It’s a potent strategy to sandbag voters with more than they can process and then throw distorted sound bites at them to try to snare a vote. The proponents of the initiatives on your ballot are exploiting short attention spans. Ergo, we have four proposals, each of which could suck up a considerable amount your careful consideration and which the proponents hope you will just agree with.

The initiatives repeal entirely or cut the heart out of existing legislation that is making progress on longstanding problems in our state. Each initiative, if passed, takes us backwards and keeps us there. Two initiatives would repeal powerful climate legislation while erasing many billions from the state budget. One would repeal a capital gains tax that has generated $2.2B in education funding in three years. Another would destroy our long-term health care benefit, and leave us with the huge expense of dismantling it, estimated in the ballot fiscal statement at $12M to $31M per year for three years.

What would be dismantled is the product of many years of study and debate. Citizens, elected officials, government leaders, tribal governments, nonprofit advocates, business leaders, and experts in many fields have negotiated and taken their best shot at addressing important problems. Millions of dollars have been spent. The funding, contracts, and programs are in full swing. Unwinding this is tearing down the house, folks. When the dust settles, we would be far less well off. Back to square one with little money, our direction in tatters.

We should ask ourselves? Is there some strategy to address longstanding problems that everyone will think is perfect? Is there a way to accomplish what is needed without raising money from any source, including, at times, our own pockets? Not likely. We are at a crossroads.

Recommended: Vote NO on all of the initiatives, keep what we have, make progress, and improve our efforts as we go!

Initiative 2117

I-2117 would repeal the Climate Commitment Act (CCA), our flagship climate legislation. The CCA steadily ratchets down greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from about 100 covered entities that together emit a whopping three-fourths of the GHG in the state. The CCA also requires that climate impacts be a business expense for these entities. Imagine that! The initiative would throttle us further by dictating that the state may never again adopt any law placing a cost on GHG emissions. They are offering us the option to tie our elected officials’ hands on climate policy forever? Yeah.

The fees that covered entities pay for GHG-emission permits are plowed back into communities and the living environment impacted by climate change, helping us to decarbonize and cope. The law has generated $2.3B in less than two years with much more on the way. Reduced GHG emissions provide the immediate benefit of reduced illness and death related to air pollution (e.g. asthma and cancer). In the long view, the CCA is the law that takes us the furthest in reaching state GHG reduction goals.

The proponents of 2117 call the CCA “a money-grab.” If assessing a fee to emit the lion’s share of climate-wrecking pollution in our state is a money-grab, I say grab the money.

The proponents state that the CCA caused gasoline prices to increase. The fact is that fossil fuel companies are not required to disclose their costs and pricing strategies. Trying to point to gas price data to prove correlation is speculation. According to the U.S. Energy Information System, the highest price of gasoline in Washington was $5.44 in June, 2022, six months prior to the CCA going into effect in January 2023. Prices have dropped since and are now where they were at times during 2008 and 2012.

The permit fees generated by the CCA are deposited into three purpose-driven accounts, expenditures from which you can read about at Clean and Prosperous. Examples include community solar, EV charging, rebates for heat pumps and appliances, transit, active transportation, wildfire protection, electric ferries, salmon habitat, forest preservation, air pollution monitoring, and much more.

Cities and counties are eligible for CCA funds to implement their climate action plans. For example, Mercer Island has received $219K in CCA grant money for home electrification and appliance rebates. The City is in process of signing a $100K grant for EV charging stations on Mercer Island. The City is eligible for an additional $400K, not available if 2117 passes. Multiply Mercer Island’s experience by hundreds of other cities and counties, many with larger amounts of money at stake.

If 2117 passes, no more Climate Commitment Act, no way to force those huge emissions down, and no more billions of dollars to decarbonize our communities and cope with climate change. Meanwhile, business as usual for oil refineries, steel and cement plants, power utilities, etc. that forward profits to shareholders and leave us on our own to cope with devastating climate change.

Initiative 2066

I-2066 would hamstring planning by power companies to reduce costs and GHG emissions. Also, it would block powerful GHG-cutting provisions of the state energy code. The code could not favor a heat pump instead of gas by the way that energy credits are awarded. Considerations of climate change aside, the typical fossil fuel pollution to which we are all exposed would continue as usual, contributing to diseases such as asthma and cancer.

I-2066 proposes a series of amendments to the law that governs planning by power utilities. The amendments methodically delete provisions that are favorable to electrification and add provisions that prohibit “discouragement” of gas. The amendments can be quickly perused in the “Full Text” of 2066 in the Voter’s Pamphlet.

Millions of new homes will be constructed over coming decades. The most cost-effective, energy efficient, and climate-friendly way to build them is to install a heat pump. I-2066 would prohibit the incentive to do so, increasing housing costs at a time when affordable housing is a crisis.

Readers would rightly be asking how all of this electrification helps if the source of power is dirty. For example, Puget Power’s electricity is currently generated by coal, hydroelectric, gas, and wind. The answer is that the state’s incentives to electrify are coupled with a law that requires a power transition to clean sources. The law is called the Clean Energy Transformation Act. It requires Puget Sound Energy and other utilities to be off of coal by end of 2025, GHG neutral by 2030, and GHG free in 2045. These are not just dates on the calendar. Efforts are a huge commitment and they are ongoing.

When customers electrify, it reassures utilities that we will be using the clean energy they are increasingly sourcing. For we who electrify, we will be getting electric power from utilities that are not generating it with fossil fuels. When we plug in our EV we will know that the power is not coming partly from fossil fuels. Our building uses will be truly clean. Airborne pollution causing disease will be substantially reduced.

Initiative 2109

At a time of record deficits for schools, 2109 would eliminate a capital gains tax that has generated about $2.2B for education since enactment in 2022. The proceeds go towards K-12, higher education, early learning, child care, and construction.

The tax applies to fewer than 4000 of the wealthiest people in the state. Exemptions include the sale of real estate and family businesses, charitable donations, and retirement savings accounts. The tax is 7% on certain capital gains in excess of $250,000 in a calendar year.

In a state which places a heavier tax burden on those earning the least, the capital gains tax improves fairness. The initiative is an attack on our children, those to whom we owe our greatest care.

Initiative 2124

This initiative would make it likely that WA Cares, the nation’s first state long-term care program, will fail. WA Cares was adopted by the legislature in 2019. About 4 million people are currently paying into the plan at about $6 per $1000 earned. WA Cares provides a benefit of $36,000 and is portable if you move out of state. It is a modest benefit for care of elderly, disabled, and persons who may be suffering illness or injury. Dismantling the program will be costly.

The initiative would require that, instead of automatic enrollment, employees would have to sign up in order to participate. Studies have confirmed that not enough people would sign up to support continued viability. Like all social programs, we gripe about paying into them but we like it when we are on the receiving end. Most of us will need long term care at some point, but only about 5% buy it on the private market, gambling that it may not be needed.

Long term care for those of low income is usually provided by women family-members, particularly women of color, who are unpaid caregivers. The demise of WA Cares will have the greatest impact upon them, and upon people for whom a $36,000 benefit will make a real difference, allowing for loved ones to not have to quit their paying jobs to care for family members, or to at least compensate them when they do. For the rest, the benefit helps by varying degrees depending on what is going on in their lives.

WA Cares is a good start toward a pressing need, and a compassionate program. We should keep it.

If you’ve made it this far, it’s worth repeating: Vote NO on all of the initiatives, keep what we have, make progress, and improve our efforts as we go!