I’m extremely concerned about what is going on in our state. Over the last few years we have witnessed a tax protest which has been evidenced through a few Tim Eyman initiatives. I honestly feel that these initiatives have been voted in, not for reasons of we don’t want these taxes, but more for the reasons of lack of confidence in the elected officials to be good stewards of our tax dollars.
Every time we, the public, expect the government to accomplish a task, we are deluged with reasons why the government needs more money to accomplish this task. I was totally amazed when the state of Washington was almost shut down because the excise tax (an annual sales tax on our automobiles) was repealed. I kiddingly told some of my colleagues that we were going to have a part-time governor because part of his salary was paid by this tax.
I have been self-employed most of my life and when revenues were down we looked at ways to cut expenses. We would never consider cutting services (we are paid for providing services). Therefore, we had to make hard choices -overhead was cut, supervisors worked more, ways were found to produce more with less, etc. We never even considered telling our customers they would receive less. It amazed me that after the excise tax on car tabs was repealed, someone had an idea that millions of dollars could be saved if they only sent the rear tab. Why did we have to be in a crisis mode before this saving was discovered?
Again, the residents are not protesting the taxes. They are upset, fed up with our elected officials’ ineptness at being good stewards of our tax dollars. If we will work together – utilizing our tax dollars to their fullest, constantly reviewing the needs of the people of this state and country and acknowledging tax dollars represent hard-working individual earnings – we will be able to restore the confidence in our elected officials.
We the taxpayers of Washington are purchasing baskets of goods and services with our taxes. And we expect the elected officials of this state to provide cost-effective goods and services to those they serve – the people of the state of Washington, who entrust these officials with the task of doing so. Is it time to take a hard look at what our public officials are really charged to do and hold them accountable to do so? We the people are responding to the call to use our tax dollars efficiently.
Marysville
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