This morning in Olympia, Northwest Progressive Institute founder and Executive Director Andrew Villeneuve filed a new statewide initiative called the Petitioning Industry Accountability Act. The intent of the initiative is to require that signature gathering companies pay their fair share in business and occupation taxes to our state.

“Qualifying initiatives to the ballot has become a big business in Washington,” said Villeneuve. “On an annual basis, millions of dollars may be spent to force public votes on legislation, particularly when people with wealth desire to make changes to our state’s body of laws. The companies that do the work of gathering signatures for these campaigns ought to be complying with our worker protection laws and paying their taxes like any other business. But we have discovered that most of them aren’t.”

“For far too long, this industry has operated underground. It’s time we started the process of changing that. This is the very first draft of this legislation, which we would be happy to see become law either through the initiative process or the legislative process. For the time being, this idea is in the research phase. We look forward to refining and improving it in response to the feedback we receive from our supporters, the public, and the press.”