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Monday, March 18, 2024
March 18, 2024

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In Our View: Let Voters Have Their Say

Foes of latest Eyman initiative should let it face ballot fate before filing challenge

The Columbian
Published:

While the race for Clark County council chair promises to be an eye-opener in November — regardless of who advances out of Tuesday’s primary — the biggest donnybrook in the general election could be Initiative 1366.

And the punches already are being thrown.

Initiative 1366, backed by professional initiative maven Tim Eyman, would provide next year’s Legislature with a Catch-22 of a choice: Place a constitutional amendment on the 2016 ballot, or see the state sales tax reduced from 6.5 percent to 5.5 percent. The proposed constitutional amendment would require a two-thirds legislative majority for any tax increase that is not sent to voters.

Eyman has traveled this road before; five times voters have approved a two-thirds majority for taxes, only to have it overturned by the Legislature or by the courts. In 2013, the state Supreme Court ruled that the two-thirds majority violated the state constitution — which stipulates that a simple majority is adequate — and that the only way around that is to amend the constitution.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Kim Wyman declared that I-1366 had garnered enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. That’s when the skirmish started, as opponents quickly filed suit to block the measure from the ballot.

“If you can’t win a vote, you try to cancel it or block it. Politicians clearly believe that voters support I-1366’s taxpayer protection policies and that’s why they desperately want to take away the people’s right to vote on it,” Eyman said with typical bombast.

“He’s proposing something that is incredibly destructive. It’s a hostage-taking scheme,” countered opponent Andrew Villeneuve, executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute.

The nuts and bolts of the measure, according to the state Office of Financial Management, is that a 1-cent reduction in the sales tax would reduce tax revenue for the general-fund budget by $8 billion between 2016 and 2021. The office also projected that a lower sales tax would stimulate purchasing that would generate offsetting additional tax collections of $226 million.

But the details of I-1366 are a discussion for a later time. For now, the issue is whether it should be allowed to remain on the ballot, and that is where opponents should pull their punches. In 2005, the state Supreme Court unanimously declared in Coppernoll v. Reed: “It has been a longstanding rule of our jurisprudence that we refrain from inquiring into the validity of a proposed law, including an initiative or referendum, before it has been enacted.” In 2007, the court affirmed that position.

In that regard, Eyman appears to be on solid ground; the court has been reluctant to rule on the constitutionality of a ballot measure that might or might not pass. But on his understanding of the state constitution, Eyman has a less-than-stellar track record; at least four of his initiatives have been passed by voters and then ruled unconstitutional.

I-1366 might or might not violate the requirement that a measure be limited to one subject matter; that will be for the courts to decide if the initiative remains on the ballot and is approved by voters. But first, voters should be allowed to decide. “Ultimately, the politicians’ lawsuit that seeks to prevent the people from voting may have less to do with Initiative 1366 than it does the right of the people to discuss, debate, and vote on the issues contained in it,” Eyman said.

Let the donnybrook begin.

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