Time to end the debate once and for all on Washington’s supermajority for taxes requirement

The Tacoma News Tribune ran my op-ed this morning calling for the Legislature to put on the ballot a constitutional amendment to require a supermajority vote to raise taxes. From the op-ed:

In November, the people of Washington will vote on Initiative 1185. The measure would reaffirm the nearly 20-year old state law requiring that tax increases pass with a two-thirds vote in the Legislature or receive voter approval.

If voting on this requirement feels like déja vu all over again, that’s because it is.

State voters have enacted or confirmed the two-thirds vote requirement four times – in 1993, 1998, 2007 and 2010 . . .

The Washington Policy Center has long recommended letting the people vote on whether to make the two-thirds requirement part of the state constitution. Should the court (as it has done the three previous times) reject the challenge to the nearly 20-year-old statutory requirement enacted by the people and Legislature on multiple occasions, this question should still be referred to the voters one last time.

This would let us get off this seemingly endless merry-go-round of passing the same law over and over again, so we can get some certainty on this policy.

To help gauge potential legislative support for allowing the voters to end this debate once and for all with a constitutional amendment, we sent all candidates for the Legislature (and those Senators not up for election) the following survey question:

If Initiative 1185 is adopted, would you vote to allow the people of Washington to have the opportunity to vote on a state constitution amendment to require a supermajority vote in the Legislature to raise taxes?

We received over 100 responses to our survey and will publish the results in the coming weeks.