No: Wasteful measure would handcuff Olympia

Red tape, a bureaucratic mess, and wasted taxpayer dollars. That’s what we’ll get with Initiative 960, which is on the November 6 ballot.

As a business owner I value efficiency, effectiveness, and openness, and it makes me cringe to think how bad things would get in Olympia if I-960 passes. Despite what its backers claim, I-960 looks like a perfect formula for crippling state government and wasting tax dollars. That’s why Chambers of Commerce, the Washington Business Roundtable, the League of Women Voters and I — along with over 100 other organizations across Washington — are opposing I-960.

Murky wording in I-960 would inaccurately label countless routine accounting measures and budget items as “tax increases.” A public vote would then be mandated on many of these, no matter how small the item and even though no one’s taxes even went up! The result will be endless expensive elections that waste our tax dollars along with long and confusing ballots.

According to the non-partisan Washington State Office of Financial Management, I-960 will cost taxpayers up to $1.8 million dollars each year. As dozens of ordinary fund transfers add pages to the 3.3 million ballots and voter pamphlets mailed out across the state, costs would skyrocket.

Even worse, I-960 restricts the information available to the public on these added, wasteful, non-binding votes. Tax measures, many of them wrongly called “increases,” would have descriptions limited to just 13 words and the informative pro and con arguments we currently receive in the voter guide are prohibited.

Voters would be asked to cast nonbinding votes based on virtually no information and the whole process squanders millions! Personally, I’d rather see taxpayer dollars spent on our state’s urgent needs.

When a measure passed in Colorado that handcuffed state government, much like I-960 would do, there were some disastrous results. Education funding dropped from 35th in the nation to 49th. Waiting time for help from emergency personnel got longer and child immunization rates fell to dead last among the 50 states. The measure caused so many problems that Colorado’s Republican Governor and business community led the charge to suspend it, and voters approved doing so by a wide margin.

Washington State should learn from Colorado’s mistakes and steer clear of I-960.

Under I-960, the legislature would need to spend a significant amount of time voting on the smallest and most routine fee adjustments. The Puget Sound Business Journal reports, “…the state Office of Financial Management…produced a list of 30 fees charged by just one agency: Ecology. They cover everything from burning grass seed to getting your dam inspected. Multiply that by fees imposed by every tributary of state government — whether they be for fishing licenses or University of Washington library cards — and the thought of taking each increase to the legislature spins into a bureaucratic nightmare.”

Having our representatives take days voting on every single fee increase just doesn’t make sense. They already vote on large fee increases. It makes sense to delegate the — literally — nickel and dime decisions. There is enough gridlock and partisanship in Olympia, let’s not add to it. I’d prefer that the legislature spend its time working on the critical issues of the day, like transportation, education, and health care.

The initiative would also leave us vulnerable in times of crisis. Supermajority legislative and public votes could only be suspended during a natural disaster under I-960.

Authorities would be handcuffed from responding quickly to urgent public needs during an economic recession, bridge collapse, pandemic flu, or even terrorist attack.

All the red tape, all the hurdles to jump, and all the mandated waste—I can’t imagine being forced to run a business like that. I-960 will waste taxpayer dollars, lead to endless expensive elections, and make it difficult, if not downright impossible, for state government to function, even during a crisis.

Vote November 6. Vote NO on I-960.

Greg Tisdel is a second-generation Everett businessman and the owner of Tiz’s Doors, which employs 48 people in Snohomish County.

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