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I-1464 would put campaign cash in voters’ hands

State Sen. Pam Roach, R-Sumner, made it into the political news recently. The FBI has been looking into her campaign fundraising.

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Image courtesy of Integrity Washington

What is strange is that Sen. Roach has said out loud what everyone walking the halls of the state Capitol knows: There is an intimate connection between campaign contributions, lobbying and legislators’ decisions on bills to support and to oppose. But our elected legislators are not supposed to publicly acknowledge these connections.

In 2014, Sen. Roach was campaigning for re-election. She was opposed by a fellow Republican, then-state Rep. Cathy Dahlquist of Enumclaw. Roach was trying to raise money for her campaign. By email, she reminded the Spokane private utility company, Avista, that she’d just been appointed to a legislative energy-policy advisory committee. Sleazy? Absolutely! Stupid? Yes. But, when these sentiments remain unspoken, absolutely commonplace.

What are we to expect when campaigns cost more than $200,000? If candidates don’t succeed raising money, they aren’t considered legitimate. So they spend a lot of time on the phone, organizing fundraisers, meeting lobbyists and the heads of political action committees, all in pursuit of campaign dollars. Who wouldn’t be surprised by legislative votes; just follow the money.

In the 44th District there is a real race between John Lovick, Democrat, who is the former Snohomish County executive and Janice Huxford, a Republican from Lake Stevens. Lovick has raised $47,000 and Huxford has raised $57,000. Whose on Huxford’s side? Premera, Regence, Ace Hardware, the Washington Food Industry Association, and the Trucking Action Committee. How about Lovick? The grocery store workers union, the Snohomish FireFighters, the teachers’ union, the state troopers and service employees. Who as a legislator will consider the public good?

How about unopposed candidates? Take for example Sen. Kirk Pearson, R-Monroe. He doesn’t have an opponent. Why would he need any campaign funds? But they have piled in, with Altria (Phillip Morris tobacco), 7-Eleven, Anhaueser-Busch, Chevron, the American Chemistry Council, PHRMA, Boeing, and Washington Banking PAC all contributing at least $900. Will Senator Pearson consider the public good of, for example, reining in drug prices, or will he be careful not to disturb the current status quo of the drug corporations and their high prices and profits?

Sen. Roach has merely pulled back the curtain on candidate-campaign contributors-legislative interactions. We don’t like what we see, but it happens all the time.

Is there a solution to this not-so-subtle corruption of public decision making? Yes! An unusual gathering of citizens, including tea party leaders, the League of Women Voters, and Connie Balmer,wife of ex-Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer, are supporting Initiative 1464, the Washington Government Accountability Act.

This initiative will limit donations from lobbyists to candidates to $100. I-1464 also sets up a voucher system, sending three $50 vouchers, called Democracy Credit contributions, to every voter in the state of Washington. As a voter, you decide if you want to contribute these vouchers to a legislative candidate. So instead of begging for $1,000 contributions from affluent residents, candidates would be motivated to request $50, $100 or $150 contributions from regular citizens, and actually give them a reason to make these donations. To be a qualified candidate to receive democracy vouchers, the candidate must receive at least 75 cash contributions of between $10 and $50. If they choose to participate, they cannot accept other contributions to their campaigns, be those from Boeing or Comcast or Jeff Bezos. They cannot contribute more than $5,000 of their own money for their campaigns. Their campaigns are limited to $150,000 to raise and spend. So they can’t buy their elections, and neither can the corporations and their lobbyists in Olympia.

Where does the money come from for Democracy vouchers? Right now, if you don’t live in Washington but you buy things in Washington, you don’t have to pay our sales tax. When my sister-in-law from Oregon comes up for Thanksgiving, or all those cruise boat passengers spend time in Seattle, they buy stuff and it’s all exempt from the sales tax. We pay it. They don’t.

Closing this sales tax loophole will provide the financing for Democracy vouchers. That would put an end to voiced and unvoiced quid pro quo between lobbyists, candidates, elected legislators, and corporations in the halls of Olympia.

Our democracy would actually reflect the will of the people!

Originally published in the Everett Herald »

How do Finns prosper more — with so much less, ostensibly, than we have?

Imagine living in a relatively small nation, where per capita income is $11,000 less than in Washington state, and the only natural resources are timber, water and ice. People pay a 31 percent tax on personal income in excess of $82,000, a value-added tax of 14 percent on food and restaurants, and 24 percent on most other goods. How could anyone possibly do well there, much less run a business and prosper?

