Welch: Olympia’s polycrisis is your problem now

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, May 27, 2026

There is a word making the rounds in political circles right now: polycrisis. It refers to multiple serious problems hitting at the same time, compounding each other, with no easy exit. You do not need to look far to find it. Just look at Olympia.

Washington State Democrats have controlled state government for the better part of two decades. A 20-year trifecta. Complete control of the governor’s office, the state Senate, and the state House. That kind of unchecked power sounds like a policy dream. In practice, it produces a fiscal nightmare.

The 2026 legislative session, which wrapped in March, passed a supplemental budget that spends $4.9 billion more than it expects to collect in revenue over the current two-year budget cycle. To make the math work, Democrats drained the state’s rainy-day fund to roughly $95 million. Not a comfortable cushion. A sofa cushion. And even after those maneuvers, they left a known $878 million budget hole for lawmakers to deal with next year. Senate budget chair June Robinson, a Democrat from Everett, acknowledged that people would be disappointed. That is quite an understatement.

Childcare funding was cut. Early learning expansion was pushed back. State workers faced furlough proposals. These are not the priorities of a party managing its resources well. These are the priorities of a party that ran out of road.

So, what did Democrats reach for? An income tax.

Governor Bob Ferguson signed Senate Bill 6346 into law on March 30, imposing a 9.9 percent tax on household income above one million dollars per year. Supporters call it the “millionaires’ tax” and argue it makes Washington’s tax code fairer. What they do not say loudly is that Washington voters have rejected proposals for a broad-based income tax at least ten times since the 1930s. What they also do not say is that this tax was written specifically to function as a legal test case. The goal is to get the Washington Supreme Court to overturn longstanding precedent treating income as property requiring uniform taxation. In other words, today’s millionaire tax is tomorrow’s everyone tax. That is not a conspiracy theory. State Sen. Jamie Pedersen communicated openly with the Attorney General’s office about exactly that strategy.

Here is the part that should give every moderate voter pause. This is not what Washington Democrats used to look like.

Former Governor Christine Gregoire served this state as a Democrat from 2005 to 2013. She is not a conservative. She is one of the architects of modern Democratic governance in Washington. When she left office, the state budget stood at $33 billion. It is now nearly $80 billion. Last week, she stood before the Association of Washington Business and said what many have been afraid to say out loud: “I would suggest to you we don’t really have an income problem; we have a spending problem.” She added that lawmakers were answering every fiscal challenge by “stacking one more tax, one more rule, one more regulation,” and that businesses cannot survive in an environment of endless unpredictability. When she pressed lawmakers about the consequences of raising the estate tax to 35 percent, the highest in the nation by a wide margin, they had no answers. They had not done the analysis. They did not grasp what they were setting in motion.

Gregoire’s willingness to say this publicly matters precisely because of who she is. If today’s Olympia leadership looked at her, they would likely call her out of step. And that tells you everything about how far the party has drifted.

There was a time, not long ago, when dissent within the Democratic caucus was tolerated. Around 2010, a group of centrist Democrats in the state legislature formed what they called the Roadkill Caucus. The name was self-deprecating but honest: they were moderate Democrats who felt run over by both the hard left and the hard right. Snohomish County had members in that group. Sen. Steve Hobbs of Lake Stevens helped found it. Sen. Jean Berkey of Everett showed interest. They pushed back on tax increases, tried to build bridges with business, and argued that most Washingtonians lived in the middle of the road, not at the ideological edges.

Progressive Democrats within the caucus did not celebrate this. State Sen. Karen Keiser described the Roadkill Caucus as the “most disruptive” group she ever dealt with. She said they made it “difficult to make real progress.” Disruptive. That is what they called Democrats who questioned runaway spending and wanted to represent suburban and rural voters. The Roadkill Caucus later rebranded, lost leverage as Democratic majorities grew, and has now largely faded from the scene. Rep. Amy Walen of Kirkland, one of the last business-friendly Democrats in the House, lost her primary bid last year. The moderates have been systematically squeezed out, either beaten in primaries or simply drowned out by an expanding progressive majority that no longer needs them.

The result is a caucus with fewer voices willing to say what Gregoire said publicly at that business summit.

This is the polycrisis in miniature. A spending structure that outgrew its revenue base. A rainy-day fund was nearly emptied. A new tax that most Washingtonians have never wanted was passed in a way designed to prevent voters from weighing in directly. When Let’s Go Washington tried to put the income tax to a referendum, the Supreme Court sided with the legislature, ruling that a so-called necessity clause shielded it from that process. The people were cut out of the decision.

Now, Let’s Go Washington is back with an initiative. As of May 12, the group launched its signature-gathering campaign for initiative IP26-645, which would repeal the income tax, prohibit future taxes on individual income, and put the matter squarely before voters this November. They need 308,911 valid signatures by July 2. They are aiming for 400,000. Two years ago, this same organization collected more than 540,000 signatures in 45 days to protect access to natural gas. They know how to do this.

Brian Heywood, the founder, put it plainly: the voters of this state have rejected an income tax numerous times, and no one believes this will stay a tax on only millionaires. Olympia’s budget has doubled in ten years. Before asking for more money, they need to demonstrate they can be trusted with what they already have.

He is right. And Christine Gregoire agrees with him, even if she would not put it exactly that way.

Washington now has the third-highest gas tax in the nation at 55.4 cents per gallon, with automatic two-percent annual increases built in. The Climate Commitment Act added an estimated 52 cents on top of that. Student test scores have declined even as per-student spending increased. The state faces a credit rating watch from a top agency. These are not the outcomes of sound governance. They are the outcomes of a one-party Olympia that silenced its own moderates and stopped listening.

Washington State Democrats have governed with a trifecta for twenty years. In that time, the moderates who once served as a check on the party’s instincts had been squeezed out. The Roadkill Caucus is gone. Christine Gregoire is speaking to business groups because she has no other venue. And the budget has gone from $33 billion to $80 billion with nothing to show for it but a nearly empty rainy-day fund and higher taxes on the way.

I will be signing the Let’s Go Washington initiative. I encourage every Snohomish County taxpayer who has watched their gas prices climb, their childcare funding shrink, and their state government nearly empty its emergency reserves to sign it as well.

Signatures are due July 2. Find a petition location at letsgowashington.com or request a sheet by mail. This is not about ideology. It is about the basic principle that in a democracy, the voters should decide whether their state gets an income tax.

Olympia did not trust you with that decision. Christine Gregoire, the Roadkill Democrats, and 308,000 signatures say it is time to take it back.

Todd Welch is a Herald columnist covering local and state issues.