Washington and Oregon’s long-promised Columbia River bridge project is now doing what mega-projects under progressive management tend to do best: shrink in ambition while exploding in cost.

What was once pitched as a transformative multi-billion-dollar regional link has ballooned from roughly $5–7.5 billion to a staggering $14.4 billion estimate under Gov. Bob Ferguson. That’s not a rounding error—it’s a complete financial rewrite. And with the budget reality setting in, officials are now “right-sizing expectations,” which in practice means quietly pushing key promises like light rail further into the future.

Vancouver leaders are less than thrilled that the long-sold vision of rail service reaching the city’s core is being kicked down the road—possibly for a decade or more—replaced instead with a lofty, elevated station over freight tracks that sounds more like a sketch than a solution. The full rail extension now hinges on a separate $1 billion federal grant that isn’t even guaranteed.

The result is a familiar pattern: the public was sold a fully integrated transit future, but the working plan is a stripped-down bridge-first approach, with transit details deferred to some future political cycle where no one has to pay today’s bill.

Even local officials say they were blindsided by the shift, while state agencies insist this is just “phasing.” Those who live in reality call it something else: failure.

State Sen. Marko Liias (D-Edmonds), chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, summed it up with optimistic understatement: they’ll “get to the finish line”—just not in any timeframe voters were originally led to expect. Read more at the Washington State Standard.

Gov. Bob Ferguson tried to calm nerves this week by pledging he would veto any effort to expand Washington’s new income tax beyond the $1 million threshold. The messaging was clearly meant to sound firm and reassuring—right up until X’s community notes and critics pointed out the obvious: nothing in the structure of the law actually locks that threshold in place long-term.

The community note pointed out that Democrats rejected amendments that would have required voter approval to change the threshold, and the bill’s “necessity clause” effectively blocks a referendum—leaving voters with the initiative process as their only real escape hatch if the tax framework ever expands. In other words, the guardrails being advertised don’t exactly exist in the way the messaging implies.

State Rep. and Washington GOP Chair Jim Walsh called out what he sees as a familiar pattern: carefully worded pledges today, paired with a legislative structure that makes future expansion politically easy and voter resistance procedurally difficult. His broader argument is that this isn’t a one-off tax policy—it’s a stepping stone.

Walsh also pointed to the role of Jamie Pedersen, one of the key Democratic architects of the legislation, saying the design of the bill makes a broader income tax framework achievable with a simple majority in a future session if the $1 million exemption is ever removed.

The irony is rich: a governor insisting the tax is tightly limited, while the bill itself was written in a way that allows those limits to be changed without direct voter approval—and getting fact-checked in real time on the same platform used to make the promise. Read more at Seattle Red.

In a new op-ed for Center Square, Elizabeth New of the Washington Policy Center argues that Washington’s WA Cares long-term care program continues to drift away from its original promises, especially when it comes to workers who opted out by purchasing private long-term care insurance.

New’s core point is that what was sold as a permanent exemption has slowly morphed into something far less clear. Nearly half a million workers originally exited the program under the understanding that their decision was final. But now, she notes, state messaging and policy adjustments are effectively inviting some of those same workers to reconsider—or at least re-engage with a system they thought they had left behind.

She highlights recent state communications showing renewed outreach to exempt workers, including letters suggesting a limited opportunity to voluntarily rejoin WA Cares. While the state frames this as expanded flexibility and improved benefits, New argues it underscores a deeper problem: the rules around exemption and participation have already shifted multiple times in a relatively short period.

That history of revisions, she contends, raises legitimate concerns about whether “opt-out” decisions will remain stable over time, or whether future legislative changes could once again alter the terms for workers who believed they had made a permanent choice.

Even so, she notes there is no immediate financial pressure requiring drastic action, as the exempt population is shrinking and the program is not currently in crisis. That makes the ongoing outreach, in her view, less about necessity and more about rebranding earlier policy decisions.

Her bottom line is straightforward: WA Cares may be evolving, but for workers trying to plan decades ahead, a system that keeps revisiting settled decisions doesn’t inspire much confidence. Read more at the Center Square.

In a new piece, the Washington Policy Center’s Mark Harmsworth points out that the push to restrict algorithmic rent-setting tools is less a housing solution and more a familiar exercise in government overreach dressed up as consumer protection.

Harmsworth takes aim at Seattle’s decision to ban software like RealPage, which the left claims enables “price fixing.” His argument is blunt: landlords have always used market data to set rents—software just makes that process faster and more consistent. Removing it doesn’t eliminate market behavior; it just forces more subjective, less precise human guesswork that can actually make pricing less stable and less efficient.

He warns that cities like Bellingham, which is now considering similar restrictions, are repeating Seattle’s playbook despite already struggling with rising rents—up roughly 71% over the past decade. In his view, blaming algorithms is a convenient distraction from the real drivers: restrictive zoning, slow permitting, high taxes, and a chronic undersupply of housing.

Harmsworth also raises constitutional concerns about Seattle’s approach, arguing the ordinance risks punishing lawful business practices and interfering with private-market decision-making under vague enforcement standards. But his broader critique is economic: when government interferes with price signals, it doesn’t fix affordability—it distorts the signals that tell the market to build more housing in the first place.

The end result, he argues, is a predictable cycle: fewer incentives to build, more pressure on existing housing, and policies that feel good politically while doing little to actually lower costs for renters. Read more at the Washington Policy Center.

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