Control, Acrimony & Taxes!
By Caitlin Rothermel
Washington state politics are absolutely lit this year.
To start, we are broke. As a state, we are broke. Only after the November election did we learn that Washington has at least a $12 billion deficit – maybe more like $15 or $16 billion. On his way out the door, 12-year former Governor Jay Inslee made a plea to not go “backwards,” and recommended increased spending and a $13 billion tax hike.
Next, newly elected Governor Bob Ferguson (state attorney general for the past 12 years) acknowledged a growing affordability problem in WA state and struck an unexpected, bipartisan tone in his inaugural speech by acknowledging the deficit, and suggesting up to $4 billion in cuts.
Then, on January 13, the WA State Legislature 2025-2026 session opened in Olympia. Based on its actions, the Legislature is sticking with team Inslee; based on interpretation and rumor, they have zero tolerance for team Ferguson’s more moderate approach.
Last I heard, more than 1200 bills had been introduced by 147 representatives to cover in this 105-day session. As with many other areas of life right now, things are moving very quickly. To facilitate this need for speed, the Legislature ended a 132-year-old practice requiring a two-thirds supermajority to terminate debate on any bill – now, only 50% of votes are needed.
House Bill (HB)-1296 proposes a number of changes to the Parents’ Bill of Rights. Formerly known as Initiative 2081, and originally planned to be voted on by Referendum, Initiative 2081 was instead adopted as law in 2024, and relates to parent rights in the WA state public education system.
A number of changes have been proposed in HB-1296, some quite controversial, and all of which I encourage you to learn more about. A couple are so striking that WA state recently came to national attention as an example of exactly what not to do.
As originally written in Initiative 2081, schools were required to immediately notify parents of incidents like assault or sexual misconduct. Now, schools will revert to a prior policy, allowing them to wait up to 48 hours. Since we are regularly learning about new instances of teacher-on-student sexual misconduct, it’s easy to see why this would be a concern.
Also, students are increasingly receiving healthcare at school, and HB-1296 will curtail requirements to share information on students’ confidential healthcare decisions with parents and guardians. Talking about adolescent mental healthcare, Senate Majority Leader Jaime Pederson was clear regarding intent: “… Parents don’t have the right to have notice; they don’t have the right to have consent about that.”
To be concerned about these changes is to HB-1296 is not a sign of intolerance. On a personal note, in my teen years, I was a ward of the state. I had a stable living situation but also spent a good deal of time thinking about issues just like this … It’s a terrible thing to deny confidential healthcare to teenagers who have abusive or absentee caregivers. But it’s also terrible to indiscriminately block parent access.
Laws like this effectively reject the primary importance of capable and loving parents, and they literally create a bureaucratic underlayer of medical and non-medical staff with unreasonable control over families.
HB-1296 contains an “emergency” clause that would put it into effect immediately and ensure no Referendum could be held to request future changes.
And by the way, HB-1296 will still bill parents and their insurance for any of this healthcare.
Now, on to two tax bills.
In 2024, Kamala Harris suggested that unrealized capital gains were a great strategy – one that could both fill the United States coffers and make us more financially equitable. Others, even her supporters, described this plan using terms like “economy killer.”
With HB-1319, Washington State proposes to play this story out by “enacting a wealth tax on the ownership of stocks, bonds, and other financially intangible property.”
Effectively, this would place an annual “property tax” on the intangible wealth of the tangibly wealthy – those with $100 million or more in intangible financials – maybe two or three hundred WA state families.
Another way to think about the intangibly wealthy is that they are a small, select group who will promptly move out of WA state if this bill is passed. Recent history supports this – in 2023, after the WA state capital gains tax (on gains over $250,000) was ratified, both Jeff Bezos and Fisher Investments (one of the largest employers in Clark County) left for other states, and made it clear why they did.
HB-1319 opens with frothy language about how socially supportive WA state is, although still so regressive in its lack of proportional taxation distribution. Although HB-1319 will not decrease middle- or lower-income tax burden, it does take steps towards ensuring that the well-off start to pay as much, proportionally, as the poor.
At one level, this sounds fair – eat the rich, call them plunderers, and judge them to high heaven! But pragmatically speaking, the rich are massive contributors to the purse of the state, and also the most agile beings alive in terms of their ability to basically dump everything and start all over.
Moving on to property tax, HB-1334 would increase the annual property tax revenue growth limit. By voter initiative, since 2007, the rate of property tax growth has been capped at 1%. HB-1334 would allow for yearly increases of up to 3%, based on a formula that combines population growth and inflation.
There are a couple of immediate points of confusion here; 1% may seem pretty small compared to the dual-digit property tax increases in King County between 2020 and 2023. Those were due to an inflated real estate market and provided KC with a 17.3% bump in property tax revenue in the same timeframe. But that financial windfall is over.
Also not included in this 1% are funds from voter-approved levies. According to the Seattle Times, these “… have become an increasingly used way to raise local revenues without running afoul of the 1% cap.”
Nonetheless, KC officials have made it clear that the 1% limitation prevents them from really getting things done. Last year, when KC Road Services spoke at a Vashon-Maury Community Council Meeting, they cited the 1% limitation as the main barrier to being able to respond more quickly to certain road projects.
In early February, the KC Sheriff wrote to her staff stating their support of the property tax increase to prevent proposed department funding cuts. Interestingly, reports indicate that staff at the KC Sheriff Office are not necessarily in favor of this. There’s a tipping point where taxation becomes politically unsustainable, even for the beneficiaries of state spending. We appear to be there.
HB-1334 bill has passed out of the House and will have a hearing with the House Committee on Finance on February 11th. Last year, a similar property tax bill was introduced and never made it out of committee because so many comments against it were submitted. You can comment, too. Search online for “HB-1334, Washington, 2025.”
