Gregoire tax ads don’t tell full story

OLYMPIA – Turn on your TV these days and you’ll see campaign ads suggesting that Gov. Chris Gregoire is out there beating the drum for a state income tax.

And then you’ll see Gregoire’s ads, in which she claims she doesn’t support an income tax “and never have.”

Who’s right?

Well, neither one.

Gregoire has clearly said, with a camera rolling, that she thinks a state income tax would be “a good idea,” so long as it was coupled with decreases in other taxes. But she also suggested that it’s a political impossibility here without a lot more support from lawmakers and voters.

Interestingly, when a newspaper writer asked Gregoire if she needed to be promoting the idea of an income tax, she immediately said it would be a waste of time. Gov. Booth Gardner pushed the idea hard, she said, “and it fell flatter than a pancake.”

Gregoire made those comments in a much-viewed 2007 appearance before The Spokesman-Review’s editorial board. (See my blog, www.eyeonolympia.com, for links to the unedited six-minute video and some of the political ads it spawned.)

Here’s a summary of what was said:

An editorial writer asked Gregoire, “Is there ever a time for an income tax” in Washington?

Gregoire pointed out that new laws often take years to get through Olympia. She noted that lawmakers have held some hearings exploring the idea of an income tax.

“The concept is being introduced for discussion purposes,” she said. “We don’t have an electorate out there that will support it right now. Clearly when I go across the state, the support’s not there.”

Success, she suggested, will require that voters be convinced that the current tax system is unfair, particularly to those lower on the economic ladder.

“So much of it is how we’re going to educate them to the regressive tax system that we have in the state and how we need to have some sort of conversion over to a partial income tax,” Gregoire said. (The second half of that sentence features prominently in a recent Rossi campaign ad.)

But Gregoire continued: “Now’s not the time, I can tell you, because the electorate isn’t there. The hearings were had. It just isn’t the time. But it’s not as if it’s not a good idea. It’s not as if it’s not one that we should pursue. It’s one that we just have to keep holding hearings and let time pass and eventually I assume we’re going to get there.”

Editorial writer Doug Floyd later asks “if there needs to be somebody to push for tax reform.”

“But you have had that,” Gregoire responded. “I’ll tell you, ’cause I was in his Cabinet: (Gov.) Booth (Gardner) did a dramatic push – and it fell flatter than a pancake.”

“It isn’t as if this isn’t a new idea and it hasn’t been pursued historically,” Gregoire said. “Its time will come, but its time has yet to come. It’s one of those issues that we have to continue to constantly have a dialogue about, but right now, that Legislature is in fact a citizen Legislature. And I don’t see the votes … in either the Senate or the House.”

A year later, Gregoire is now running an ad in which she looks directly into the camera, suggests that Rossi’s lying and says flatly “I do not support a state income tax and I never have.”

“This is 100 percent not true,” said Rossi spokeswoman Jill Strait, who said Gregoire “is amazingly now trying to deny” her past comments.

“The incumbent has been caught in a blatant lie when she says she has never supported a state income tax,” said Strait. “She clearly does support such a tax; she just won’t say so when it’s campaign season.”

In vote after vote for decades, Washingtonians have repeatedly rejected the idea of a state income tax. The last major candidate to call for one was King County Executive Ron Sims, who ran for governor four years ago. He lost by a landslide more than 2 to 1 – against Gregoire in the Democratic primary.

And in Olympia, five bills backing an income tax have been introduced in the Statehouse since 2003. All promptly died in committee. Only one even got a hearing.

I-1000, I-1029 prospects looking good

The Washington Poll, a University of Washington-based survey, this week released a new batch of results on the several initiatives appearing on this year’s ballots.

Initiative 1000, which would allow terminally ill patients to obtain lethal prescriptions, appears headed for victory. The poll found 56 percent leaning toward voting yes, 38 percent no.

Interestingly, this “death with dignity” measure is one of the few places on this year’s political landscape where the famous Cascade Curtain evaporates.

Liberal-learning Puget Sounders, the poll suggests, favor the idea 55 percent to 39 percent. But in Eastern Washington, a reliably conservative region that’s often the political mirror image of Seattle, voters support it by about the same ratio: 53 percent to 41 percent.

I-1029, a union-backed measure to require more paid training for home health care workers, seems even more popular: 65 percent yes, 20 percent no.

The only statewide measure that might be struggling, according to the poll, is Tim Eyman’s I-985, which would strip millions of dollars from the state’s main checking account to pay for anti-congestion work on roads. The poll found 45 percent of voters leaning toward a yes, 43 percent no.

Yes, Virginia …

Among the declared write-in candidates for president in Washington this year:

– Donald K. Allen, who’s urging a “huge class-action suit by American citizens against Congress” for the bad mortgage meltdown and decries an alleged Bush plan for turning Mexico, Canada and the United States into “one big, open, borderless co-op.”

– Frank Moore, a bushy-bearded man missing at least a couple front teeth, who promises to “do away with welfare and Social Security” in lieu of a guaranteed income for all Americans of $1,000 a month. He’ll also destroy 10 percent of America’s nuclear arsenal a year.

– Jose Aparicio, whose “Rebirth Party” home page seems to have drawn just a single reader comment this year.

– Santa Claus, a Nevada man formerly known as Thomas O’Connor. He had his named legally changed in 2005.