Tag Archives: taxes

Senate passes three budgets, and one has big problems

Dear Neighbors,

There are now less than 10 days left for legislators to wrap up their work at the Capitol. The time remaining in this session will be devoted to debating and voting in the Senate chamber, while some of us put in extra hours negotiating final versions of the three budgets (operating, capital, transportation) — including a lot of hours this Sunday, when we’re not scheduled to be on the “floor” voting.

We have through Friday to complete our work on bills passed over to us by the House of Representatives. Then the focus narrows to two things: acting on bills that are labeled “necessary to implement the budget” and deciding whether to accept changes made to Senate bills by the House.

Yesterday the Senate Ways and Means Committee, which handles the operating and capital budgets, met for what is likely the final time this session. Nearly 60 bills were on our committee’s agenda, and it makes sense that most were House bills, most also come with a price tag — at a time when the Legislature already has a $1.5 billion budget gap to fill.

This is important because, in spite of all the talk we heard about affordability when lawmakers arrived at the Capitol, this session is reaching deeper into the pockets of people across our state. The operating budget approved by the Senate majority on Friday is a prime example. Please keep reading for more about that budget and the other two spending plans adopted by the Senate.

Also, mark your calendar for the pair of post-session town-hall meetings our 16th District delegation has scheduled. I hope you can join us!

Senate’s $80-billion operating budget depends on raiding funds, more tax increases

The new operating budget is labeled “supplemental” because it’s about revisiting the two-year operating budget adopted in 2025 and making adjustments to get through the remainder of this budget cycle — meaning the end of June 2027.

The Senate majority says its plan (Senate Bill 5998) reflects “incredibly difficult decisions in a constrained fiscal environment.”

I’m having trouble seeing how adding $2.3 billion in spending, on top of the $77.9 billion approved less than a year ago, reflects any difficult decisions. And considering a state-record $12.3 billion package of tax increases was also approved in April 2025, how can there be any fiscal constraints?

There is no good reason for state spending to be growing twice as fast as household income in our state. And what the chart below doesn’t show is how the increase in spending on K-12 and higher education has tracked pretty well with the growth of household income — the overspending is happening in non-education areas, and it’s been going on for years regardless of who’s in charge in Washington, D.C.

It also concerns me that the Senate budget relies heavily on what we call “one-time” money to balance. Not only would it drain the state’s reserves and hit the rainy-day fund hard, but it also takes hundreds of millions that should have gone into the capital budget and also raids the Public Works Fund. On top of that, the Senate budget includes more tax increases and assumes the Legislature will adopt a state income tax this year. All of that is irresponsible and unsustainable.

In a statement following the 30-19 party-line vote on the Senate version of the supplemental operating budget, our Republican budget leader refers to this budget “as an $80‑billion house of cards on a shaky foundation of assumptions and short term fixes.”

He’s right — the better approach would be to keep new spending within the available revenue, to avoid new taxes and the use of budget gimmicks. I’m concerned that the Democrats’ approach will simply lead to another budget shortfall next year and a push for another big tax increase. That’s not the way to make living in Washington affordable.

Capital Budget: This was another productive session for our Senate capital-budget team, and we appreciated the unanimous support our work received. Sen. Mark Schoesler of Ritzville and I offer our take on the Senate budget here.

The image below gives a sense of how we worked to make sure the Senate capital budget (Senate Bill 6003) funds infrastructure and other community projects in all four corners of the state, not only in the more populated Puget Sound area.

The task now is to negotiate with the House, which adopted its own capital budget, to produce a final version that will be adopted before the Legislature adjourns. The House version also includes funding to deal with the enormous waste tire pile outside Richland. I’ll wait until then to detail the investments coming to our legislative district and region.

 

Transportation Budget: This also received unanimous support in the Senate. The fact that the Senate version (Senate Bill 6005) doesn’t rely on taxes and fees is a welcome change from the base transportation budget adopted in 2025. I appreciate that it’s strong on for money for road and bridge preservation, maintenance and facilities.

As with the capital budget, I’ll wait until a compromise is negotiated between the Senate and House before detailing the funding secured for projects in and around our 16th Legislative District.

Encouraging news for Prescott School District is bright spot in budget — but why was bill to protect other districts rejected?

In case you hadn’t heard the great news already — the supplemental operating budgets adopted by the Senate and the House both include money to help put the local Prescott School District back on sound financial footing. It makes me cautiously optimistic that the funding will carry into the final version.

I know the Senate Democrats’ budget leader was aware of the overwhelming community support for Prescott’s Feb. 10 school levy. While I can’t say the “yes” vote of over 86% clinched the budget appropriation, it had to help.

