On Thursday, July 13th, the Washington State Supreme Court failed us all. In a 6-3 vote in the case of Washington State Farm Bureau Federation et. al. v. Sam Reed, the court held that the legislature could declare an emergency for the purpose of evading the tax and spending limitations in I-601.

The Court endorsed a declaration of emergency based on the flimsiest of precedents. From now on, a legislature's declaration of emergency need not pass even the laugh test.

To understand how bad the decision is you have to have to look back to 1992 when the voters passed I-601. Prior to I-601, the state budget was habitually in a state of crisis as legislatures would spend every dime of surplus revenue in economic upswings and then, when the inevitable economic downturn came, raise taxes to cover the shortfall their wild spending had left in the budget.

The legislature's boom to bust budgeting benefited one group primarily: government employees, especially public school teachers. In good times, they got new members and raises. In bad times the taxes were increased to cover it all. This resulted in a one-way ratchet of ever increasing state budgets, both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of the State’s economy. The public finally got sick of this scam, however, and passed I-601.

I-601 addressed the problem in two principal methods; a requirement of a 2/3 vote to raise taxes and a budget growth cap limited to population growth plus inflation.

The limits imposed by I-601 served us well for more than a decade. Then the Democrats finally won complete and total control over the Governor’s office (with the dubious "election" of Ms. Gregoire) and both houses of the legislature. Even worse, the leaders were unapologetic liberals who never met a spending program they didn’t like. With the enthusiastic support of the public employee and teachers unions, the leftist Democrats (as opposed to the centrist Democrats) rammed through increases in spending and taxes the likes of which we hadn’t seen for more than a decade. Ms. Gregoire then signed the bills with great relish.

I-601 was still an obstruction to this spending frenzy that the leftists had to overcome. They did this by a bare, party line, majority vote – neatly sidestepping the supermajority requirements. Then – and this is the galling part – they passed a clause stating that this bypass was an “emergency.” This was how they planned to eliminate the public’s right to repeal the bypass by referendum.

The citizenry was undeterred. Shortly after the legislature adjourned, supporters filed a referendum with the Secretary of State’s office seeking to gather signatures anyway. In an absolutely unprecedented move, Secretary of State Sam Reed refused to file the referendum.

The proponents of the referendum understandably were not pleased with this turn of events. They filed an action directly with our State Supreme Court. They asked two things: 1) to hold that the “emergency” clause was invalid insomuch as there was no real emergency and everybody knew it; and 2) to tell the Secretary of State to do his job and file the referendum (this is called a Writ of Mandamus).

Unfortunately, six members of the State Supreme Court showed that their hearts were with the big spenders in Olympia rather than with the voters.

Furthermore, five of them saw nothing wrong with Secretary of State Sam Reed deciding for himself what referendum he would file and which he would not. It used to be that the constitutionality of a referendum was for the courts to decide, not the Secretary of State who was supposed to perform only the clerical task of filing. Justice Alexander, in slight mitigation of his vote for preposterous emergency declarations, filed a concurring opinion saying that the court really wasn’t deciding if the Secretary of State could "just say no" to referenda he didn’t like.

Fortunately, the majority decision was poorly written and future courts might be able to wriggle out of adhering to this wretched precedent. This is the remaining sliver of hope for citizens who think the State Constitution's guarantee of referenda and initiative is an important check on the Olympia culture.
- posted by Thomas @ 11:00 AM