Tax limits challenged in state Supreme Court

Published 11:13 pm Tuesday, September 9, 2008

OLYMPIA — A top Democratic state lawmaker asked the state Supreme Court today to throw out voter-approved laws requiring a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to raise taxes.

Attorney Thomas Ahearne, representing Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, told the high court that Washington’s “supermajority” tax-vote rule is unconstitutional because it effectively alters the state constitution’s provision that lawmakers need a simple majority to pass laws.

The supermajority law was passed by initiative, but Brown argues that a constitutional amendment — much more difficult to pass — is needed to alter the Legislature’s voting powers.

“Our constitution establishes our democracy, which is one where majority rules, not special interests or minority rule,” he told the nine justices.

But the high court peppered Ahearne with questions about why the case was before them in the first place, and whether the Legislature’s majority Democrats had avoided using other options before coming to the courts.

“The court plunging headfirst into the legislative process, that’s a concern I have,” Justice Barbara Madsen said.

Brown’s lawsuit challenges the two-thirds vote requirements, which were approved in 1993’s Initiative 601 and broadened in last year’s I-960. In the past, lawmakers have amended and even suspended the two-thirds provision at times, something justices noted.

A majority of the Legislature could amend such an initiative two years after it is passed by voters, but Ahearne said that step wouldn’t solve any constitutional problems.

The lawsuit is technically against Lt. Gov. Brad Owen, who is the Senate’s presiding officer, over a parliamentary ruling he made in March. Owen ruled that a proposed $10 million liquor tax increase, which got a simple majority vote of 25-21, had failed because it did not get supermajority support.

Many lawmakers, particularly Democrats, dislike the two-thirds vote requirement’s infringement on their powers, and the liquor tax proposal was widely seen as a ploy by Brown to challenge the supermajority law’s constitutional footing.

On Tuesday, Ahearne argued that Owen should have been required to pass that bill on to the state House.

“Under our interpretation … this statute is unconstitutional. It is the simple majority provisions that prevail,” he said.

Chief Justice Gerry Alexander said that argument “seems like an oblique way to argue the constitutionality of the statute before this court.”

State Solicitor General Maureen Hart, representing Owen, argued that Brown’s case should not be considered by the high court. Owen’s ruling was procedural, she said, and not binding. If majority Democrats really wanted to pass the bill in question, they could have overruled him, Hart argued.

“This whole notion that somehow the lieutenant governor has issued judicial or legal rulings is not the case,” she said.

After the hearing, Brown said the court needs to determine the constitutionality of the case so that it doesn’t keep resurfacing year after year.

Initiative 960 promoter Tim Eyman of Mukilteo said Brown wants to clear the way to raise taxes in next year’s session.

“There’s no legal impediment standing in her way,” he said. “She’s trying to get the court to resolve the political question that she has, to give herself political cover.”

Brown, however, said her court challenge was about upholding the state constitution, so “we’re not held hostage to a minority of legislators when we’re passing public policy or budgets.”