Washblog

Last year, I had heard Barbara neatly dismantle pro-I-330 arguments in a debate at my church. And I had come away from that experience with admiration for her quiet, focused, and unflappable presence. Many people had expected I-330, which limited injured patients' right to sue, to be voted in. But it lost 43% to 57%. I had little doubt that Barbara's leadership on that difficult and high-stakes campaign played a large part in our victory. Last week I met with Barbara and Juan Martinez, WTFC's new Organizer, for coffee.   Where's the Tax Fairness Coalition headed, I asked? Their answer: a "Campaign to Hold Big Oil Accountable".  YES!

What will we accomplish by holding big oil accountable?  Well, a victory for basic fairness, first of all.  Of more immediate relevance for our daily lives, WTFC tells us that we can secure over $600 million a year to help schools, hospitals, and local governments meet rising energy costs.  And we can invest further in developing renewable energy resources to bring our state more jobs, more economic independence, and cleaner air. The Economic Opportunity Institute cites other possible benefits, including the reduction of business and occupation taxes across the board and reduced gas prices.

Barbara and Juan - with the backing of the 74 member organizations in their coalition, are well suited to lead this new campaign.  Before heading up the No On I-330 campaign, Barbara was the Executive Director of Washington Citizen Action.  She's been organizing for 16 years, starting with a gig managing a successful long-shot campaign for a state Representative straight out of college and moving on next to direct, on-the-ground action with ACORN.   Juan was a congressional staffer specializing in housing, homelessness, and consumer affairs with Representative McDermott, a case manager with DSHS in Belltown, and President of Local 843, WFSE, AFL-CIO.

The tax fairness movement, Barbara explained, must be driven by grassroots citizen action. To be successful, we must go beyond those organizations and people who have been traditionally been involved -- and engage the whole range of citizens who are affected. Holding big oil accountable is a natural first step.  It is not difficult for any of us going broke on our fuel bills while oil companies make record profits -- to see that this is unfair.

In this time of political turmoil, it is also right to ask when Washington citizens are going to learn to work together to take charge of our common destiny. When are we going to work together to protect our families, businesses, and environment? Surely, we're not going to continue to fight about ideology forever as we struggle with increasingly challenging issues. The Economic Opportunity Institutes' recent report,  Regulating the Oil Industry and Corraling Oil Industry Profits, invokes our citizen authority to take matters into hand:

Washington state has the authority to create policy to capture some of the windfall profits of oil companies, invest these profits in renewable energy, and regulate gasoline prices.

Some resources

• Unintended Consequences, Donald Hopps, Ph.D., Institute for Washington's Future.  This editorial is a good backgrounder on how our chaotic tax reform dynamic perpetuates our tax misery.
• The 2002 study commissioned by our state legislature, Tax Alternatives for Washington State (AKA Gates Study), concluded:  "... our current system is fundamentally inequitable to low- and middle-income people, unfair to many businesses, and subject to sharp fluctuations in revenue. "
• The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in its 2003 study, Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States, concluded that Washington had the most unfair tax system in the nation and that it was soaking the poor and middle class and sparing the rich.
• Economic Opportunity's 2005 report: Reforming Washington's Tax System: Where Do We Go From Here?, by Marilyn P. Watkins:  People in the lowest one-fifth of the state's population pay 18% of their   in state and local taxes, the middle class pays 11%, while the richest 1% pay just 3%.