OLYMPIA — Democratic leaders in the Legislature said Wednesday they won’t hold hearings on two initiatives to repeal the state’s new capital gains tax and the state’s new carbon market.
The announcement signals legislators won’t act on either proposal, meaning the two initiatives will almost surely head to the November ballot.
Senate Majority Leader Andy Billig, D-Spokane, and House Speaker Laurie Jinkins, D-Tacoma, told reporters Wednesday that committees wouldn’t hold hearings on either petition, two among a slate of six total initiatives to the Legislature.
The six initiatives were filed and are sponsored by the state Republican Party chair, Jim Walsh, who is also a state representative from Aberdeen.
With each initiative, lawmakers have three choices. They can adopt it into law, in which case it wouldn’t go to the ballot. Their other two options are to adopt an alternative to go on the ballot alongside the initiative, or to do nothing, in which case just the initiative would appear on the ballot.
“I think we can definitively say we’re not going to have hearings on these two initiatives that roll back progress and really would harm our state,” Billig said. He said the initiative to repeal the capital gains tax would “devastate” state funding for child care.
Jinkins said she didn’t know yet whether hearings would be held on the other four initiatives. Nonpartisan staff have been preparing analyses of the budget and policy impacts of each measure.
“I don’t know if we’ll hear all four of them or some subset of them yet, but we’re getting very close,” Jinkins said.
Billig said there would be hearings on any initiatives where legislators are considering passing them into law or doing an alternative.
“There will be some hearings, we don’t have the final decision on which ones or when,” he said. “But there will be some hearings.”
The other four initiatives would do the following: lift certain limits on when police can chase suspects, require parents and guardians of kids in public school be allowed to view instructional materials and student records, bar the state and local governments from imposing an income tax, and make the state’s long-term care insurance program optional.
In a phone interview, Walsh said he wasn’t surprised by the news that the capital gains tax repeal and carbon market repeal wouldn’t be heard, but was “disappointed.”
“It’s calculated, cynical, and a little bit cowardly,” he said. “They’re going to count on their political allies to fund a very spendy campaign to try to get people to vote against their own interests this fall when the initiatives are on the ballot. And I just don’t think that’s going to work.”
