Tax Increases: Court sticks to law

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

When state legislators voted this year to repeal the requirement that they muster a two-thirds majority to raise taxes, they attached a so-called "emergency" clause to the bill. That exempted the bill from referendum under the state constitution.

When groups tried to file a referendum with Secretary of State Sam Reed, he refused to accept it, citing the constitutional exemption. They asked the Washington Supreme Court to order Reed to accept the referendum.

On Thursday, with remarkable speed but still just about 10 days before it would be too late to turn in referendum signatures anyway, a divided court correctly turned down that request 6-3.

Writing for the majority, Justice Charles Johnson pointed out that the constitution exempts from referendum "Such laws as may be necessary for ...support of the state government and its existing public institutions."

The court has previously opted to let the Legislature decide which laws fit those criteria. Based on the constitutional provision and the court precedent that has been built on it, the decision was clear-cut. The Legislature voted to exempt this bill from referendum and the court has no business ordering Reed to act otherwise.

Justices Tom Chambers, Jim Johnson and Richard Sanders called on the court to do more. Chambers said the majority ruling was "absolutely correct" but on the basis of "law we should overrule."

Thus the court's three conservative justices called for judicial activism in response to their six colleagues' insistence on hewing to the law.

Justice Barbara Madsen was quite right in her brief concurrence, pointing out that "should the people want to overrule their elected officials they can do so by initiative as they have done in the past." An obvious example being the initiative campaign to repeal the gas-tax increase also passed in this year's legislative session.


Should citizens file an initiative to again require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to raise taxes?
69.2% Yes.	29.6% No.
1.2% Don't care.
Total Votes: 510