Once again liberals from Olympia’s legislative halls to Seattle newsrooms are being challenged by the release of the state’s mid-session revenue forecast, which tells Democrat budget writers how much money they get to waste over the next two years. The problem for the math-challenged is how to explain to the public that record tax collections do not equal any tax refunds for the state’s taxpayers – indeed, taxes will continue to go up as they have every year under Governor Jay Inslee, just as state spending will.

That leaves legislators and reporters complaining that, yes, sure they are getting more money to spend in the future, but it’s not as much as they were promised after last November’s forecast. How disappointing for them. As for us taxpayers, we’ll just have to hope that at least a little bit of the record $65 billion+ expected to go out the door in the next budget will escape the clutches of the Democrats’ favorite special interests, and help out the rest of the state. (Everett Herald, Crosscut)

One of the sub-texts of the release of the State Senate’s capital spending budget was the omission of Governor Inslee’s highly publicized $4 billion homeless bond scheme from that plan. The governor’s influence was reduced to turning to Twitter to attack his fellow Democrats for “taking us backwards on housing”. Inslee’s childish retort was answered this morning in a Seattle Times op-ed by the Democrat who wrote the budget, Mark Mullet. He pointed out that Inslee’s scheme “would mean Washington would be spending more than 5% of revenue to pay off its debts” and that would mean “we would need to spend nearly $2.4 billion in additional interest payments going into the future.” Of course, it doesn’t help that Inslee endorsed a fellow Democrat against Sen. Mullet in his last primary election. Ouch. (Seattle Times, Seattle Times)

It must have been a slow news day in Spokane, but when “(A)round a half-dozen activists gathered next to Spokane City Hall to demand action from local leaders during a Monday morning press conference” it forced this question to the front – should “activists” get to determine who the Spokane Police Chief is allowed to talk to? Because the activists were “calling for the resignation of Spokane police Chief Craig Meidl” because it appears he is talking to the wrong kind of people – business people.

Chief Meidl pointed out the hypocrisy to the Spokesman-Review, saying his conversations with a local businessman “were not philosophically different from those with then-Spokane NAACP President Kurtis Robinson and Spokane Human Rights Commission Chair Anwar Peace, who both called for Meidl’s resignation Monday. ‘Kurtis and Anwar have been recipients of that relationship as well. So it seems to me that they want that relationship unless I’m sharing things they don’t want me to share’.”

In the background was perhaps the real reason for the attack on the police chief, which is that “In December, the Office of the Police Ombudsman released a report detailing the aftermath of a 2020 homicide in Browne’s Addition and a subsequent confrontation between police and Councilwoman Betsy Wilkerson over whether Wilkerson would release surveillance footage without a warrant.” Now that Councilwoman Wilkerson is running for Council President, that controversy is sure to come back up, and her supporters might be trying to help change the subject a bit. (The Spokesman-Review)

To get early insight into what might make Shift’s next Daily Briefing worth reading, tune in to 570 KVI on your AM dial weekday mornings at 8:05, to hear John Carlson talk Washington State legislative politics with Shift co-founder Randy Pepple. And you can always stay for the rest of the Commute with Carlson by tuning in here.

Washington State remains one of eight states with no state income tax – though the Democrats have passed an illegal one, and have appealed its unconstitutionality to the State Supreme Court to let them have one. Maybe they should consider this news from our neighbors to the  south. (Sorry for the paywall, but the headline says it all): Oregonians moving to Clark County in droves; experts cite income tax. (The Columbian)

Not to be outdone by the governor’s $4 billion dollar homeless scheme, King County’s homelessness bureaucrats recently proposed “that the region spend $10 billion or more over five years to create more than 18,000 new temporary spaces for people to live.” However, “(A)fter an initial draft of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s Five-Year Plan prompted skeptical responses from local leaders—who questioned the proposal’s multibillion-dollar price tag and ambitious timeline for addressing issues the region has been struggling with for decades—the agency is considering a slate of revisions.” And, according to reporter Erica Barnett at Publicola, those changes are “modest.” (PubliCola)

It’s hard to find this level of hypocrisy every day, unless you are used to watching the Inslee administration.  In this particular case, while the governor is flapping on Twitter about “state leadership”, his own bureaucrats are ignoring his mandates. The Washington Policy Center’s Todd Myers reports that, while Inslee decreed in 2019 that half the state’s future passenger vehicle purchases would be electric,  “as the state returned to normal in 2022, despite a large increase in revenue, state agencies continued to fall far short of the governor’s target. According to DES, only 9 of the 34 passenger vehicles purchased in 2022 were electric.”

What’s even worse, “despite the state’s consistent failure to come close to meeting the governor’s target, the state has now adopted a rule to require that 35 percent of new passenger vehicles sold in the state are EVs in 2026, increasing to 100 percent in 2035.” That’s right — the state can’t come close to meeting the Inslee electric car mandate, but you can bet the bureaucrats will be able to enforce one against you. (Washington Policy Center)

If you want to take a trip back to the hazy and heady days of the CHAZ/CHOP scene in 2020, Seattle Met has a piece for you filled with lefties lamenting the loss of the innocence of those days – and how hard it is to actually reduce spending on police if you want a civilized society.  But the dreamers gotta dream. (Seattle Met)

Yes, there is math on this test…and record tax revenues keep rolling in.

King County – “leading the way with solutions” that aren’t working

Even Sound Transit cheerleaders sounding alarm at agency incompetence

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