I-900 GOES TOO FAR AND WASTES TAXPAYER’S DOLLARS
Everyone wants government to operate efficiently, and performance reviews are a tool to achieve efficiency when done wisely and with common sense. But, this initiative lacks common sense:

1. Local citizens and their locally elected officials should establish their own goals and priorities, not Olympia;

2. Local governments will have to spend scarce staff time and local taxpayer dollars to collect data for the audits;

3. One size does not fit all. There are over 2,000 units of local government, from large metropolitan cities and counties to small rural mosquito control and irrigation districts. They all have different purposes and responsibilities. Is it really appropriate to compare a unit of government of 300 to a unit of government of 300,000?

I-900 IS UNNECESSARY AND DUPLICATIVE

The 2005 legislature passed two performance audit bills, one for Department of Transportation programs and another for state agencies. Many local governments already provide accountability by conducting their own performance reviews. This initiative is an unnecessary duplication that would add another layer of government and cost tens of millions of tax dollars.

Before you vote, ask yourself – Would you really trust one partisan elected state official to tell your local government what to do?

WE HOPE YOU WILL ANSWER NO AND VOTE NO ON INITIATIVE 900.

The following is a letter written by Josef Kunzler of Permanent Defense to help educate voters about the consequences of Tim Eyman’s Initiative 892.

Dear Fellow Voter:

I wanted to take a moment and explain to you the case against Initiative 892, the slot machine initiative that dumps 18,255 new electronic slot machines in the middle of communities across the state.

It is my sincere hope that as you think about whatever tax relief this initiative may or may not deliver, that the sound of electronic gambling machinery at over 2,000 locations and possibly more throughout the state goes through your mind. Sure, some say that’s a cheap shot – maybe that’s true, maybe not.

Take a moment and imagine two very different visions for our state:

Vision 1: We make I-892 law and we allow 18,255 electronic slot machines to be dumped into our communities all because a majority of us bought the sound bite of an initiative that promises property tax relief with no consequences. The end result will be a giant expansion of gambling, and the number of gambling addicts will skyrocket along with the profits of foreign business conglomerates. This means an increase in crime, including drug use, home invasions and theft, because addicts often resort to desperate measures to satisfy their addiction to gamble over and over again. We will walk through our communities fearing the pickpocket looking for change to plop into those machines and then we will realize gambling isn’t a destination activity any longer: it is now a local activity in our communities.

Vision 2: We reject I-892 and send a clear message that we do not want any more gambling in this state. We also respect the need of our Native Americans to have a means of self sufficiency – and as we do so, we tell the out-of-state gambling industry to butt out of our politics. Finally, by rejecting Tim Eyman’s latest initiative, we reject his ideology of tax cuts on the backs of our way of life.

Now, which vision would you like? Do you want those bandits taking over your community and your taxes, making you liable if this gamble turns out to cost more than promised? I seriously doubt that.

Washington State deserves better than this degradation into gambling dependency.

Vote NO on Initiative 892. Protect your local community and your way of life.

A new report released by the Department of Revenue has just discredited initiative profiteer Tim Eyman’s claims that taxes are skyrocketing and out of control.

Indeed, the report found that Washington State’s tax burden has been declining since 1981- just the opposite of what Tim Eyman continues to claim.

Eyman tried to dismiss the report, calling it “election-year politics”. But it’s Eyman, and not the state Department of Revenue, who has skewed statistics.

Eyman tries to take the total amount of revenue collected each year by the state and stack it up in ever-increasing bars on a graph, then point to it and say that property taxes are obscene and uncontrollable.

But you can’t measure property tax growth, or any kind of tax growth, by looking at the dollar amount collected each year. Any smart economist can tell you right away that Eyman’s method of looking at tax growth is extremely distorted.

Tax growth is best measured against personal income. This accounts for factors such as inflation and population growth- factors essential for a correct calculation.

The Department of Revenue’s new report measures tax growth against personal income, and finds that Washington is not the first, second, third, or fourth highest taxed state in the nation.

We rank 32nd in the nation in the new report (from 1998-2002) in comparative state and local taxes. And our tax burden has been on the decline since 1981.

That’s hardly “obscene” tax growth. When it comes to taxes, Washington is actually in the upper tier of states- states with a lower tax burden.

And having a lower tax burden isn’t always a great thing, because taxes pay for essential public services. Without enough revenue, the quality of those services can be degraded.

It’s clear that Tim Eyman’s rhetoric about skyrocketing and obscene property taxes is useless hype. No wonder, though, that Tim Eyman doesn’t want voters to believe this report. If they do, it will give them no reason to vote for his initiatives.

If his initiatives are voted down, Tim makes no money. It’s somehow in his best interest, then, to keep the lies coming and the fabrication machine on full spin.

Washington’s voters deserve to know the truth, not the spin, about property tax growth in this state. And clearly they’re not going to get that from Tim Eyman.

Since the beginning of his efforts to put I-864 and I-892 on the 2004 ballot, Tim Eyman has consistently complained about the rise in property taxes over the past several decades. His major, overriding complaint is that property taxes have increased from $1 billion in 1980 to $6.25 billion in 2003. But does this figure accurately represent the change in the property tax burden?

The answer is no. Information from the Department of Revenue does show an increase in the amount of revenue collected from property taxes each year. But you can’t look at the amount of money the state collects and use that as an appropriate figure.

Any accurate representation of the property tax burden should take into account the following factors:

• Inflation
• Population growth (and, since 1980, Washington’s population has increased 32.2%)
• Expansion of the tax base (i.e., more properties to tax)
• Loss or gain of federal funding
• Shifting of revenue from one tax source to another

Tim’s complaint that the property tax growth is “obscene” is unjustifiable. Revenue collection figures will always continue to grow because of inflation. And because the population continues to grow, and because more properties are developed, Washington will require more public services. More public services requires an increase in revenue.

There is no way to prevent this increase unless the level of public services currently provided by the state and local governments were to drastically regress. This would lead to a loss of jobs as firemen, librarians, police officers, and other government employees would be laid off in large numbers.

The following chart, furnished by the Department of Revenue, provides a better look at tax growth. Compare it side by side to the chart Tim Eyman uses in his argument that the property tax burden is “obscene”.
Several conclusions can be made from the chart to the left. The first is that the tax burden has dramatically decreased. Part of this is because government has had to make do with less, even as population has grown and demands on the state’s infrastructure have increased.

The second is that using 1980 as a starting date is misleading. If you start one year earlier, in 1979, it’s obvious that the tax burden has clearly and dramatically decreased. In fact, property taxes as a percentage of assessed value have clearly declined.

According to the Washington State Tax Structure Committee and every other accountable source, the economic figure that most closely tracks growth in demand for public services is growth in personal income. Personal income is also the only number which permits a true measure of tax burden.

This second chart, also provided by the Department of Revenue, shows that thirty one other states have higher tax burdens than Washington:

So Tim’s claim that tax growth is “obscene” is simply not true. And compared to other states, Washington’s tax burden is fairly low. Because Tim’s method of measurement doesn’t produce meaningful information, his results are completely misleading and out of context.

Those who take Tim’s statistics for granted don’t understand that he’s playing with the numbers and the figures, using irrelevant data and presenting misleading graphs to paint a distorted picture of Washington State’s tax burden. He’s proved one thing- even when it comes down to math, you can’t trust Tim Eyman.