Chief
05-09-2007, 06:05 PM
http://www.theolympian.com/101/story/101231.html
Adam Wilson
The Olympian
The Washington Supreme Court is considering whether voters were able to tell exactly what Initiative 747 did when they passed it in 2001.
The measure has limited *property-tax increases to 1 percent a year since it passed. But almost a year ago, a lower court in King County agreed with a county and a coalition of low-income advocacy groups in their case against the initiative.
The Supreme Court will issue its decision in the case later. How long that will take is difficult to predict, as the court has decided some other high-profile cases in a matter of days but has taken more than a year on others.
At the heart of the debate is the way I-747 was written to back up an earlier initiative that limited property taxes. That measure lowered the lid on tax increases from 6 percent to 2 percent, but it was under a court challenge.
The courts struck the first law down after I-747 was written but before it came to a vote.
The challengers say voters who read I-747 would not realize the new law changed the maximum property-tax increase from 6 percent to 1 percent — not from 2 percent to 1 percent.
“Some people thought they were voting for one thing … some people thought they were voting for something else,” attorney Knoll Lowney said.
The Attorney General’s Office defended the initiative as a state law, saying statewide initiative guru Tim Eyman of Mukilteo and other backers did the best they could to explain in the measure what it would do.
Asking people to write initiatives that take into account future court decisions is impossible, deputy Attorney General Cameron Comfort said.
“The voters pamphlet entirely explained the law as it exists,” he added, noting the pamphlet was written after the courts struck down the first tax-limiting measure.
The justices peppered both sides with questions, asking how initiative writers could have avoided the problem and how much work voters had to do to understand I-747.
Supreme Court Justice Bobbe Bridge focused on the portion of the law that requires initiatives to show which statutes they will change.
Justice Richard Sanders said the law being changed may be less important than the effect of the new one.
“There’s no doubt, is there, that someone who voted or anyone who voted for this initiative understood that the maximum allowed increase was 1 percent?” he asked.
Whitman County officials filed the case against I-747 because Whitman was one of two counties where voters opposed the initiative, county commissioner Greg Partch said after the arguments. The other county was King.
“It’s devastating for taxing districts, our fire districts,” Partch said. “They have just about used up all their reserves.”
Partch said I-747 did less to damage the county’s finances than another Eyman-backed measure, I-695, which limited car-tab fees.
That measure also was defeated in a court challenge, but unlike I-747, it was written back into law by the Legislature.
Eyman, who was in the courtroom, said local governments will quickly raise taxes if the Supreme Court strikes down his initiative.
<a href="http://clarkblog.org/index.php/topic,356.0.html">“It’ll be pigs at a trough,”</a> he said.
Justice Jim Johnson is not participating in the case. He helped draft I-747 before joining the court.
Adam Wilson
The Olympian
The Washington Supreme Court is considering whether voters were able to tell exactly what Initiative 747 did when they passed it in 2001.
The measure has limited *property-tax increases to 1 percent a year since it passed. But almost a year ago, a lower court in King County agreed with a county and a coalition of low-income advocacy groups in their case against the initiative.
The Supreme Court will issue its decision in the case later. How long that will take is difficult to predict, as the court has decided some other high-profile cases in a matter of days but has taken more than a year on others.
At the heart of the debate is the way I-747 was written to back up an earlier initiative that limited property taxes. That measure lowered the lid on tax increases from 6 percent to 2 percent, but it was under a court challenge.
The courts struck the first law down after I-747 was written but before it came to a vote.
The challengers say voters who read I-747 would not realize the new law changed the maximum property-tax increase from 6 percent to 1 percent — not from 2 percent to 1 percent.
“Some people thought they were voting for one thing … some people thought they were voting for something else,” attorney Knoll Lowney said.
The Attorney General’s Office defended the initiative as a state law, saying statewide initiative guru Tim Eyman of Mukilteo and other backers did the best they could to explain in the measure what it would do.
Asking people to write initiatives that take into account future court decisions is impossible, deputy Attorney General Cameron Comfort said.
“The voters pamphlet entirely explained the law as it exists,” he added, noting the pamphlet was written after the courts struck down the first tax-limiting measure.
The justices peppered both sides with questions, asking how initiative writers could have avoided the problem and how much work voters had to do to understand I-747.
Supreme Court Justice Bobbe Bridge focused on the portion of the law that requires initiatives to show which statutes they will change.
Justice Richard Sanders said the law being changed may be less important than the effect of the new one.
“There’s no doubt, is there, that someone who voted or anyone who voted for this initiative understood that the maximum allowed increase was 1 percent?” he asked.
Whitman County officials filed the case against I-747 because Whitman was one of two counties where voters opposed the initiative, county commissioner Greg Partch said after the arguments. The other county was King.
“It’s devastating for taxing districts, our fire districts,” Partch said. “They have just about used up all their reserves.”
Partch said I-747 did less to damage the county’s finances than another Eyman-backed measure, I-695, which limited car-tab fees.
That measure also was defeated in a court challenge, but unlike I-747, it was written back into law by the Legislature.
Eyman, who was in the courtroom, said local governments will quickly raise taxes if the Supreme Court strikes down his initiative.
<a href="http://clarkblog.org/index.php/topic,356.0.html">“It’ll be pigs at a trough,”</a> he said.
Justice Jim Johnson is not participating in the case. He helped draft I-747 before joining the court.