And yet, looking at living conditions — such as education, health care, quality of life, economic dynamism and political environment — this nation actually does much better than we’re doing in the U.S. Fewer people are poor, and more people there live longer, are more productive, and are … well, happier.

This place isn’t Arendelle of the movie “Frozen.” It’s Finland. Finland has a highly industrialized, largely free-market economy. The conservative Heritage Foundation rates Finland and the U.S. 74th and 76th, respectively, in terms of “economic freedom.”

In Washington state, our per capita income is close to $50,000 per resident. By that measure, we’re a rich state. But we’re underfunding our schools from pre-K through higher education; too many people are homeless, while many more face stagnating incomes and diminishing public services; and we’re all facing more uncertain economic futures.

So how do the Finnish people prosper with so much less, ostensibly, than we have? The answer is, they make shared investments to build their kids, families and communities.

Look at the economy in terms of peoples’ lives: When a baby is born in Finland, the family gets a baby box with clothes, diapers, bedding, towels, a picture book, a teething toy and other items. Paid family leave kicks in for at least a year, at 80 percent compensation with a guarantee you can return to your job. When mom or dad decides to go back to work, the cost of day care is subsidized so the maximum monthly payment is $322.

As kids grow up, their parents can devote real time to them. Every worker gets five weeks vacation, and the family budget is enhanced with a monthly stipend of $110 for the first child. The stipend increases with each child, so the stipend for the fifth child is almost $200. Pre-kindergarten is universal and free for all children. Schools provide meals for all children. In school, children are immersed in a system focused on creativity, teacher and student autonomy, foreign languages, math and music. No surprise: 15-year-old Finns are the top in the world in education. And when a student goes to technical college or the university, there is no tuition. Instead, the student gets a living allowance!

The Finnish health care system covers everyone. A friend of mine recently had surgery which required two nights in the hospital. His total bill: $103.74, inclusive of surgery, hospitalization, care and medicines!

In retirement, people receive about 55 percent of their average earnings along with a $560 monthly housing allowance. The average pension, including the housing allowance, comes to about $29,000 a year. Full pensions start at age 63. It’s guaranteed, like our Social Security, so the Finns don’t have to worry and hope that their 401(k) performs well. They don’t need 401(k)s! How is this financed? The Finns pay 5.7 percent of their wages into the pension system, and 7.2 percent after age 53. Compare that to our 6.2 percent tax for our Social Security. Employers pay more: 23 percent.

So sure, taxes are higher in Finland. But it’s a shared investment the Finns use to build their economy. The Finns have figured out that once you provide a universal platform of educational opportunity and health and social security, then businesses can just focus on doing business, being innovative, creating new products and systems.

That is what the Finns do. It has a dynamic private sector, ranked third in the world by Grant Thornton accounting (the U.S. is ranked 12th). There are double the number of small and medium enterprises per 1,000 people in Finland compared to the U.S.

And the Finnish people don’t have to scrimp to pay $1,500 a month for child care, worry about how to take time off from work when they have a child, wonder how to pay $12,000 yearly tuition for a public university tuition, or risk bankruptcy in a medical emergency, or wonder about having enough to eat when they retire.

That means that they can grasp their future with hope. Can we?

Originally published at the Everett Herald

What Washington got for Boeing’s $305 million tax break

Last week Boeing reported that it had skipped out on $305 million in taxes in 2015. Back in 2013, the Legislature enacted a special Boeing exemption from business taxes.

The legislative intent was to keep jobs in Washington. But that was not written into the tax exemption bill. So in spite of, or maybe because of, the tax exemption, Boeing has shed over 10 percent of its workforce since 2012, shifting more than 10,000 jobs out of Washington state.

State Rep. June Robinson, D-Everett, has proposed a solution. She introduced legislation to make this tax exemption dependent on actual jobs. Any loss of jobs since December 2013 would decrease the allowable exemption. So Boeing’s tax exemption would have been cut in half now, because in the past three years, more than 5,000 Boeing jobs have been disappeared. It is a small commonsense step forward. But the Legislature refused to take it up.

Perhaps that is because some legislators believe that the tax incentives have proved justified. One legislative leader stated, “We all feel frustration with short-term layoffs,” he said. But taking a “long view,” landing the 777X and the carbon-fiber industry here “is the future of aviation” and “makes that package worthwhile.”