The dollars earmarked for Prescott are not tied to the one-time money being used to balance the supplemental budget. These are unspent funds left from assisting the Marysville School District in 2025.

Prescott needs to present a financial plan capable of convincing the superintendent of public instruction to withdraw his petition to dissolve the district. The budget appropriation will be the anchor of that plan.

Senate Bill 6065 would help Prescott (and potentially other districts) by clarifying the policy that allows school districts to make interfund loans in response to specific financial issues. It passed 49-0 in the Senate and is awaiting a vote by the full House.

Who could be opposed to stronger financial oversight?
Knowing that Olympia’s effort to dissolve the Prescott district originated with financial management by former district employees, I had introduced Senate Bill 6247 to hopefully spare other districts from going through the same ordeal.

My bill would create what amounts to an early-warning system regarding a school district’s finances. Although the Senate passed it unanimously, the education committee in the House made 13 changes before moving it forward to the House Appropriations Committee — which then let the bill die.

I’ve seen a lot of good Senate bills die in this same committee over the years, but it’s very difficult to understand why any legislator would not want to prevent waste, fraud and abuse in our schools — especially the kind that can ruin a district financially.

I enjoyed sponsoring Ruwaida El-Atwani as a Senate page recently. She’s a junior at Hanford High School and the 16-year-old daughter of Kadriye and Osman El-Atwani of West Richland.

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I am working to make living in our state more affordable, make our communities safer, uphold our paramount duty to provide for schools, and hold state government accountable. I’ll work with anyone who shares those goals and wants to find solutions.

Please reach out to my office with your thoughts, ideas and concerns on matters of importance to you. I am here to serve and look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Perry Dozier
State Senator
16th Legislative District

EMAIL: Perry.Dozier@leg.wa.gov
OLYMPIA PHONE: (360) 786-7630
OLYMPIA OFFICE: 342 Irving R. Newhouse Building
MAILING ADDRESS: P.O. Box 40416, Olympia, WA 98504

 

 

Majority is determined to raise your taxes, one way or another

Dear Neighbor,

This year’s regular legislative session will end no later than midnight this coming Sunday. Our state constitution says so, because the regular sessions in odd-numbered years are limited to 105 days — and Sunday is day 105.

If the Legislature still has work to do, it can go into what’s officially called an extraordinary session. We tend to call it a “special” session or simply, overtime.

A special session is looking like a pretty strong possibility this year, because the majority Democrats and the governor agree on raising taxes but not on which taxes to increase, and by how much. That’s up in the air even more because of what majority Democrats did on the day before Easter, when we were in session nearly eight hours.

Here are more details, taken from the news release I issued Saturday evening (here’s the relevant part of it):

Dozier opposes first wave of Democrat tax hikes

OLYMPIA, April 19… Today Sen. Perry Dozier and his fellow Republican senators opposed the first round of major tax increases brought to the full Senate: a sales-tax increase that will hit lower- and middle-income families harder, a tax increase that will drive capital out of Washington, and a collection of unrelated tax increases that includes a new tax on self-storage rentals.

Dozier, R-Waitsburg, offered this statement after the Senate’s majority Democrats pushed the three tax bills through during their third consecutive Saturday voting session of 2025:

“It’s a farce for the Democrats to keep talking about making the wealthy pay more when they clearly are willing to tax everyday Washingtonians. Today alone the Senate majority supported tax increases that will apply to childcare, nursing homes, synthetic tobacco products, self-storage companies, doorbell cameras, and much, much more.

“The tax bills that came out of the Senate today would cost more than $10 billion all by themselves, and we’re still expecting other taxes to be coming our way from the House. I heard Governor Ferguson on Thursday when he said $12 billion in new taxes is unsustainable, so the majority is close to that already – but maybe the Democrats just don’t care what he thinks.

“The best answer to the governor’s concerns about tax increases, and being ready for anything coming out of Washington, D.C., is the $ave Washington budget proposed by Senate Republicans. It doesn’t require a single tax increase and won’t cut anyone off of services. We made a motion to bring our budget bill to the floor today, but the Democrats said no.”

The governor hasn’t come out and said he will call legislators into a special session if there are too many new taxes in the budget they ultimately adopt — “they” being Democrat legislators, who are the only ones pushing new taxes.

Also, when Governor Ferguson said $12 billion in new taxes is “too risky” (in addition to “unsustainable”), he may have been referring to state-level taxes, not a combination of state and local. But if more services become taxable, the local sales taxes also apply, and the property-tax hikes being proposed certainly would mean local increases. That’s why I say the tax bills approved by the Senate on Saturday have put the count at $10-plus billion, with more tax increases in the pipeline.

