Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Early in the 2025 legislative session, there was a lot of hopeful talk from the new governor about reining in emergency powers, reducing the misuse of emergency clauses and keeping the budget under control after a decade of huge increases. This would have been a welcome change from Governor Inslee who repeatedly abused his power and left the state worse than he found it in many areas.

Ultimately, Governor’s Ferguson’s first session failed in all of those areas. A bill to limit emergency powers supported by the governor was not adopted.

The governor vetoed some meaningless emergency clauses but left others that were designed to undermine the ability of the people of Washington to vote on these issues. According to the legislative code revisor’s office, there were about 48 bills that included emergency clause language in some form. Not all of these were abusive, but some were, and they were left in place.

And the budget increased both taxes and spending significantly. The tax increases are the largest in state history, by a large margin.

Additionally, the claim that these taxes only hit the wealthy is clearly wrong. The budget increases gas taxes, property taxes, fees for state parks and many other costs that will impact virtually everyone.

The notion that these new taxes are needed to pay for the budget is also dubious. The state budget has increased by 51% after inflation and population growth since 2013. It is also important to note that despite that dramatic increase in spending, Washington has failed badly at its most basic functions – educating children, promoting public safety, providing reliable roads and ferries, preserving our environment, etc.

There are some good things that were removed from the budget. For example, we highlighted last year’s wasteful $45 million EV subsidy that ended up subsidizing the wealthy while doing little to reduce CO2 emissions. Although Governor Inslee wanted to increase funding for those subsidies, the program was eliminated from the budget.

Additionally, Gov Ferguson vetoed some bad spending. Including $200,000 to teach low-income families how to ice skate (this is real). Another veto eliminated about $2 million to study offshore wind turbines with some of that money being directed to one of Jay Inslee’s former advisors. We highlighted that waste as well. This is good news.

But Governor Ferguson’s vetoes reduce the budget by a total of about $25 million. That is nothing. It amounts to .03% of the state biennial budget. There are individual line items that could save that much. For example, the budget includes $22,544,000 just for local government climate planning. There is another $10 million to help activist groups and local governments access federal climate grants – spending taxpayer money to get more taxpayer money.

What do we do from here?

First, we will keep fighting in Olympia for good policy. We did get some wins this year, including legislation to finally exempt agriculture from the costly CO2 tax.

But when it comes to good policy and promoting change, the Washington Policy Center believes that it begins at the local level. That’s why we are focusing on promoting change from the ground up. The best solutions come from people who feel the costs directly and see the results of public policy. We know this works better for schools. We know it works better for the environment. We know it works better in our daily lives.

We need to reestablish the connection between people and their governance. Right now politicians and government are intentionally distant from people. Politicians deliberately lie to the public and manipulate them in the hopes of imposing an ideological agenda.

In Spokane a judge actually overturned the will of the voters to address homelessness and the city council then refused to honor the will of the people. That is wrongheaded and Un-American.

We need the exact opposite. We need more connections to the people who are the source of sovereign power. We need more empowerment of individuals and families, not only because it works better, but because it is simply more respectful of individuals and more moral.

Washington Policy center will work to change policies at the local level. Limit property taxes. Give parents control of their children’s education. Help people keep their community beautiful and be good stewards of the environment.

That’s the difference between us and many who run Washington now. They see the public as an obstacle to be manipulated and controlled. We see the public as the main source of legitimacy and solutions.

Washington is a case study of what happens when people outsource societal problems to politicians and government bureaucracy. Money gets spent. Taxes are increased. Government grows. And the problems get worse. It is time to change that. And that change begins from the ground up.