{"id":381411,"date":"2010-03-01T20:09:51","date_gmt":"2010-03-02T01:09:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/northwestvoices\/2011227278_taxtalkinherentproblemswiththeinitiative.html?syndication=rss"},"modified":"2010-03-01T20:09:51","modified_gmt":"2010-03-02T01:09:51","slug":"tax-talk-inherent-problems-with-the-initiative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/381411","title":{"rendered":"Tax talk: inherent problems with the initiative"},"content":{"rendered":"

Initiative causes simultaneous spending and cutting<\/strong><\/p>\n

I agree with Danny Westneat that we elect public officials to make decisions and lead [\u201cDivining the will of the people,\u201d NWSunday, Feb. 28]. Government by poll does not work and more importantly for Washington state: trying to run our state budget process by initiative does not work.<\/p>\n

We voters want low taxes. We also want good education, transportation and public safety. The only problem is that our initiatives don\u2019t have to make the numbers add up.<\/p>\n

In 1993, Washington voters passed the \u201cthree strikes\u201d initiative to lock up prisoners for life \u2014 a very expensive idea. The same year we also passed I-601 to limit taxes. Neither of these initiatives detailed where the money would come from. Likewise, in 2000, voters passed I-728 to limit class sizes \u2014 which also costs money \u2014 while also passing I-722 to limit taxes.<\/p>\n

Sure, I could vote for less taxes and more programs all day, but I\u2019m not the one who has to make the trade-offs or hard choices. That\u2019s what we elect legislators to do and we should let them do their job. It\u2019s not a perfect process, but it\u2019s far superior to \u201cpseudo government\u201d by initiative.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Melanie Mayock, Seattle<\/em><\/p>\n

Partisan politics created budget deficit<\/strong><\/p>\n

With all due respect, I disagree with David Johnson\u2019s letter that supported bypassing I-960 and raising more taxes [\u201cBypassing Initiative 960: Alternative to taxes is unacceptable,\u201d Northwest Voices, Mar. 1]. I believe The Seattle Times\u2019 editorial calling for more fundamental tightening of operational purse strings was on point [\u201cDemocrats should have kept two-thirds rule,\u201d Opinion, Feb. 28].<\/p>\n

Just look at the business basics. Gov. Chris Gregoire and her predecessor added more than 14,500 public employees. After giving public employees excellent pensions and benefits over the years, our governor double-dipped for her voter personnel by significantly jumping their salaries when she took office. Also, she waived more than $100 million of annual revenue sharing from Indian casinos \u2014 the only state in the nation to do so.<\/p>\n

Ironically, she got substantial contributions from both groups for her political campaign. In my personal and professional opinion, partisan politicians with law degrees that give away money to their constituencies just do not seem to understand the business of managing a budget \u2014 or have an interest in doing so.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Harvey Gillis, Bellevue<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Initiative causes simultaneous spending and cutting I agree with Danny Westneat that we elect public officials to make decisions and lead [\u201cDivining the will of the people,\u201d NWSunday, Feb. 28]. Government by poll does not work and more importantly for Washington state: trying to run our state budget process by initiative does not work. We […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2861,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-381411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2861"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381411\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}