Maybe the governor and the legislative Democrats will come to terms on taxes before midnight on day 105. I suspect they realize how it will appear to the public if we are pushed into a special session simply because of Democrat infighting about raising taxes.

Either way, multibillion-dollar tax increases seem inevitable this session, even though Senate Republicans have proposed a budget that does everything our state needs, using the revenue available and without a single cut to human services. It’s as though the majority is pursuing tax increases simply because it doesn’t think the people will push back — and that’s a poor way to govern.

Is the threat of a property-tax increase over? Not so fast

As of this past week the Democrats had not one but three bills to raise your property taxes. Each would affect the Washington law prohibiting the state and local governments from increasing your property-tax rate by more than 1% annually unless they get permission through a public vote.

Senate Bill 5798 would eliminate the 1% cap and tie tax-rate growth to inflation plus population growth; House Bill 2049 and Senate Bill 5812, introduced with identical wording, would triple the 1% limit. Each has received tremendous public opposition.

On Saturday there was new concern that Democrats would make SB 5798 / HB 2049 even worse, through a rewrite that would allow school districts to pursue higher levy amounts. This would take Washington’s K-12 funding system backwards, to the days when property-rich school districts had a huge money-raising advantage over property-poor districts.

Now the concern has shifted yet again. The House majority approved HB 2049 late last night, after taking out the part about the growth of property-tax rates — and as we anticipated, inserting a new part about larger school tax levies.

If this means the Democrats have completely abandoned their efforts to lift or eliminate the 1% cap on tax-rate growth, great. That is a victory by itself, for Republicans and especially the people who have applied so much pressure by stating their opposition to the bill.

However, enabling school districts to go for larger tax levies is still opening the door to higher property taxes, and sets the stage for two things to happen.

One is a return to the time when school districts were either “haves” or “have-nots” depending on property values. Republicans worked hard to level the playing field between districts, so property-rich districts didn’t have such an advantage. We don’t believe a child’s educational opportunities should depend on a ZIP code, and it’s shocking that Democrats would try to undermine that.

The other is that districts could once again become more reliant on local-levy dollars than on state-level funding, which sets the stage for another lawsuit like the one that brought about the landmark McCleary lawsuit more than a dozen years ago.

So don’t be fooled — in a way, HB 2049 is almost worse now, because of how it could raise the cost of living for homeowners and renters while also putting rural families and rural students at a disadvantage. We will fight this!

Another attack on agriculture

It isn’t just the tax increases being discussed in Olympia that worry me. The effort to impose rent control is likely to shrink the supply of rental housing, meaning higher prices, and the attempt to make striking workers eligible for unemployment benefits will increase the cost of doing business.

Neither of these is a tax increase, literally, but if they become law, each will make living and working in our state less affordable.

Another example which hasn’t gotten much attention is the bill to begin phasing out certain refrigerants in our state — and by going after refrigerants, House Bill 1462 also goes after food storage.

This bill came before the full Senate this past week, having been passed in the House already on a party-line vote. I used it as an example of how policies popular with certain interest groups can have a much darker side, and what this bill in particular means for growers across our state who rely on cold storage.

Click here or on the image above to view my remarks on HB 1462. Because it has been passed by both chambers but in different forms, I can’t tell you how it will end up exactly — but we already know it will be unfriendly to agriculture.

Regulatory changes add to the cost of doing business in our state, and while many of those costs end up being passed along to consumers, not every business sector can do so — agriculture being a prime example, because those of us who grow commodities are “price takers,” not “price makers.”

As I said on the floor of the Senate chamber, this bill is another of the many attacks I’ve seen on agriculture during what is now my fifth year as a senator. We should be protecting agriculture instead, knowing all the jobs it provides and the important role it has in our state economy. Let’s not kill the family farm!

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I am working to make living in our state more affordable, make our communities safer, uphold our paramount duty to provide for schools, and hold state government accountable. I’ll work with anyone who shares those goals and wants to find solutions.

Please reach out to my office with your thoughts, ideas and concerns on matters of importance to you. I am here to serve and look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

dozier signature

Perry Dozier
State Senator
16th Legislative District

EMAIL: Perry.Dozier@leg.wa.gov
OLYMPIA PHONE: (360) 786-7630
OLYMPIA OFFICE: 342 Irving R. Newhouse Building
MAILING ADDRESS: P.O. Box 40416, Olympia, WA 98504