– Olympia, WA
The 2025 Washington state legislative session kicked off in January with all the fervor a political party being given carte blanche to enact its will could muster.
House and Senate bills began to flow like the Columbia in spate, and as each new piece of legislation slid into the committee docket, the tale being written was decidedly one-sided. As the only state that ticked left in the 2024 election cycle, Washington’s august bodies in Olympia matched the ardor of the base in ramming progressive ideals into all areas of public life.
They pushed forward additional onerous gun control laws, attacked parental rights by severely limiting the scope of the “Parents Bill of Rights” signed into law last year, inexplicably added Muslim holidays to the state’s official calendar, to name only a few, with the full-throated support of new governor Bob Ferguson.
For all their agreement during this honeymoon phase of the newly installed governor and congress, though, one area has been a constant thorn in the side between the two otherwise fully aligned branches of Washington’s government:
Taxes.
As has been well reported, the budget necessary to run the state’s expansive bureaucracy and programs, is woefully imbalanced to the tune of a $12-$15 billion deficit. According to state senator, Leonard Christian, this is an untenable situation. “This isn’t the federal government,” he quipped at a town hall meeting this winter, just before the outset of the new congressional session. “We actually have to have the money to pay for things.”
All said and done, with the budget sent to Governor Ferguson’s desk in March, the budget was still $845 million short of balancing, meaning almost another billion dollars being tacked onto the growing red ink on the ledger.
The proposals for reigning in the budget have been varied, coming from both sides of the aisle.
While Washington congressional republicans call for slashing of government programs and subsidies, and reduction of government spending in areas like education, immigration and elsewhere, the majority party in power has been staunchly opposed to these measures.
Instead, what the house and senate democrats have offered up are even more extensive taxation on the rich in the state, as well as a plan to cause a violent increase in property taxes state wide.
The latter, a particularly onerous proposal, would remove the one-percent cap on property tax increases per year state-wide, and replace it with a sliding scale that includes population growth and other factors that could drive property taxes to impossible amounts for many homeowners and property owners across the state.
WA Democrats won't listen to Public Testimony, so it is time to escalate.
— Future 42 (@future42org) April 9, 2025
Protest with us next Tuesday to demand:
NO To Raising Property Taxes! pic.twitter.com/IIjffmv1Yd
The proposed plan, they claim, would net an additional $15 billion in state revenue, erasing the budget deficit looming on the horizon. All it would take is over-burdening a populace that broadly speaking had nothing to do with creating that deficit in the first place.
With such a massive majority in both halls of Washington’s congress, with a dyed in the wool liberal in the governor’s mansion and courts that would gladly uphold their combined agendas, the possibility of these taxes passing without any issue seem like a foregone conclusion.
Then came word from Ferguson’s office, “no wealth tax”. To say that the governor’s rejection of the house-proposed bill is an understatement. While he has not commented on other tax proposals (like the increasing of property taxes), his public refusal of the congress’s wealth tax revealed a stunning rift in the monochromatic blue government in Washington.
During and after the campaign for governor, Ferguson made some waves with his repeated commitment to stay away from tax increases to deal with Washington’s soaring debt crisis. Being the heir apparent of Jay Inslee – who never saw a tax he didn’t like – and showing such lockstep agreement with his predecessor during his 12-year turn as attorney general, many in Washington gazed at those promises with a severe eye of suspicion.
Thus far in his first term, however, Ferguson seems true to his promise and, at least publicly, is standing by his word.
What is the bigger picture here? Should conservatives and those simply hoping to remain housed, clothed and fed amidst soaring price inflation and threatening new taxes see this divide as a reason for hope?
This is the same Bob Ferguson who sued the first Trump presidency a record 99 times while AG. The same man who blustered during his inauguration in January that he would fight any federal attempts to deport illegal aliens from Washington state and would work tirelessly to enshrine a woman’s right to murder her unborn children into law and protect those laws vehemently.
No, Bob Ferguson has not become a conservative overnight. What he may represent is a rare callback to the previous generation of liberals; socially progressive but fiscally conservative. A dinosaur. A relic. A man woefully out of step with his progressive comrades and now, a fly in the ointment for their unending lust of the rich man’s gold.
His is the morally inconsistent viewpoint that people should have full government-funded access to abortions and sexual mutilation of minors, but hedges at the idea of ballooning the state budget to pay for it all.
This does not bode well for a return trip to Olympia in four years for Ferguson, but if the rift continues beyond this current session of congress, it could open unexpected doors for conservatives who are paying attention. A budget will be passed out of this session. It is inevitable. And more than likely it will further the deficit facing the state instead of lessening it.
Conservatives, though, and those tired of soaring prices at the gas pump, the grocery store and in every arena of life, have a chance to begin waging war against the criminal acts of Wasihngton’s congress. Those legislators will keep pushing the envelope on taxes, but the people have already started making their voices heard.
In opposition to the proposed bill to eliminate the one-percent cap on raising property taxes, more than 95% of all respondents to the bill on the state’s legislature web portal stood strongly against the proposed bill, with many people crossing the aisle to do so.
The people of Washington state are tired of being robbed blind at every turn and a voice is rising to stand against those who would just keep taking from them. Now is the time to capitalize on the disunity in Olympia to drive the wedge further and start electing more of those who will listen.
