OLYMPIA—Legal wrangling ended in the state’s high court August 9 over the four initiatives that Washington voters will decide this November. Washington’s Supreme Court ruled that information about how three of them could affect the state budget will appear alongside the measures on the ballot.
In a two-page ruling, justices affirmed a lower court’s decision to deny an effort by Republican Party leaders to nix those “public investment impact disclosures.”
Also Friday, justices rebuffed a bid by an alliance of unions and progressive groups to force the secretary of state to redo its certification of the measures by reconfirming that the hundreds of thousands of people who signed petitions were legal voters.
The Washington State Supreme Court rejected two related challenges that could have kept citizen initiatives off the ballot to repeal the state’s capital gains tax, end its cap-and-trade program, make participation in a state-run, long-term care program optional and bar restrictions on natural gas in new construction.
Defend Washington and Washington Conservation Action Education Fund, which filed the suits, oppose all four measures.
In each case, the court issued a two-page order and said an opinion fully explaining its decision would be issued at a later date.
A 2022 law requires disclosure statements of 15 words or less be placed on ballots if a measure repeals, levies or modifies a tax or fee, and if it would cause a net change in state revenue.
State attorneys crafted this wording for the three measures focused on the cap-and-trade law, the capital gains tax and the long-term care program.
State Republican Party Chair Jim Walsh and Mainstream Republicans of Washington Chair Deanna Martinez, who refer to the statements as “warning labels,” sued in June to block their publication, arguing the measures don’t fit the law’s criteria.
A Thurston County Superior Court judge rejected their arguments. Walsh and Martinez petitioned the state Supreme Court to take the case up directly because the secretary of state’s office had said it needed to know by Aug. 23 if those statements would be on ballots.
“This is a major win for the voters of Washington State,” said Aaron Ostrom, executive director of Fuse Washington, a statewide progressive political organization. “When voters have information about the destructive impacts of their initiatives they go down in flames.”
SOURCE: This article was authored by Jerry Cornfield of the Washington State Standard part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Images and X posts were added by the Lynnwood Times.
