican leadership put intense pressure on moderate Republicans to withdraw their support, according to an account in The Columbian at session’s end.

Bowman also provided documentation that Heck voted for an $8.7 billion tax increase in February of 1983, described by the Seattle Times as “the highest in the state’s history.”

Grant Lahmann, Heck’s campaign manager, stood by Heck’s statement that he never voted for an income tax and accused the Herrera campaign of “continuing to cherry-pick a legislative record that is over 30 years old.”

“None of these income tax pieces of legislation they cited were ever voted on in the Legislature, not even in committee,” Lahmann said. “Those ads continue to imply that is the case but they remain false. Denny never voted on an income tax in the state Legislature. If they want to talk about a 30-year-old record, why wouldn’t they talk about legislation that was actually voted on and passed, like the over 40 times when Denny voted in the House to reduce the tax and fee burden on Washington state families?”

Lahmann released a list of 42 votes Heck cast in favor of tax cuts, tax exemptions and fee reductions between 1977 and 1984.

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