But these are permanent, not short-term, layoffs with Boeing investing in “centers of excellence” around the world. Was it this $305 million tax avoidance that made Boeing decide to build the 777X here? That $305 million was three-tenths of a percent of Boeing’s revenue in 2015, which exceeded $96.1 billion. Boeing spent $6.8 billion just buying back Boeing shares. The tax exemption amounted to 4 percent of this buyback program, which had nothing to do with positioning Boeing in Washington state.

Boeing’s business decision to place the 777X here was based on the factors of production, mainly that the Puget Sound area is host to the world’s best and most concentrated grouping of mechanical, technical and engineering human capital for aerospace production. In other words, we have the educated, trained and skilled workforce and the state is funding a pipeline of trained workers for future aerospace work. That is what interests Boeing.

If they can position work outside of Washington, they will. They have no commitment to our state. That ended when McDonnell Douglas took over Boeing twenty years ago. No longer was Boeing a northwest company with social commitments and production facilities dedicated to Washington state. Instead, it could be a rogue multinational company, and use Washington’s workers and intellectual capital to seed other production in other states and countries.

You might note that other states are giving Boeing tax exemptions as well. South Carolina, for example, gave Boeing $120 million in 2013 to offset Boeing’s expansion costs there. The South Carolina deal was dependent on the creation of 2,000 jobs. The $305 million Boeing saved in 2015 in our state was part of a $8.7 billion 16-year tax exemption deal. And in contrast to South Carolina, the Washington state deal appears to be dependent on job destruction!

How does this $305 million compared to the cost overruns of the 787? Those overruns amounted to $25 billion, or 84 times Boeing’s 2015 tax break. They were the result of Boeing shifting 787 production to other states and other countries. But the workers and managers in those places couldn’t meet the exact specifications needed to create and fly the 787. So production and repair was shipped back to Washington state, where highly trained and skilled workers put the pieces back together again. What was Boeing’s next move? Accelerate production in South Carolina, having the Puget Sound workforce train the South Carolina workforce to build the 787 correctly, and on time. This means that Boeing will slowly drain jobs out of our state, while also receiving a multi-billion dollar tax break over the next eight years.

Legislative consideration is usually a slow and deliberative process, for good reason. Legislators want to be able to consider all the intended and unintended consequences of their law-making. But the Boeing package was pushed through in a special two-day session, called for just that reason and paid for by the taxpayers of our state. All just to give Boeing a gift. What could that $305 million have paid for? Compensation for 4,000 teachers. Or community college tuition for 80,000 students. But instead it went to bulk up the stock buyback for Boeing shareholders. That is a disservice to the citizens of this state.

Originally published at at the Everett Herald

It takes a web of public support to keep ourselves healthy

Mention “the web” and many people will think you’re talking about the Internet. But when you’re having a serious medical problem, you see an entirely different network in action.

Two weeks ago, as my body tried — at first, in vain — to fight off a serious infection, my family and friends were the first set of those connections. They took me to the doctor and dentist, made sure I took antibiotics, talked to me, and comforted me. I’m grateful. I certainly was not in any condition to do that on my own. But I’m also grateful for the many other connections that supported them and made my care possible. Family and friends can only do so much.

Consider the doctors, l technicians, nurses, medical assistants and dentists who help us. We have this professional workforce thanks to public investments in the University of Washington’s medical school and nursing school, numerous community colleges and other universities and colleges across the state and nation. Not only was their cost of education subsidized by the state, but all the capital investments in building and technology for medical education came from the state’s taxpayers.

Consider the growing list of MRIs, CT scans, biologic drugs and cancer treatments now available. These advances are possible because of government investments in health research and development, through the National Institutes of Health. Anti-cancer drugs like Taxol, that have saved my sister’s life and thousands of others, were initially developed by the federally funded National Cancer Institute.

These are public triumphs for everyone’s health. But even those require a network to succeed. The priorities we set as a society, and enact through our democracy, are the foundation for everyone’s protection, health and quality of life.

Consider the roads leading to and from our homes and nearby medical facilities. No single person builds and maintains them. We chose to pool our resources via collective taxation to shape our transportation network.

Consider that half of all people in Washington have health insurance through government financing, whether via Apple Care, Medicare, Obamacare the State Health Benefit Exchange, or as public employees of school districts, fire districts, the state, counties and cities. My wife, sister and brother-in-law are part of this network. So is anyone over 65, all kids under 18, and many retired fans of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. This woven web of coverage isn’t perfect, but it beats handing your fate over to a private market interested more in profits than patients.

