Senate Republican Leader John Braun has had a front row seat to the massive over-spending spree that has marked the Jay Inslee years in the governor’s mansion. Yet even a decade full of new taxes and double-digit increases in state government spending could hardly prepare him for the sheer audacity of the Democrats in 2023 – proposing a 20 percent increase in the next budget and huge new property taxes to increase spending even further, all while claiming they care about affordable housing. As Senator Braun writes in the Centralia Chronicle, “raising property taxes would make the affordability crisis in our state worse, lifting the 1% cap on annual growth goes against the will of the voters, and to say it again, state government doesn’t need more money. We must do better.”

Unfortunately, doing better for legislative Democrats means taking more tax dollars from your wallet. Sen. Braun framed the situation: “A majority of the state Senate’s Democrats have launched a surprise attack on one of the best friends Washington taxpayers have: the voter-endorsed law that limits the growth of property taxes to no more than 1% per year…The state Department of Revenue estimates raising the annual levy-growth cap to 3% will cost the people of Washington a whopping $12 billion more over the next decade.” That’s a lot of money to hand out to the party’s special-interest donors, and to grow the size of government even beyond Gov. Inslee’s usual lofty dreams (as Shift has noted). For more on this rational perspective, read here. (Chronicle, Shift)

It is sometimes hard to tell truth from satire when writing about public safety conditions on Seattle’s streets, yet all of us at Shift assure you we are being serious with the news, from KOMO, that fentanyl vending machines are off to a great start in Seattle in their first year, with “over 4,000 fentanyl test strips and over 1,000 naloxone kits were distributed through the vending machines.” Surprisingly enough, the social service folks who are hired to manage the machines “told KOMO News everyone should have access to Narcan kits and fentanyl test strips.” Certainly nothing says that Seattle is a city in recovery like the need for “everyone” to have ready Narcan access.

That “legalize it” attitude certainly seems to be shaping Seattle policy, even as the headline screaming from page 1 of the Seattle Times is that fentanyl has gone from nowhere to the leading street killer in the last five years. The Times spells it out clearly: “Illicit fentanyl kills at least two people every day in King County, and the powerful opioid was responsible for over 700 fatal overdoses last year, roughly triple the death toll of traffic crashes and gun violence combined.” However, nowhere in the first installment of the Times lengthy drug expose is a single mention of the Democrat Party’s legalization approach, which has provided the ripe conditions for the scourge’s liftoff. To find out how the city has upped its vending machine game and its sheer consumption of drugs, read here(KOMO, Seattle Times)

The folks over at the Tri City Herald cannot be accused of lacking patience, given the number of times they have had to write about silly people on the West side of Washington wasting taxpayer money on yet another study about ripping out hydroelectric dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers. Seemingly for as long as the dams have been in place, producing some of the world’s cheapest electricity, environmental extremists have been complaining (as Shift has noted in the past). Unfortunately, the greenies demand more of your tax dollars every time they complain, and as the Herald’s editorial writers point out, that is adding up to real money, and perhaps “At some point maybe there should be a study on these repetitive Snake dam studies, and whether they’ve been worth the money.” To read how much the liberals want to flush downriver, read here.  (Shift, Tri City Herald)

The sad truth is that Governor Jay Inslee should have entered office 10 years ago knowing at least one thing – that the state’s ferry fleet, which provides access to his then-home on Bainbridge Island, needed help. And now, 10 years into his reign of error from his non-ferry-dependent governor’s mansion, one ferry is up on the shore of his old stomping grounds and the 21-boat system under his command remains in disarray. The beleaguered governor essentially admitted his approach has failed even though the problems were obvious: “Look, we have a very old fleet. We desperately need new boats. We’ve known this for a long time.”

But knowing and doing are two different things, and “doing” is rarely a priority for the Inslee Administration. Failure will continue, as the Times writes, as “The state is already behind by at least two years, due largely to a breakdown in negotiations with Vigor, the Seattle-based shipbuilder that constructed the last 10 ferries. That means Washington is spending heavily to keep ships functioning when they’re due for retirement.” More on the distressing situation is here. (Seattle Times)

Even when Republicans are in the minority, as they are in the state legislature, sometimes an idea is strong enough that it overcomes Democrat opposition. Such is the case with January finally being named Americans of Chinese Descent History Month, as reported by the (Everett) Herald. Senator Keith Wagoner told the paper the mission of the bill he has sponsored the last three years “is to provide our schools the tools, our students the education and our citizens the long overdue recognition they deserve.” Unfortunately, as Shift has written about in the past, the senator’s well-meaning approach has been undermined by partisan and at times racist opposition from legislative Democrats (whose petty behavior was even exposed by the release of their own government emails). Read more about the good news here. (Shift, Herald)

Senator Ron Muzzall (R – Oak Harbor) joined us for this week’s Newsmaker Interview. Senator Muzzall is the Ranking Republican on the Senate Agriculture, Water, Natural Resources and Parks Committee. Sen. Muzzall informed us of the Inslee Administration’s many “broken promises” and failure to follow the law by not providing an exemption for farmers from the skyrocketing fuel prices thanks to the Democrats’ expensive “Cap and Tax” energy policies. He blamed the urban Democrats’ “downright disrespectful views of agricultural workers” for the radical overtime wage policies which are financially hurting both the state’s farmers and farmworkers. Read more.

CAN YOU SAY UNCONSTITUTIONAL STATE INCOME TAX?

TIMES MENTIONED DEMOCRAT LEGALIZATION POLICIES EXACTLY ZERO TIMES IN ARTICLE ON WHY FENTANYL IS NOW A PROBLEM

INSLEE PREPARES STATE TO MISS YET ANOTHER RANDOM ENVIRONMENTAL DEADLINE

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.

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