John Braun: This year’s passage of four initiatives is already making our state better
Friday, December 20, 2024
Earlier this month, the City of Federal Way released data showing crime rates overall had fallen 11% from a year ago.
That’s great news for any community, especially one of the larger cities in our state. The statistic that really stood out was the 52% drop in auto thefts.
While Federal Way’s mayor appropriately gave most of the credit for this progress to the city’s police officers and leadership, he also made a point of acknowledging what state legislators did to help officers get back to pursuing criminals the way they once could.
That refers to the Legislature’s passage of Initiative 2113 this past March. The initiative repealed the reactionary pursuit restrictions that had been passed by majority Democrats in 2021, which quickly turned out to be a gift to car thieves and other lawbreakers.
It was nice of the mayor to praise legislators. However, the gratitude really should go to the 434,112 Washington voters who signed petitions to put I-2113 in front of the Legislature, and to Let’s Go Washington, which coordinated the gathering of the voter signatures.
The pursuit restrictions adopted three years ago were more ideological than practical. They were driven by the misguided anti-police sentiment from which communities like Seattle are still recovering. Ironically, the former House member who filed that bill was a Democrat from, of all places, Federal Way.
Thieves can read, and once they realized how the change in law would let them steal things with almost zero chance of being pursued, it was game over. By October 2021, more than twice as many cars were being stolen as the nearly 1,700 reported in June 2021, the last full month before the law changed.
The first effort to restore a “reasonable suspicion” standard to the rule about vehicle pursuits was derailed at the last minute by the more extreme members of the Senate majority in 2022. By then, car thefts were setting one record after another, exceeding 4,000 per month statewide.
Some of our Democratic colleagues downplayed the significance of the growing wave of car thefts. They contended a car is just a piece of property, and because property crimes aren’t violent crimes, they weren’t worth a police pursuit.
It apparently never occurred to them how a car theft could cost a single mother her job or hinder her ability to care for her kids. Or, they were oblivious to the concept that the fear of being pursued would be enough of a deterrent to change the mind of a would-be car thief.
In 2023, the majority consented to a few changes in the pursuit law but continued to resist our efforts to make suspected car thieves fearful again.
It seemed like we were stuck, and criminals would continue to have the advantage. Then Let’s Go Washington and those hundreds of thousands of concerned voters stepped in, and suddenly, there was hope.
Almost exactly a year ago, boxes of signed petitions in support of I-2113 and five more initiatives to the Legislature were turned in at the secretary of state’s office. In all, they contained some 2.6 million signatures. Well over 800,000 voters signed in support of at least one of the six measures.
All six initiatives were certified — the first time that many measures had been put in front of the Legislature in a single session.
Three of the initiatives were passed before we adjourned for the year: I-2113, to return the pursuit restrictions to their 2020 form; I-2081, to create a parents’ bill of rights for K-12 education; and I-2111, to ban an income tax at any level of government.
The other three measures would have repealed laws that enrich state government: the Climate Commitment Act, which functions as a hidden gas tax; the capital-gains income tax; and the mandatory payroll tax for long-term care.
Majority Democrats refused to hold votes on those measures while we were in session, which automatically moved them on to the November ballot.
As a result, the attorney general’s office was able to use the majority’s new “warning label” law to publicly disparage those three initiatives. The biased claims were then blasted across the airwaves and online, week after week, by high-powered, big-money opposition campaigns.
Knowing how those three cost-saving initiatives would have made living in Washington more affordable, it was very disappointing to see them go down to defeat simply because opponents had such a financial advantage.
Still, Republicans respect the will of the voters. Now that we know the Climate Commitment Act, capital-gains income tax and payroll tax will remain in place, we can look for opportunities to deal with the obvious flaws in those policies.
Also, as 2024 draws to a close, let’s consider that our state is in a better position now than it was a year ago, thanks to Let’s Go Washington and the voters who made the initiatives happen in the first place.
Looking at the year as a whole — and counting the voters’ passage of I-2066, to protect access to natural gas — the people of Washington went 4-for-7 on either repealing bad laws or enacting pro-taxpayer, pro-family, pro-child policies. The benefits of that are already being seen in places like Federal Way, with its lower crime rates.
Still, there are major public-safety concerns to address, like the shortage of law-enforcement officers. Also, look for majority Democrats to continue resisting our efforts to adopt common-sense policies about fentanyl and stolen firearms, for example.
As significant as this year’s four winning initiatives are, the Democratic leaders in the Senate and House are clearly more interested in talking about the three measures that didn’t become law.
Specifically, they see the defeat of the money-saving initiatives in November as a sign that Washington taxpayers are willing to turn more of their hard-earned dollars over to state government.
Outgoing Gov. Jay Inslee hinted at the same thing regarding the whopping $13 billion in tax increases in his final budget, which he made public Dec. 17.
Republicans won’t make such assumptions about the voters’ intent. We’ll just point out that winning the best of 7 is always a good thing – and say goodbye to 2024 with gratitude for the efforts of voters who put four good pieces of legislation in a place where they could be passed. It has already made our state better.
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Sen. John Braun of Centralia serves the 20th Legislative District, which spans parts of four counties from Yelm to Vancouver. He became Senate Republican leader in 2020.