Consider that now in Seattle and Tacoma and Spokane, you can take a work day to care for yourself or sick family member without fear of losing your wages or your job. That’s only possible because the Seattle, Tacoma, and Spokane city councils passed ordinances to make it so. Initiative 1433, the statewide ballot measure now gathering signatures, would extend this network of law to all workers in the state.

When you are sick, you gain a new perspective on life. It tends to diminish one’s own sense of self-importance. That humbling is a good thing. We all need some perspective about ourselves away from the noise and ego of everyday life. It shatters the self-made, up-by-my-bootstraps, don’t-need-any-help edifice that too often masquerades as some kind of American ethos.

A person is only able to lead a healthy life because of the entire web around them: of society, government, health professionals, friends and family. Keep that in mind as certain presidential candidates invoke the founders of our country or other contemporary leaders as paragons of self-sufficiency. None of us are or were — not the founders (whose quality of life was enabled through the slave labor), not Donald Trump (whose wealth is protected by bankruptcy courts and civil law), and not Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton (who, like many of us, benefit from publicly provided health coverage).

We are all in this together, no matter what the color of our skin or the accents and language of our voices. It’s time to bury the hubris and take a large dosage of humility — maybe like some of our great-grandparents took a spoonful of cod liver oil each morning. Then we need to figure out how to advance as a nation of interconnected and interdependent individuals striving for lives of purpose, hope, happiness and solidarity.

Originally published at the Everett Herald

Black history, U.S. history are inseparable

Image: Community College of Aurora (Source)

Image: Community College of Aurora (Source)

This month is Black History Month. In reality, every month is Black History month, because without black people, there would be no United States.

Black history is tied up with slavery and capitalism, territorial expansion, annihilation of native Americans, the Civil War, Jim Crow, and ongoing inequality. It is tied up with these elements not as a peripheral happening on the margins of America, but as central to American development.

The first person killed in the American Revolution was a black man in Boston; Crispus Attucks, born a slave, was shot during the Boston Massacre. What is more telling about the American revolution is the thousands of blacks who fled to the British to gain their freedom. In England slavery had never been authorized by law. In the American colonies, slavery was sanctified by the colonies.

The founders of our country embedded slavery into the American legal system. They continued the trans-Atlantic slave trade. They gave extra political power to the slave south by counting each slave as three-fifths of a person for purposes of apportionment and representation. They mandated that escaped slaves must be returned to their original owners. That’s all in the constitution, written by the founders, white men from both the North and South.

Thomas Jefferson opened up new pathways for slavery with the Louisiana Purchase, bringing parts of Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, and New Mexico into the nation. This territorial expansion resulted in tremendous agricultural development, enabled through slavery.

Who were the slave owners? Our presidents, to start with. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Andrew Jackson, John Tyler, James Polk, and Zachary Taylor. Washington owned more than 250 slaves, Jefferson 200 slaves, Madison over 100, Andrew Jackson 200. But really, to own just one other person as property is damning all by itself. These men did not just own slaves, they sold slaves, whipped slaves, broke up the families of slaves, and raped slaves. This is not just part of black history, it is an essential part of American history.

Who is an American hero? Is it James Monroe, a signer of the constitution, our fifth President, and the absentee plantation owner whose overseers whipped slaves to work harder? Or is it Denmark Vesey, the free black organizer of a slave rebellion in South Carolina who was executed for this attempted act of liberation when Monroe was president? Is it Nat Turner, who led a slave rebellion in 1831 in Virginia? Or is it Andrew Jackson, the president during this rebellion, who owned a prosperous Hermitage plantation built on the backs of hundreds of slaves, who waged war on the Creek, Seminole, and Cherokee Indians, and who signed and put into force the Indian Removal Act, forcing tens of thousands of Cherokee from Georgia, opening up the southeast for the expansion of slavery.

Black people turned the American civil war into a war of liberation. Once the war began, hundreds of thousands of blacks fled to union lines. They forced Abraham Lincoln to make this a war for the emancipation of slaves. And as white men faltered and refused to sign up to fight, black soldiers took their places, fighting for the union, for emancipation, for themselves.

The acts of black people, both free and slaves, to overcome slavery, to liberate themselves, to become people who could actually strive for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, these were and are acts of utmost patriotism.

