Special session stops short of enacting a “true” 1 percent cap on property taxes
Special to The Reflector

Two days before the Legislature went into special session on Nov. 29, the Port Townsend City Council voted to raise property taxes beyond 1 percent by tapping into their “banked capacity.” The special session is now over, and Port Townsend can still go after their unused taxing authority. In fact, so can every other local government in Washington state. 

The I-747 bill from the governor that was pushed through by the Democrat majority in the Legislature reinstated I-747 – the 1 percent limit on tax collections over the previous year – but left the door wide open for local governments to go after taxes they didn’t collect under the old 6 percent limit. This is what is referred to as “banked capacity,” and it adds up to an estimated $108 million under the governor’s bill. 

I think the homeowners have been double-crossed. 

I submitted a bill that would have eliminated local governments’ banked capacity. When the majority refused to take my bill up, I offered an amendment to the governor’s bill to require a vote of the people before banked capacity could be tapped. The Democrat majority killed my amendment.  

I do not intend to let this travesty go unchallenged. Come January, I will push hard for a bill to eliminate the authority of local governments to collect their banked capacity without a vote of the people.  

I will also push my colleagues to send a constitutional amendment to the ballot that will freeze property values as of January 2008 and limit reassessments to no more than 1 percent. Skyrocketing reassessments have played a major role in increasing the burden of property taxes. 

Let’s look at the facts. Even under I-747’s 1 percent limit, Clark County taxpayers paid $437 million in property taxes in 2007, a 6.5 percent increase over the prior year because of new construction (not subject to I-747’s limit) and voter-approved levies. 

When the Supreme Court threw out I-747 on Nov. 8, I took the lead in calling for a special session fully intending that we would reinstate I-747 and protect homeowners from banked capacity.  

But there seems to be no end to government money grabbing.

We stop it one way by reenacting I-747, and then the law is circumvented by doing nothing to stop banked capacity.  

The people approved Initiative 722 in 2000, which capped property tax collections at 2 percent and eliminated banked capacity. In 2001, the people reduced the cap to 1 percent by approving I-747.  Both of these initiatives passed with a strong “yes” vote.  

People are being forced to give up their homes because they can’t afford their property taxes. This is just plain wrong.

11/29/07