During Black History Month we celebrate the accomplishments of black people who are not threatening, people like the former slave George Washington who founded Centralia, or George Washington Carver, the famed botanist. But in telling black history as the integral part of American history, we could and should be celebrating those people who fled the colonies to gain their freedom, who led the rebellions against American slavery and the expansion of slavery, who enabled slaves to escape to freedom on the “ underground railroad.”

We should be celebrating Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, the 54th Massachusetts (colored) infantry from the Civil War, and 20th century leaders who made the establishment uncomfortable, people like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. These are the Americans who were brave and strong and lost their lives to help our country become, indeed, a more perfect union.

And we still have a long way to go.

Originally published at EOIOnline

Legislators have another chance to fix tax breaks, keep Boeing jobs in WA

I recently purchased a T-shirt from the Boeing store for my daughter, who is fan of the 737. It says, “If it’s not Boeing, I’m not going!” That may be true for her — but Boeing jobs are certainly on their way out of Washington.

How can this be? The Legislature met for a three-day special session in the fall of 2013, specifically to put in special tax breaks for the aerospace giant. That bill, sponsored by state Rep. Reuven Carlyle, D-Seattle,and state Sen. Andy Hill, R-Redmond, was introduced one day, had one hearing in the House, one in the Senate and passed the next day.

Those tax breaks work out to about $550 million a year. Since they were made law, Boeing has moved 3,600 jobs out of our state. That makes the recent news about the company avoiding $20 million in sales taxes last year an especially bitter pill.

Boeing jobs are going to California, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Missouri and South Carolina — but apparently not for the tax breaks in those states. The first three on that list have no special tax breaks for the company. Missouri‘s tax break amounts to $229 million over ten years, and requires Boeing to create 2,000 jobs to get it. South Carolina’s tax deal totals $1 billion, and requires the company to produce 5,800 jobs in that state.

Washington’s deal looks like gross largesse by comparison: a total of $12 billion in tax breaks since 2003 — with no requirement for new jobs, or even keeping existing jobs here! (Meanwhile, Boeing is developing a new finishing plant for the 737 in China.) If the Legislature had tied its tax “carrot” to jobs, we could have created up to 11,000 median wage jobs here. That would have been a fair trade.

Air_Berlin_B737-700_Dreamliner_D-ABBN

Our legislators can fix what’s gone wrong. In fact, Reps. June Robinson, D-Everett, Mike Sells, D-Everett and Luis Moscoso, D-Mountlake Terrace, have proposed legislation to tie tax breaks to jobs. House Bill 2147 would reduce Boeing’s tax breaks by increments for every drop in Boeing employment, starting with a baseline of 83,295 workers. That was Boeing’s Washington workforce when the tax breaks were passed. If Boeing shed 5,000 workers, then the tax break would dry up completely. The House Finance Committee gave this bill one hearing, and then sat on it.

Rep. Mia Gregerson, D-SeaTac, Robinson, Sells, Moscoso, Lillian Ortiz-Self, D-Mukilteo, Strom Peterson, D-Edmonds, and Derek Stanford, D-Bothell, have sponsored a bill to require aerospace companies taking advantage of the tax incentives to pay workers who have worked for them for three years at least 80 percent of the state’s median wage (about $16 an hour) by 2016, 90 percent by 2017, and 100 percent by 2018. The House Labor Committee passed this bill. From there, it went to the House Finance Committee, where again, nothing happened.

In January, state lawmakers will return to Olympia. Then those failures of legislative courage can be reversed by ensuring that the billion dollar aerospace tax breaks are tied to keeping good paying jobs right here in Washington.

Boeing ended its first quarter with a $9.6 billion cash cushion, after repurchasing 17 million shares for $2.5 billion and raising dividends by about 25 percent compared with a year ago. So Monday’s news about the $20 million Washington lost in sales tax revenue to the company looks like small potatoes.

But it’s a big deal for foster kids whose case managers are overstressed and overworked, trying to keep up with a workload that violates standards of care (and basic humanity). $20 million would enable our state to recruit and pay enough social workers to care for, protect and develop a pathway of hope and opportunity for these foster kids.

Those 32,000 students can’t get state financial aid even though they qualify, because legislators cut State Need Grant funding. $20 million would put college within reach for thousands of these students.

Those are just two of many examples. So what will it be when the Legislature convenes next month? Lumps of coal for those with the least, and billions of dollars for those with the most? Or will we recognize that giving tax dollars to a corporation that is shifting jobs out of our state is not a smart investment?

Originally published at the Everett Herald

Eyman has it partly right: Lower the sales tax. The rest…needs some work.

The polls may tell us we’re divided on who to vote for, but in our hearts I think we all want similar things: to ensure kids can get a strong start in life, to have a college degree or a professional trade to be within everyone’s reach, to have clean and safe places to play; and to live in safe and vibrant neighborhoods.

A good public budget plans for today’s priorities, for future needs, and for the unexpected — and taxes allow a community to pay for the public goods and services for which it has planned.

The latest Eyman Initiative, I-1366 (which just squeaked by with a 51% yes vote) could threaten all of that — but only if we let it. I-1366 says the Legislature has to either reduce the sales tax rate by one penny — which would, over the next 6 years alone, cut $8 billion from K-12 and higher education, mental health services, foster care and more — or vote to put a constitutional amendment on the 2016 ballot that would give a super-super minority of 17 out of 147 legislators the power to effectively stop any future tax reform, including closing corporate tax loopholes.

There are four ways our elected leaders can respond. Only one really has any hope of helping:

  • The Legislature can do nothing and hope that the state Supreme Court finds I-1366 unconstitutional. That is a hope, not a certainty.
  • The Legislature could vote to repeal the initiative, but that takes a two-thirds vote of both houses, which is unlikely given the prolonged partisan showdown over the budget this past year.
  • The Legislature could vote to put the undemocratic constitutional amendment proposed by I-1366 on the ballot, but again, that takes two-thirds vote of both houses. Unlikely at best.
  • The fourth option is to do Eyman one better, and double the sales tax decrease proposed in I-1366. Here’s why — and how.

Washington’s sales tax hits low- and middle-income people much harder than the wealthy, because people with less money have to spend more of it on the basics. Low income families contribute $1 out of every $8 they make for sales and excise taxes. Middle class families contribute $1 for every $13. The top 1 percent of families, those receiving more than a half-million dollars a year, contribute $1 for every $63 they receive. Under this system, cutting the sales tax is a big help for middle class and working class family finances … if that money is replaced with new revenues to fund the public services on which we all depend.

WA taxes 2015 ITEP

On the other hand, if we reduce the sales tax without a new source of revenue we can forget about reducing tuition at our colleges or reducing class sizes in our elementary schools. The only way we can pay for shared priorities like education, health care, stamping out forest fires, and public parks is if that money is replaced … and more.

So, let’s take a lesson from our neighbors in Idaho and Oregon and forty-three other states where people who receive more, pay more in taxes toward our community priorities — so all of us can have access to these public goods now and in the future. That is called an income tax!

Here is a dead-simple way to do it: the Legislature entirely exempts the first $50,000 of income from taxation, then the tax steps up the income ladder, so the effective tax rate is zero for families at $50,000, 2 percent for families at $100,000 ($2,000 in taxes), 5 percent for $500,000 of income, and 10 percent for a million dollars or more of income.

Washington has a lot more wealthy people than most other states. They just don’t pay their fare share of taxes. This progressive income tax would fix that and bring in $7.5 billion a year. Combined with a 2-cent sales tax decrease, as opposed to Eyman’s 1 penny, and legislators will have lowered taxes on three out of four households in our state — and still meet our government’s duty to fund the foundations of economic opportunity and a prosperous economy.

A bold legislature would take advantage of Initiative 1366 to pass this tax reform to benefit all of our citizens. But will they be bold?

Originally published at EOIOnline

‘Listening tour’ a tone-deaf exercise

girl school busRecently the State Senate

Early Learning and Education Committee brought their listening tour about K-12 education to Everett. This listening tour has come about as the Legislature has been found in contempt by our state Supreme Court of failing to meet “the paramount constitutional duty … to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within (our) borders.” The Supreme Court is fining the Legislature $100,000 a day. So instead of actually doing something about this, they decided to go on a (listening) tour.

Read that constitutional language carefully, “…ample provision for the education of all children…” It doesn’t say only children who are five years and older. It doesn’t define education as starting in kindergarten. It says, simply, “ample provision for the education of all children.”

We all know that education and learning begin a long time before kindergarten, in fact, immediately beginning at birth. That is what all the early brain research demonstrates. That is what parental love and caring has shown for all of human history, even in the absence of 21st century brain research. But this is not something that is officially embraced by our state.

Most of us are left on our own when it comes to the education of our children before kindergarten. At the same time, most parents go to work in the morning and come home in the evening, dropping off their young children in day care centers and family homes. So we depend on the teachers and caregivers in these centers and homes to love, care for, and teach our children.

So is the state making any effort at providing voluntary universal early learning for the young children of our state? Not really. Child care and early learning are seen as the responsibility of the parent. Public support and public dollars are not part of the equation for most kids and most parents. And yet we worry that kids are not “prepared” for kindergarten and they are not ready for school when they enter our public schools.

Our current system of early learning isn’t working very well. The average annual cost of child care in a child care center in 2014 in Washington was $13,488. That was a 9 percent increase, more than $1,145 from just two years before. It is more than tuition and fees put together at UW.

So how does this translate on the other side? The median wage of child care assistants was $20,796 and of teachers was $24,492 in 2014. It is a downward slope for these workers. Child care assistants actually made 40 cents per hour more in 2004, while supervisors, now earning $14.65, made 80 cents more per hour a decade ago. What do you get with lousy pay and few benefits? High turnover, no incentive to gain further relevant education, and low morale. These are not the ingredients which we need for high quality early learning.

Why is it so expensive? A major driver of cost are mandated ratios: one teacher for four infants, one teacher for seven toddlers, and one teacher for 10 pre-schoolers. If you have ever taken care of a group of very young children, you know that these ratios make a lot of sense.

The increasing cost, decreasing availability, and decreasing compensation are canaries in the coal mine for early learning. Our “system” of child care is largely dependent on parents paying tuition, while most of these parents have seen their wages and salaries stagnate, their health care costs increase, and the costs of having children pile up. So we starve the people we expect to care for, teach, and love our kids. The bottom has fallen out of the paramount duty for the education of all children when it comes to our youngest children. The Legislature is in complete disregard of its responsibilities and duties.

So when our state senators conclude their listening tour, they need to sit down and come up with the money, not just for K-12, but also for early learning. It is a tall order, about a $5 billion annual amount for education that we have been avoiding for decades. We know where that money is. Now we have to stop listening and go get it, for the future of our children and our state.

Original: Everett Herald »

A path forward on full funding for Washington’s schools

Good public schools won’t solve all the problems we face — but public education is a crucial cornerstone for creating hope and opportunity for students, and for building stronger communities and a more prosperous, equitable economy.

Ensuring every child has equal access to this ladder of opportunity, from pre-school through higher education, is the most important work of our state government. And if our elected leaders aren’t up to that task, then it falls to us, the voters, to make sure it happens.

One of the most encouraging developments during the recent five-day strike by Seattle educators was the outpouring of support from parents, students and local businesses. People understood why teachers were striking — not only for paying professionals what they are worth, but also to ensure adequate recess time for kids to run and play and breathe fresh air; to reduce stressful and unreliable testing; to make sure there are enough counselors, nurses and other workers essential to educational progress.

Seattle teachers achieved much of what they were looking for — but unless state elected officials pass future budgets that fully fund public education, Seattle residents — and those in other districts — will find themselves back in the same situation, scrambling for contested funds and watching their compensation decrease.

In fact, the average teacher salary in Seattle fell by $4,470 just from the 2013-14 school year to the 2014-15 school year.  This year average teacher compensation was $8,728 less than it was in 2010. All told, teachers lost $22,600 over the past six years compared to their salaries in 2009. And while they got an increase in their contract, they will still be $4,000 short of what they earned in 2009, doing the same work.

jrb graph for herald columnThis is no way to attract and retain a strong cadre of professionals who will dedicate their lives to helping kids reach their potential. Even if legislators don’t seem to recognize this, parents do. That‘s why Seattle parents started a new Facebook group, “Washington’s Paramount Duty,” which has garnered thousands of friends within a week.

When we talk about sustainable, predictable and ample revenue to fully fund basic education and tackle structural funding inequities, there is one simple, elegant and robust solution: a progressive income tax. Yes, in 2010 voters in Snohomish County clobbered an income tax on the wealthy, by a margin of 2 to 1.  But in Seattle, more than 63 percent of the voters supported this tax. Since then we have seen the accelerating escalation of income and wealth to the top 1 percent, and the stagnation of earnings for the rest of us. Without an income tax, we recoup none of that money from the top 1 percent to fund our schools.

A progressive income tax, with a $50,000 exemption, would raise $7.5 billion a year. That would be sufficient to fund K-12 education as the Supreme Court has ordered, reduce tuition by half at our public universities and colleges, fully fund early learning, including the compensation of early learning teachers, and enable the Legislature to lower the sales tax rate by 1.5 cents on every dollar.  It would shift taxes from working class families to high income individuals. It would bring equity to both education and taxation.

Our state legislators should vote a progressive income tax into law. That really is the only way to end the undermining of public schools. But if they just dawdle around the edges, shrugging their shoulders at the fines and contempt findings leveled on them by the Supreme Court, voters will need to take matters into their own hands. Our kids can’t wait.

[Original posted at the Everett Herald]

State income tax would fix school funding and much more

Twelve days ago the State Supreme Court found that the Legislature is in “ongoing violation of its constitutional obligation to amply provide for public education.” It imposed a $100,000-a-day fine until a funding plan for this obligation has been satisfied. That adds up to about $3 million a month, which may seem like a lot, but is small potatoes in the big picture of the state’s $38 billion operating budget. If anything, the court let the Legislature off easy. A more effective remedy would have been to garnish the salaries of the legislators themselves. That would have gotten their attention!

Legislative leaders think they can just muddle through and do a minimal amount to meet the paramount duty for the education of all children. This is what they want to believe, so that they do not have to grapple with our tax system, which is the underlying reason for the perpetual underfunding of state services, including — but not solely — K-12 education. They want to manage the fiscal crisis. We need to vanquish it.

Our state government underfunds all over the place. Case managers for foster kids have a case load that is 30 percent higher than national standards, meaning they don’t have the time to devote to abused, neglected and disregarded foster children. College tuition, now running at close to $12,000 a year at the University of Washington, is almost double what it was ten years ago, even with the slight decreases put into place this summer.

How much will it cost to fully fund McCleary and the voter-approved but Legislature-delayed Initiative 1351? About $3.5 billion a year more than what the Legislature is funding now. What if we decrease higher education tuition by 75 percent, resulting in tuition levels of $1,500 for community college, $2,500 for the regional universities, and $3,500 for the research universities? That’s another $1.5 billion.

Image: Themeplus/Flickr Creative Commons

You can’t just muddle through that $5 billion. Economic growth won’t get us there, because our tax system is not tethered to growth in income. But it would also be incredibly easy to get this money, if we had the political leadership willing to do so.

How can that be? Look to Amazonia on South Lake Union or across I-405 to Redmond, or to the tony neighborhoods of Hunts Point and Medina. Note the new buildings, new cars, new remodels, new houses, and realize that is just the tip of the iceberg of new income and wealth in our state. The beneficiaries, indeed the takers, of this wealth, gain it thanks to our public legal system, public transportation infrastructure, public-owned utilities, public schools, public safety and public higher education. And yet, because we don’t tax income at all, we leave the biggest building blocks for education on the table. All of this income stays with the house. In staying with the house, it just makes worse the aggregation of income, privilege, power, and wealth to the top 1 percent, while undermining and under financing public services.

Legislative leaders turn a blind eye to the wealthy when considering how to fund McCleary. As a result, the Legislature violates the state’s paramount constitutional duty. These leaders are afraid of even mentioning a tax on income, yet that is the only solution for full funding of McCleary and for putting a brake on the accelerating accumulation of outsized income at the very top.

How much revenue would a progressive income tax provide for public services? First exempt $50,000 of income. Then put in place effective tax rates of 2 percent for a $100,000 household, 3.5 percent for a $200,000 household, 5 percent for a $500,000 household, 6.25 percent for a million dollar household, and 8.125 percent for a $2 million household. That would raise $7.5 billion.

Now let’s do the math:

$7.5 billion in new revenue,

Minus $3 billion for K-12 education,

Minus $1.5 billion for higher education tuition,

Minus $500 million for early childhood education.

That leaves $2.5 billion on the table. With that, we could take a bite out of our regressive tax system by dropping the sales tax by 1.5 cents. That would cost about $1.5 billion. And that leaves $1 billion a year for other public services and a reserve.

The expenditures for McCleary are certain and definitive. You can’t get around them. So let’s not try. Instead, it is time for a progressive income tax. We can’t afford to wait.

Original published at the Everett Herald